“What is this?” Nate said as they moved down the steps and into the room. “A bomb shelter?”
“More like a safe house,” Quinn said.
There was a living area and a kitchen and two other doors that led off to other rooms. Quinn took a quick look inside each — a bedroom and a bathroom.
“This must extend under half the backyard,” Orlando said. “If she’s not Desirae’s mother, then she’s in the business herself.
“Let’s spread out and look around,” Quinn told them.
While Orlando disappeared into the bedroom, Quinn and Nate tackled the main living area. On a credenza near the kitchen, Quinn spotted a couple figurines that were a perfect match for the pair up on the piano. He realized he’d made a mistake earlier as to what they were. Not Native American. Polynesian — maybe Tahitian or Fujian or Hawaiian.
“Quinn, come here,” Orlando called.
He entered the bedroom and found her on the other side of a queen-size bed, wearing her look-what-I-found smile. She beckoned him over, and then leaned down and pulled on what appeared to be a long drawer under the bed. But it was no drawer. It was a single-person trundle bed, the mattress covered by sheets with cartoon princesses.
A young girl’s bed.
Orlando ran her finger over the edge of the bed frame, leaving a trail in the dust. “Don’t think anyone’s been down here for a while.”
They looked at each other, clearly thinking the same thing, but neither wanting to openly speculate about who had slept in the trundle bed.
“Let’s keep looking,” Quinn said. “See if there’s anything else around.”
While the room had no closet, it did have a wardrobe cabinet and matching dresser.
“There’s some shirts and pants here,” Orlando said, looking in the top drawer of the dresser. She pulled out one pair of pants and unfolded it. “Women’s. I’d say for someone around five foot seven or so.” She returned them to where she’d found them and opened another drawer. “Old pair of tennis shoes, a couple of belts.” She closed that and opened the bottom drawer. “Okay, here we go.”
She held up a nightgown. A girl’s, with the picture of a dog on the front. Orlando put it back and hunted through the rest of the drawer.
“Looks like a variety of sizes,” she said. “The older stuff is smaller. Everyone’s different, but I’d say the newest stuff is for a girl somewhere around nine or ten.”
Nate stuck his head into the room. “Found something you’re going to want to see,” he said, and then disappeared as quickly as he’d appeared.
Quinn and Orlando returned to the main room. Nate was standing next to a waist-high cabinet right outside the kitchen area. The top was open, making it look like one of those console record players from the 1950s, but as Quinn drew near, he saw no turntable inside. Instead, there were connectors attached to long wires curled neatly next to a tablet computer inset in the shelf.
“Let me see,” Orlando said, nudging Nate to the side.
She examined the setup for a moment, and then crouched and felt along the sides of the cabinet. After a few seconds, there was a quiet click and the front panel swung open.
Quinn and Nate both leaned down to look over her shoulder.
Three electronic devices took up the lower half of the space, with some wires running between them and the top shelf where the tablet and connectors were.
“Give me a flashlight,” she said.
Quinn handed his over. She moved the beam through the interior, and then leaned into the cabinet as far as she could to get a closer look.
“So, what is it?” Quinn asked when she pulled herself out.
“Just a second and I’ll show you.”
After giving him the flashlight, she stood up, looked into the top half again, and pushed the button that brought the tablet to life. A password screen appeared, asking for four numbers. Instead of punching in any, she retrieved her phone and plugged it into one of the connectors. She then used it to hack into the tablet.
The home screen offered several app icons. She touched one that looked like the handset for an old home phone. Two things happened simultaneously: the screen went black with the exception of the words STAND BY in bold white letters across the middle, and the equipment in the lower half of the cabinet began to hum.
The message on the screen then changed from STAND BY to INITIATING to CALL in a matter of a few seconds.
Orlando turned to Quinn and Nate and held up her phone. “Suddenly I seem to have a signal.”
“A booster,” Nate said.
“Oh, it’s a lot more than that,” she said.
She placed a call.
Three rings, then a wary Daeng said, “Yes?”
“You guys bored yet?” she asked.
“Orlando?”
To Quinn and Nate, she said, “Not only a booster, but a number and location scrambler. My guess is that it routed the signal all over the place before Daeng’s—
“Did she find you?” Daeng asked, cutting her off.
Quinn’s brow furrowed. “Who?”
“A woman drove up a few minutes ago and went inside. I assume she’s Nadine Chastain. I’ve been trying to call you, but none of you have been answering your phones.”
Quinn shot a look at the safe-room entrance but no one was there. “We’ll call you back.”
CHAPTER 29
Nadine Chastain barely thought about the cold as she left the elementary school where she volunteered in the library and helped students with their homework after classes ended. The temperature was part of living in Quebec.
The weak winter sun had nearly set as she pulled out of the parking lot. She made one stop on the way home, picking up a few groceries at the market so she could prepare her favorite split pea soup.
As she pulled into her driveway, she clicked the remote that deactivated her alarm and received the double beep that told her it was already off. This was not the first time she’d come home to find she’d forgotten to arm it so it didn’t concern her. It wasn’t as if crime was high in the neighborhood.
Groceries in hand, she hurried to the front door and let herself in.
She smiled and sighed as the warmth of her house wrapped her in its arms. She loved her little home and her little town. She couldn’t imagine living anywhere else, especially a big city. It was too easy to get lost, something that had happened to her four or five times when she’d been in Washington, DC, a few days ago, running the errand for her daughter.
She left her coat and boots in the mudroom and carried the food into the kitchen. Very neatly, she set the ingredients for the soup on the counter in the order she would need them.
That done, she went to get the slow cooker from the sideboard in the dining room. As she was returning to the kitchen, something in the corner of her eye caught her attention. She paused and looked into the living room. It took a moment before her eyes settled on the tiki figurines on her piano. Or, rather, the space where the tikis and the doily should have been.
She looked behind her, positive someone would be standing there, but she was alone. She rushed into the kitchen, set the cooker on the sink, and grabbed the largest carving knife she had.
In her head, she could hear her daughter yelling, “Where’s the gun I gave you?!”
Right where it had been since the last time Desirae visited, locked in a metal box at the bottom of Nadine’s closet. She was scared to death that if she ever had to use it, she’d end up shooting herself, or, worse, one of her neighbors.
She moved out of the kitchen and over to the piano. The tikis and the doily were sitting on the piano bench. She hadn’t put them there. She hadn’t touched them since dusting last week. Why would someone—