She crept around the floor’s edge, skirting the metal plates and inspecting the seams of each to see if all of them had been welded shut. After five minutes, she came upon a section that was covered by a thick metal grate. She peeked through and could just make out a large cylindrical object. She knelt, threaded her fingers through the grate and tried to lift. It gave just enough for her to know that it wasn’t welded in place, but it was too heavy for her to lift alone.
“Help me,” she called out, and when neither brother moved to assist her, she added, “Do you want the money or not?”
Raul looked to his brother as if checking for permission, and then moved to help Jenna. Like her, he attempted to lift the grate up, but even with their combined strength, it refused to yield.
Carlos regarded Jenna suspiciously. “That thing hasn’t been moved in years, little girl. I think you’re jerking us around.”
Jenna was inclined to agree with the first assertion. Unfortunately, it didn’t support her claim that Noah had recently hidden money here. But she felt certain that this was the place. “Just help us lift it. Or better yet, find something we can use as a lever.” She glanced around the debris strewn floor, looking for something sturdy enough to fit the bill.
“Raul,” Carlos said, his tone still dubious. “Get a tire iron from the car.”
The younger brother moved off without question, leaving Carlos and Jenna alone. Jenna measured the distance between herself and him, calculating her odds of taking him on one-on-one. He was bigger but she had years of training in unarmed combat, and she would have the element of surprise on her side. He had a gun, but as Noah had often told her, people with guns had a tendency to put too much faith in them. If she charged, he might waste precious seconds trying to draw the gun and aim it, time in which she would be able to close the distance and punch him in the throat.
But not quite enough time, she thought. Carlos, consciously or not, had kept a good stand-off distance. That was another thing Noah always complained about when watching action movies. When someone — a cop maybe — held a prisoner at gunpoint, they would always get right up in their face. It was dramatic as hell, but Noah always scoffed and talked about how easy it would be to disarm the gunman in that situation.
It was funny how all those little things Noah had said and done over the years, things which she had never thought twice about, now made sense. All that time, Noah had been teaching her, passing along his accumulated wisdom, preparing her for…
For this?
He must have known a threat like this might someday materialize, and while he had chosen not to reveal the truth about himself to her, he had taken steps to ensure that she would be prepared. He had trained her, mind and body, to deal with whatever happened. That was why, even though her muscles ached, her empty stomach rumbled and her head throbbed, she did not feel afraid.
Raul came back with a short lug wrench, tipped with a chisel point at one end for popping off hubcaps. It was not long enough to provide much leverage, but Raul was able to work it into a seam and managed to lift the grate and jam the pry bar under it.
“See,” Jenna said, pointing triumphantly.
Carlos looked unimpressed, but joined in. The three of them succeeded in pushing the grate aside a full eighteen inches. He then shone his light down into the hole. Jenna looked in and saw the smooth concrete walls that curved in either direction to form a wide circle, and at the center of the circle, the enormous white cylinder of the rocket motor. A line of hooplike protrusions — curved pieces of rebar, each about the size of a horseshoe — were set in the concrete wall at one-foot intervals, forming an access ladder.
She was itching to descend into the silo, to seek out its hidden depths and whatever it was that Noah had left here, but she waited for Carlos to give her the go-ahead. She did not want to let either of them go down the ladder, but neither did she want to seem too eager to do so herself. If either one of them did decide to explore the silo, she decided that would be her cue to strike.
“Okay, little girl,” Carlos said, gesturing at the opening. “This is your show. Go get it.”
19
Jenna dropped onto the floor, swung her legs out into empty space, and twisted around until she felt a steel rung underfoot. She tested it. After forty-five years of exposure to the tropical Everglades air, the steel could have been as rusted as the metal plates covering the silo. The first rung felt solid underfoot. She stepped down to the next and tested it the same way. Just as she was about to take the step that would plunge her into the darkness below, she raised her eyes to Carlos.
“I’m going to need a light.”
He frowned then looked at his phone for a moment before handing it over. “No bars out here, so don’t bother trying to call for help.”
In truth, the idea had not even occurred to her. “I just need to see what I’m doing.”
She turned the bright LED down into the depths of the silo. Far below her feet, at the base of the rocket, was a platform made of the same metal grating. The distance seemed about right for Noah’s ‘minus eighty.’ She slipped the phone into the back pocket of her jeans and started down again.
The round mouth of the silo, dimly lit to begin with, shrank to a spot that glowed about as brightly as the luminescent numbers on a wristwatch — enough to be seen, but not enough to illuminate anything. She didn’t need light for the descent, though. She could see everything in her mind’s eye, and she knew exactly where she was in relation to the platform. She had, without even thinking about it, calculated the number of rungs. She ticked them off in her head as she went down, testing each hold before trusting it with her weight. After several minutes, she reached a foot out behind her to find the platform.
She was less certain about its stability, but there were no creaks or groans. With one hand on a rung, she lowered her other foot down and stood there for a moment.
“Okay, Noah. I’m here,” she murmured. “What am I supposed to do now?”
She took out the phone. It had timed out and gone dark, but she found the button to wake it up and was gratified to see that there was no password lock. That would come in handy if she needed to use the phone after…
First things first.
She used the screen’s brightness to survey the area. The rocket motor was just behind her, its rounded end perched atop a solid concrete pedestal at the center of the metal grating. The silo continued down into the shadowy unknown, but Jenna knew that what she wanted would be found right here. She waved the light around, painting the area into her mental image but also looking for anything that seemed out of place.
She focused on recesses and niches hidden in shadow. Noah would not have left his cache out in the open. As inaccessible as the silo’s bottom was, there was nothing to stop a thrill-seeking urban explorer from making the descent. Noah would have recognized that possibility. After a few moments of searching, she spied something just above the inverted dome of the rocket motor.
It was a metal box, about the size of the aluminum lunch-boxes that some of her schoolmates carried. Most kids who brought lunch from home used collapsible insulated bags, but a few liked the kitschy appeal of having a metal box painted with images from cartoon shows. My Little Pony. Hello Kitty. Things she had never been interested in. This box was an undecorated gun-metal gray. She rapped her knuckles on it. Solid as a bank vault. She held the light closer and saw where the box had been spot-welded to the rocket. She also saw that it was secured with a three-digit roller combination lock.