I start walking the bottom floor again, taking note of all the missing items. In comparison, the paintings that are left almost seem to stand out. I study them, searching for anything, any scrap to cling onto.
Maxx and Chasm are patient with me, following me around but focusing their attention on other things. Checking bookcases for hidden doors, scooting furniture around to look for possible entrances in the floor.
“We might need to head upstairs,” Chasm remarks after our fifth round on the bottom floor.
Instead, I pause beside one of the paintings. There’s nothing remarkable about it, just a somber portrait of some old dude with a receding hairline. It’s the small gold placard on the bottom of the frame that catches my attention.
See, I told you: I play a lot of video games.
Alfred Armando Vasquez.
Blue and red lights flicker at the edge of my vision, and I glance to the left just in time to see a police cruiser pull into the driveway.
Fuck. My. Life.
“We need to go, Kota,” Maxx tells me, putting his hands on my shoulders.
But I can’t. Not yet. My heart is racing, slamming against my ribs while sweat pours down the sides of my face. Please let me be right. Please, please, please.
“In Agatha Christie’s book, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, the murderer turns out to be her husband—Alfred Inglethorp.” I point at the placard. Alfred.
“You have like, fifteen seconds,” Chas whispers, flicking off the lights and moving to stand beside us. I reach up, running my hand along the edge of the frame. I’m not sure what I’m looking for. A hidden note taped to the side of the painting? A key on the top edge of the frame maybe?
I definitely don’t expect a latch.
My fingers brush against it, and I press down with a satisfying clicking sound.
The wall we’re standing in front of is made up of floor-to-ceiling wood panels. And I don’t mean, like, seventies ones made of plywood or pressed fiberboard; I’m talking real nice, real expensive hardwood panels.
The panel beneath the painting as well as the one below it swing inward slightly.
It’s a door.
It’s a fucking goddamn door.
I push it inward with my palm, Maxx and Chasm following behind me.
“Holy shit, Kota,” Maxx whispers as Chasm reaches behind us, yanking the hidden door back into place. “You are a mega badass.”
Chasm murmurs something in Korean that, although I don’t understand it, sounds a lot like hearty agreement.
We all freeze at the sound of the house’s front door opening. Footsteps follow after and then there’s a murmured conversation that’s too low for any of us to make out. Meanwhile, we’re all clustered in a small dark hallway. So dark, in fact, that I can hardly see my hand in front of my face.
The footsteps move away, and there’s the sound of the front door closing again. Everything goes quiet.
“The hell?” Chas murmurs, and then he dares to crack the hidden door, peeking out around it. “The cop is leaving.”
Chills skitter down my spine, and my heart swells in my chest. I slide my hand against the wall, searching for a light switch. Soon after, I find what I’m looking for and flick it.
Light blooms in the small hallway, revealing a set of stone stairs.
Stone stairs that go down.
I glance back, meeting Maxx’s wide green eyes and Chasm’s narrowed amber ones.
I turn toward the staircase.
“Parrish?” I call out hesitantly, careful to keep my voice low. “Are you here?”
I start down the steps, putting out an arm when Maxx tries to move in front of me. He’s chivalrous and protective, and I love it, but also …
“Parrish?” I start, just a little louder, moving down the last of the steps and rounding the corner.
There’s another hallway with several wooden doors set into either side. I count four in total.
Silence. Silence. Silence …
“Dakota?” a voice chokes out from behind the first door, and my entire world shifts, turns upside down, explodes.
My body breaks out in goose bumps, and my ears start to ring.
“Parrish!” His name breaks out of me in a scream, and then I’m running without remembering to tell me legs to move. I skid on the stone floor as I come to a stop in front of the door, reaching my hands up to the metal bars near the top.
Fingers—inked fingers—reach out and curl around mine.
Heat floods my body, and I realize suddenly that I’m crying and clinging and grabbing at those beautiful fingers like I’ll die if I don’t maintain that grip, if I don’t feel those warm hands on my skin.
I lift up on my toes to look past the bars and there he is.
There. He. Is.
Parrish Vanguard.
A cry escapes me as we wrap our fingers together and he pulls my hands in toward him, pressing kisses to my knuckles. His face is just as beautiful as always, but he’s lost a little color. Whether from the blood loss or from living in a stone-walled room underground, I’m not sure. I don’t care.
