Deep Sleep (Devin Gray #1)(31)

“I’m glad you did,” said Devin. “It was a pleasure meeting you.”

“Likewise,” she said before moving out of his way.

They stepped inside, and Devin shut the door behind them, checking for a dead bolt or some way to make sure it was locked.

“It self-locks. You need to use the key every time when entering,” she said. “But if you lock yourself out, just wave through the window. One of us is almost always in the living room.”

“I will. Thank you,” he said before heading for the staircase.

“Oh, uh . . . Devin?”

He stopped at the foot of the stairs. “Yes?”

“Will we, uh . . . see you around much?” she asked.

“I can’t say,” he said, which was the truth.

He had no idea what he’d find up there.

“Well. I hope we see you around,” she said, opening her apartment door.

Devin nodded. “Okay. See you later.”

“It was a pleasure meeting you,” said Berg.

Henrietta smiled as she went back inside her apartment and gently closed the door.

Devin reached the third floor, with Berg following closely behind, and made his way to the only door in the hallway, which had no doorknob. Just a dead bolt. Henrietta and her family must have thought that was more than a little bit odd. He glanced around the hallway, unable to locate the camera he assumed was recording him. Security seemed a little light for something supposedly this important. Then again, looks could be deceiving.

It took him two tries to select the right key to turn what felt like a heavy-duty dead bolt. Without a doorknob, he wasn’t entirely sure what to do next, other than push his way in—which turned out to be the right answer. When the heavy metal slab swung inward, he quickly entered and located the framed print of Van Gogh’s Starry Night in the empty family room, tilting its left corner upward to reveal a basic alarm pad set into the wall.

His mother wasn’t kidding about the tight timeline. The display read six seconds—and counting. He pressed the pound sign, followed by the four-digit code she had provided in the phone message he had accessed by speed-dialing “Mom” on the satellite phone. She’d briefly walked him through the entire apartment process in that message. With the alarm system deactivated and Berg inside, Devin shut the door and threw the dead bolt. The door was solid enough, but not what he had expected from a security standpoint.

A quick look around explained why. The space contained nothing but a small wooden table and two mismatched kitchen chairs. This meant one thing. Whatever lay behind the next door would be epic. The question was, In what way? Epically critical to national security as she claimed or epically fucking crazy—and there was only one way to find out.

“I’m guessing she didn’t spend much time in this room,” said Berg.

“Probably a safe bet,” said Devin before wandering into the kitchen. “Take a look at this.”

Berg followed him to a hallway off the kitchen, which turned out to be more of a vestibule. A sturdy-looking door stood at the end of the stunted corridor, featuring a dead bolt, a regular keyless doorknob, and a touch pad embedded in the wall next to the doorframe.

“That looks promising,” said Berg.

Devin pulled the satellite phone from one of the duffel bag’s outer pockets and checked the last number he’d dialed. Exhausted from ten sleepless nights, he didn’t trust his memory at this point. He’d inputted the eight-digit code and pressed send so it would appear in his recent calls for easy retrieval.

Devin tapped the screen, activating the digital touch pad. He entered the code and pressed the green SUBMIT icon. A mechanical whirring in the wall behind the touch pad started a moment later, followed by a solid thunk closer to the door. Some kind of power-driven locking mechanism. No wonder she hadn’t invested much in the front door. The screen read OPEN DEAD BOLT, so he took the next step toward the big reveal and dug the keys out of his pocket.

A full minute later—the door wide open—Devin remained in the doorway, still trying to process what he was seeing. Mostly, he was afraid to step inside and get sucked into whatever had so entirely consumed his mother. Helen Gray had renovated the place, spending her available funds on her obsession, instead of the public-facing neighborhood gentrification effort.

All the interior walls had been removed and replaced by a dispersed pattern of cylindrical metal supports, initially giving the space an open feel. The complete absence of windows closed it right back up. If he’d blacked out and woken up in this room, he’d guess it was a basement.

The left wall, extending about twenty-five feet from front to back, consisted of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. From what he could tell, the shelves housed numbered binders. Several hundred if he had to guess. The rear wall, about twelve feet wide, featured a sizable wall-mounted flat-screen television. A recliner and an end table with a lamp sat in front of the television. A short length of string hung down from a square attic door directly above the recliner.

The only other pieces of furniture were a simple black writing desk and chair in the center of the space, facing right—toward the room’s pièce de résistance. A floor-to-ceiling, front-to-back “conspiracy wall,” complete with red strings going in every direction, photographs, headshots, maps, Post-it notes, and newspaper clippings.

The difference between this wall and every wall he’d seen at the FBI or in the movies was that Helen’s wall was meticulously organized. She hadn’t continually tacked items to the wall as they developed, building a shantytown of information. She’d obviously rebuilt this wall dozens, if not hundreds, of times.