“What’s that?”
“I feel like a little kid snooping where I don’t belong, and I’m terrified of getting caught.”
Liam moves to the next set of bookcases, where he taps at the molding.
“What are you doing?” His odd inspection of the bookcases can no longer be ignored.
“Looking for hidden things.”
“What makes you think there are any hidden compartments?”
He spins his finger in the air, gesturing at nothing in particular.
Somewhere within the house, Mitzy’s little dragonfly drones evade the security systems with their light-bending camouflage. I hope she finds what she needs and that we can leave this wretched place.
“Right.” I feel foolish forgetting about the drones.
While he checks out the bookcases, I sit down behind my uncle’s desk and shamelessly check out the way Liam’s ass fills out his trousers. I want more of that. Screw sneaking around in my uncle’s house. I’d rather be in bed, exploring more of what Liam has to offer.
I lean way back to prop my feet on Marco’s desk. The chair wobbles beneath me and kicks out, dropping me unceremoniously to the floor. Liam comes running.
“Are you okay?”
I hold my hand to my temple where one of the casters, or maybe it was the arm of the chair, whacked me. The spot is tender to the touch, but there’s no blood.
“That’s going to leave a mark.” Already, I feel the skin swelling. “How am I going to explain this to my mother?”
“Screw your mother.” Liam squats down and places his hand on my arm. “Here, let me help you out.”
A sprawl is not my best look. I wave Liam off and spin around until I’m on all fours. I get ready to push myself off the floor when an odd compartment under the desk catches my eye.
“Liam?”
“Yeah?”
“What’s that?”
My uncle’s desk is a massive piece of carved mahogany. Inlaid wood covers the top of the desk, and delicate carvings decorate the four corners. Every surface is polished to a high shine, including the wood underneath the desk.
Just to my right, tucked under the desk, is a door with a brass lock securing it in place.
43
LIAM
I get on all fours and shove my head under the desk, trying to see what Maria found.
“Here.” I hand her my cellphone. “Give me some light.”
While she turns on the light of my phone, I pull out my multi-tool. It’s basically a Swiss Army knife on steroids, loaded with all kinds of extras, courtesy of Mitzy. Lock pick in hand, I get to work on the lock.
It doesn’t take long before that satisfying snick unlocks the hidden compartment.
The building schematics indicate a secret tunnel exiting this room. It leads to the underground bunker we saw on the files Mitzy sent earlier. I was looking for a lever, or release, when Maria took her spill.
“What’s inside?” Maria lowers her voice to a whisper, although there’s no need.
Thanks to our Guardian team, Marco and Muriel Rossi are conveniently stuck in traffic. Which gives us time to do a little recon before they arrive to the party. I estimate we’ve got an hour before they work their way free of that mess.
I open the door and pull out a painted wooden box. It looks to be decades old. Deep grooves mar the black and silver metallic finish. There’s a lock on the box; the brass finish worn smooth over the years. I hand it back to Maria.
“It’s locked.” Maria turns the box in her hands. About a foot in every dimension, it’s a bit too large for her to handle. She drops the box on the floor and something rattles inside, several somethings.
“Let’s open it.” I crawl out from under the desk and spin around to place my back against the heavy wood. Maria hands me the box and I make quick work of the lock. Once the lock is opened, I hand the box back to her, knowing she needs to be the one to open it.
“It’s like finding hidden treasure.” She places her hand over the lid. “What do you think we’ll find? Cash? Jewels?” She’s making this more of an adventure than it needs to be. “Deeds to stolen land? Barron bonds? Are those even a thing?”
I love the way her eyes light up when she’s excited. I give her a little nudge, wishing I was close enough to give her a kiss. It feels like it’s been weeks, rather than hours, since I held her in my arms.
“Open it and let’s find out.”
She lifts the lid, and her brows draw together.
“What the hell?”
Maria pulls out an old video recorder, a relic from an earlier time when VCRs were all the rage. DVDs took over soon after that. Floppy discs ushered in the computer age, and even floppies were pushed to the side as thumb drives took over. Now, even those are mostly obsolete. With everything stored in the cloud, there’s no need to keep storage of any kind.
She pushes the red power button and to our surprise, the thing turns on.
“Whoa, that’s weird.” She holds it away from her, as if it’s a poisonous snake that will bite her. “It’s fully charged.” Turning it around, she peers at the archaic display. “How can it be fully charged?” She digs inside the box. “There’s no charging cord.”
The skin on the back of my neck itches. It’s a warning I’ve come to respect. I glance around, looking for a charging station that would help make this odd find make sense.
I take the box from Maria while she examines the controls.
“There are several videotapes.” Each one is painstakingly labeled, along with a collection of thumb drives. I scoop the thumb drives into my hand and hold my hand palm up.
“What are you doing?”
A soft, nearly imperceptible whirring sound disturbs the air. I locate the tiny drone by ear and by a rippling disturbance in the air. Invisibility cloaks no longer belong in the realm of movies such as Harry Potter. The tech is out there, and it’s no surprise Mitzy leads the forefront of deploying that tech into the field.
The drone lowers, hovering over my palm by less than a foot. A gentle downward breeze is the only sign it’s there, at least until a miniature grappling device lowers down from its belly.
“What the hell?” Maria jumps when a fine cable, not much larger than a strand of spider’s silk, spools out of the drone. Her eyes blink several times as she searches for the nearly invisible drone. It’s not an easy feat.
The grapple makes contact with my palm. I do nothing but hold still while the drone slowly loads the small collection of thumb drives into a tiny bay hidden inside itself.
“What’s it doing?” Maria locates the drone by following the cable up.
“Taking these out for analysis.”
“We don’t even know what’s on them. Shouldn’t we put them back where we found them?”
“And miss finding something important?” I point to the video recorder. “Let’s play a couple of those tapes. I’m curious what your uncle would hide under his desk.”
“Can’t the drones carry these out?”
“No. They’re too big to fit inside the drone.”
The drone finishes loading the last of the thumb drives. The grappling hook reels back up into the drone, and I lower my hand to the floor. I don’t hear it leave, but I know it’s on its way out of the house with its precious cargo.