About a minute later, he saw the light again, but not only the beam this time. The person holding the light source walked through a gap in the brush.
The halo was wide enough that he could see a second person, too. Judging by their shapes, the one following was a man, maybe six feet tall, while the one holding the flashlight was considerably smaller. His first thought was a petite woman, but she seemed small even for that.
Then it hit him.
A girl.
No, he thought. It couldn’t be.
But back at the house was a man who was tangentially connected to the girl they were hunting. Nolan kept watching, hoping to get another look at the two people, but they had been swallowed up by the jungle.
She had been about the right size.
He let the thought stew for another moment before clicking on his mic. “This is Nolan. I may have found something you’ll be very interested in.”
CHAPTER 34
“The bottom step lifts up,” Desirae said. “You’ll find some flashlights underneath.”
They were in the guest bathroom, standing near the entrance to the escape tunnel.
“Nate, take point,” Quinn said.
Nate ducked through the hole and vanished down the steps.
“You next,” Quinn told Orlando.
Gloria rendezvoused with King and Andres less than a minute after she’d called for them.
“Consider all targets hostile,” she said. “All I need is one of them alive enough to talk. Understood?”
Both men nodded.
“They’re somewhere in the back of the house,” she said. “We locate first and then neutralize the problem. You two go back around the front, I’ll take the rear, and we’ll meet on the west side.”
Staying on the lanai, Gloria hurried past the living room to the only window between it and the far corner, and peeked in. No lights on, but enough illumination leaking in from the hallway to discern the shape of a twin bed and a dresser. This room was too small to be the main bedroom. Turning down the west side, she found another window looking into the same bedroom, but it provided no more help.
A moment later, King and Andres appeared at the other end.
When they met in the middle, she whispered, “I take it they’re hiding in the master bedroom.”
“You didn’t find them?” King asked, surprised. “They weren’t in the rooms we checked.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Dammit.”
She motioned for Andres to turn around, then pulled out the lock-pick set, three disposable masks, a couple of flash-bang grenades, and a tear gas canister. The last she kept for herself, while handing a flash bang each to the two men.
They hurried around to the door into the living room. Gloria picked the lock and they all pulled on their masks.
Just loud enough for her men to hear, she said, “One, two, three.”
She shoved the door open and rushed across the living room to the hallway entrance. Immediately, Andres and King tossed their grenades toward the bedrooms.
Bang! Bang!
The double explosion filled the house with sound and light.
Gloria pulled the pin on the tear gas canister and lobbed the can to the back of the hallway. With a hiss, smoky gas began to fill the rooms.
She waited for the first cough, knowing it would come in a matter of seconds, but all remained quiet. She gave it another few moments, and then raised her gun and led her men to the back of the house. When they reached the end of the hall, they each took one of the rooms.
“Clear!” King called from the hallway bathroom.
“Clear!” Andres called from the smaller bedroom.
“Shit,” Gloria said as she stood in the deserted master bedroom, then added, “Clear.” She reentered the hallway. “Where the hell did they go?”
Before anyone could venture a guess, her earpiece beeped.
“This is Nolan. I may have found something you’ll be very interested in.”
“I sure as hell hope so. We haven’t found crap here.”
He told her about the man and the girl, and then floated the possibility of who she might be.
Andres’s eyes widened. “In here,” he said, then disappeared inside the second bedroom.
“Did you hear me?” Nolan asked.
“Just a second,” she told him as she followed Andres.
Lights were now on in the room, so there was no mistaking it for anything but what it was: a preteen girl’s bedroom.
Not proof. Not even close. But in her bones, Gloria could feel everything aligning.
I’m so close.
“Nolan, stay on her,” she ordered.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“We’re on our way.”
Gloria and Andres returned to the hallway and found King waiting for them. As they started toward the living room, she noticed something odd.
The haze in the bedrooms had hung in the air, hardly drifting at all, but in the hall, it was being drawn into the bathroom.
She looked inside, thinking the window must be open, but it wasn’t, nor was the gas moving in its direction. It was drifting toward the sink. More accurately, it appeared as if it was being sucked in around the cabinet the sink was in.
“Hold this.” She shoved her rifle at King and then pulled the cabinet doors open. She was fully expecting to see no back panel, but it was there like it should be. Odder still, there was no smoke in the cabinet.
She ran a finger along the seam where the counter met the wall and felt a slight separation that continued all the way around the side. She gripped the countertop and gave the cabinet a yank but it didn’t move.
“Give me a hand,” she said.
King and Andres set down their weapons and grabbed on. The cabinet creaked when they pulled, and the gap between it and the wall increased to nearly a quarter inch, but that was all they got.
“There has to be a release,” she said, checking under the lip of the countertop.
Nothing there, so she felt along the sides of the box, and then opened the doors again and searched the inner frame.
“Ha!” she yelled as her finger touched a button.
She pushed it and felt the vibration of something releasing.
When she yanked the cabinet again, it moved effortlessly away from the wall, revealing a hole and the top few steps of a staircase.
“Grab your guns. Time to go hunting.”
The muffled boom of the grenades echoed down the tunnel, but they were all too well trained to stop and look back.
“How much farther?” Quinn asked Desirae.
“Not too much.”
Another minute on, they heard a noise in the distance, a kind of groan.
Quinn looked back at Desirae, an eyebrow raised.
“Keep going,” she said.
Several moments later, they heard footsteps on the planks covering the stairs behind them. Without saying anything, they picked up their speed. As soon as they reached the end, Nate raced up the stairs and, following Desirae’s directions, shoved the door open.
“Nate and I can pin them down here while you two catch up to Tessa and Abraham,” Quinn said to Orlando and Desirae as soon as they were out and the door was closed. “Let me know as soon as you’ve gotten them out of here and we’ll join you.” He looked at Nate. “Pistols only, and spread out so if they throw a grenade it doesn’t get both—”
A faint but unmistakable scream cut him off.
Desirae twisted toward the sound. “That’s Tessa,” she said as she ran into the jungle.