When No One Is Watching(80)
“Shouldn’t there be inventory?” Sydney asks. She stalks around the space, shining lights into every corner. Her efficient stride knocks over a box of Meow Mix and the contents spill on the floor, to Frito’s content. Sydney passes the light over the bare cement walls and we both search for a few minutes, neither of us commenting on the muted noise of screams outside and, eventually, a gunshot that makes us both jump.
“Maybe I was wrong,” she says, leaning down to stroke Frito, who’s winding around her feet. She stays bent, flashlight tucked beneath her arm and pointed behind her, and that’s when I see it—the thin strip of shadow in the cement wall.
I step around her with the crowbar. The flat edge of it just fits into the slit, but I don’t have to do much more than one lever. This door swings back into the cellar smoothly. Quietly.
“I can’t believe I made fun of you for having that,” she whispers as it opens, and then we both tense.
A breeze blows my hair back as I step in front of her with my gun raised. A hallway is revealed as the door touches back against the cellar wall, completely open. No, not a hallway.
“I guess the rumors about the tunnels were right,” Sydney says in a barely audible voice. “It’s creepy knowing this was underneath us all this time.”
It’s not the unfinished tunnel that had come to mind when the teens at the planning meeting had talked about mole people. It’s professionally done cinder block painted beige with a garish yellow strip running along the top. Halogen tubes are spaced evenly along the walls, and it’s surprisingly wide, the ceilings high enough for a truck to pass through.
It looks like—
“It’s part of the hospital,” Sydney says as she cautiously peeks out, and turns her head from right to left. “This has to be it.”
When I peek out after her, I get the full effect of what she means. It has the same old, sterile, and unwelcoming atmosphere of most public hospitals.
The tunnel stretches down to the left but on the right there’s a set of beige double doors, with aluminum plates along the bottoms, about ten feet away.
She grips her gun and starts walking right.
“Should we come up with a plan?” I ask.
“Like what? Shoot all the white people except you?” She glances at me, then back toward the approaching double door. “That’s the only information we really have.”
“True. Awkward. I guess we’ll play it by ear.”
Our footsteps echo in the hallway and I keep turning around to make sure the sound isn’t someone sneaking up on us, but the hall is empty. There’s no motion except for the flicker of one of the halogen bulbs that needs to be changed.
When we get to the door, Sydney asks, “Ready?” in a voice that shakes with fear. Her hands are trembling, too, and she quickly tucks the Glock into the back of her waistband and pulls the .22 revolver out from the front, flipping the safety.
Her hands steady, but she shifts her weight from foot to foot, probably feeling the same anxiety that’s crawling over my own skin.
“Ready,” I say.
My breath is coming fast as I push the door open and she stalks through ahead of me. We’re greeted anticlimactically with another set of double doors, and our breathing fills the small space as we psych ourselves up to walk into danger again.
Just as Sydney takes a step forward toward the door, someone pulls it open slowly from the other side, and the sound of benign chatter precedes whoever it is.
“Shit, they need to fix these doors already; the other one is jammed. Anyway, yeah, they said I could have the Perkins place, then they went and gave it to that shithead Charlie,” a familiar voice says. William Bilford’s voice. “Like fuck that, I’ve been doing all the legwork for months and I told them I wanted those fireplaces. At the Jones place, I’ll have to get the fireplaces rebricked and get rid of all the cement over the backyard.”
The front end of a rolling gurney pushes through the doors into the vestibule, followed by an unfamiliar woman’s voice. “At least you got to call dibs, I just have to wait, even though I’ve put up with—”
A brunette with her dark curls pulled back, wearing a blouse and slacks, stares at me, leaving her sentence unfinished.
“Who’s this? Is he one of the researchers?” She squints, trying to place my face.
“Did you change your mind?” William asks me, clearly amused. “Once shit started going down? I told you to get in early.”
“Ms. Gianetti?”
It’s only when Sydney speaks that they even seem to notice her presence. The woman startles.
“Ms. Green.” The woman looks dismayed. “What are you—?”
“I guess this is why you couldn’t help my mother get her house back?” Sydney’s voice is low and vicious, angrier than I’ve ever heard her.
“No, it’s not like that,” the woman says, her eyes darting between me and William. “I tried my best, but there was nothing to be done.”
“Of course there was nothing to be done!” Sydney points the gun at her. “Tell me the truth. You helped cheat a sick older woman out of the home she’d poured her life into.”
“She isn’t that old,” Gianetti says. “And nothing we did was illegal. You can try finding another lawyer, but the responsibility to read the fine print and think through the sale falls onto the homeowner.”