Chapter Four

Ever

I watch as she smiles triumphantly and then starts to put the code in for the safe, there is no hesitation, no checking she's got it right, she simply knows it. Her smile falls as she sees that the safe is empty, and I lean back in my chair with a frown.

“If she was working with Hunt, then why would Hunt send the first guy to try and get to the file?” Jensen questions, finished with his phone call and clearly having watched the screen for long enough to see the same things that I did.

“Exactly. We can assume that if Luc’s father was working with Hunt, then there is a big possibility that Luc’s mom knew him or knew of him.” I start, wondering aloud.

“True,” Jensen replies curiously.

“So, it could be entirely possible that something in her life has recently changed, and she is clever enough to realize the leverage that she has with a file like that? She could use it to bribe him, or she could sell it back to him.”

“The second option wouldn’t be very smart of her because she would be the only person who knows what is in that file in order to bribe him with the information. Hunt’s not stupid enough to leave her alive. If she handed the file over to him, she would be signing her death warrant.” I give him a look, and he adds, “But I see what you mean, and it’s possible that she thought that way.”

“It would explain why one of Hunt’s guys was sent here first. What did Alaric say?” I ask, changing the subject.

“There is no record of her coming into the country, and as far as all their intelligence is aware, she is still on the island living the quiet life.”

“That’s possibly even more concerning; it not only means that she’s come into the country undetected, but it means that she knows how to do it.”

“She may have picked up some things from being married to Luc’s dad,” Jensen suggests.

“I suppose, but something about this is just not sitting right with me,” I reply. “Don’t forget she somehow disabled the cameras that Alaric set up outside of the house.”

“And yet she didn’t bother doing anything with the ones in the house, ones that she definitely knew existed because they’re hers,” Jensen replies, making a really good point.

I frown, “See, none of this is making sense.”

I press play again, watching the feed as she gets up and angrily kicks the piece of carpet. She seems to take a moment to compose herself, looking down at the floor before her head suddenly snaps up, and she quickly moves over to the window.

I glance down at the time stamp, “That’s around the time we arrived.”

“Shit, seriously, she was in the house for that long?”

I shrug, “She must have been unless there’s another person that did all the camera disabling and shit for her.”

“That’s pretty fucking unlikely,” Jensen replies.

I shrug, “I know, but really, there’s a lot about this situation that I would’ve said was unlikely.”

“Yeah, I guess you're right,” he replies.

We both fall silent as we watch Luc's mom rush back through the house, I have to switch through quite a few cameras in order to follow her movements. My curiosity piques as I watch her make her way into the room that we're in now. We watch as she taps away at the computers, looking nervously at the door every few minutes. I don’t know what she thinks she does but she definitely didn’t delete any footage of her in the house.

My eyes widen as I watch her press a button underneath the shelving on the wall behind us and it opens up, revealing a room which she steps into, the shelving closing seamlessly behind her. I speed the video up a bit to see if she came back out again, but the shelving unit doesn’t move and the next movement in the room is when Jensen and I enter.

Which means she didn’t come back out.

Sharing a look with Jensen, I slowly stand up and pull my gun free from its holster, Jensen’s gun already in his hand, as we approach the shelving unit. I move to where the button is as Jensen takes up position on the other side of where it should open. It would not be smart to stand directly in front of it since if she is armed, she will more than likely start shooting straight away.

He readies his gun and then gives me a nod. I press the button, hearing the whoosh of the release as the shelving slowly starts to move before I, too, get in position. When the door is fully opened, Jensen and I wait a moment just to make sure that no one starts shooting before we slowly move forward, glancing around the corner and into the room.

The room is reasonably small; there is a metal framed bed on one side, a few shelves with food that will not be going out of date any time soon, and some other supplies you would need if you were going to stay here for a while. It’s a safe room and a well-equipped one at that. What is not typical of a safe room in a house like this is the second door, which is left standing open and revealing a staircase that is going down.

Jensen and I move around the room, making sure that there isn’t anyone hiding under the bed or anything like that. We clearly saw her enter this room, and she didn’t come back out.

Fortunately, it doesn’t take us very long at all to check the room, since it is not a very large space.

“Blood,” Jensen signs as he points to droplets on the floor near the second door.

“They look fresh, and they have been smeared,” I reply, also signing. I am incredibly grateful that we have this way to communicate silently and easily. I move closer and crouch down, studying it and the area. I pull out an evidence bag that I always seem to carry with me these days and a swab—collecting a sample of the blood and putting the sealed bag back in my pocket. Looking into the darkened stairway, I can just about make out the telltale staining of more blood. Quite a lot more. Glancing up at Jensen, I sign, “There is more. A lot more.”

He frowns as he moves behind me and looks into the dark space, his eyes squinting before they widen slightly when he sees the blood.

Lifting his hands, he signs, “But how? We followed her through the house on the cameras and didn’t see her get injured once. When she stepped foot in this room, she wasn’t injured.”

“Which means she has either done a ‘you’, tripped, and seriously hurt herself this way, or I was right earlier, and there was a third person who was waiting in here for her.”

Jensen sighs and pulls a face, “We’re going to have to go down the dark and creepy stairway, aren’t we?”

I grin excitedly and nod, signing, “Yep.”

“It disturbs me how excited you are about this,” he signs.

I just roll my eyes and stick my tongue out at him before I stand back up and ready my gun. The stairway is dark but there are dim lights just up ahead giving off a barely there glow. It’s not much but it is enough to be able to see where we are going.

Stepping over the puddle of blood, I move into the stairwell and start to descend the steps as quietly as I can, Jensen following behind me. The space is small, not wide enough for two people to stand next to each other, and, in fact, is small enough that if I were to stick my elbows out, they would brush against the walls on either side. I am incredibly grateful that I am not claustrophobic.

As we move downward, there is a distinct musty smell that says that this stairwell hasn’t been used for a very long time, which makes sense since no one has lived here since Luc’s father went to prison. This place smells really damp as well though because it’s such an enclosed area, it is not a pleasant smell at all. The blood trail carries on down the steps, which are surprisingly longer than I would have guessed they would be. Eventually, they come to an end, and I am even more surprised to see a long, dimly lit, and very cramped hallway stretching in front of us. There are no windows, and if I really had to guess, I would have to say that we’re actually standing in the old servant's walkways, the ones that big houses like this had in order to make sure that the servants were never seen or heard, my lip curls in disgust.

Despite how bland, bleak and modern the rest of the house looks, its bones are actually pretty old, and servants’ walkways is the easy explanation I can come up with to explain why this stairway and random corridor are here.

What I can’t explain is why the stairway went down. The security room, where we were checking the cameras is on the ground floor. My curiosity is practically eating me alive at this point, and I have to remind myself that I need to go slowly, and cautiously, this is not just some random old house that I am exploring, we are following someone dangerous, someone who most likely has seriously injured Luc’s mom.

The corridor, being cramped, is actually pretty fortunate for us because it means that there is nowhere for someone to hide and potentially surprise us with an attack. My relief over this doesn’t last very long though as we suddenly and somewhat abruptly come to a dead end and a sharp corner. It is so abrupt that I honestly didn’t notice it until we were right on top of it. Thankfully, there is nothing waiting around the corner for us, but if possible, I move even more cautiously forward from that point onwards, just in case.

After a while I notice that the floor is starting to tilt upwards, like we are walking up an incline. We have been walking for a really long time, longer than we should have been walking if we were still in the house. Considering that there has only been two of those sharp turns and otherwise we have been going straight, there is absolutely no way that we can still be in the house. It’s impossible.

Which begs the question, where the fuck is this tunnel leading. The further we walk, the more rough the walls become, instead of smooth plastered walls and wooden floorboards it changes into stone floors and rough stone walls, interspersed with big wooden beams that seem to be holding the walls and ceiling up.

One thing is for sure: this tunnel that we are in now is old. Really, fucking old, it certainly predates the house, although I have no idea by how much. Finally, we come to a set of wooden doors, the path has slanted upward so much that the doors are actually in the ceiling of the tunnel and there is an old wooden ladder leaning against the wall in order to help you get to them. Jensen and I share a look, still not willing to speak aloud just in case someone is waiting on the other side of the door.

We have come too far to turn back now, and the chances of us finding the doors from the other side of them are pretty much impossible since we have absolutely no idea where they are. I head up the ladder first, unhook the latch, and then push the door up as slowly as possible. The first thing I notice is debris, like leaves and sticks, that sort of thing; we are outside then, which makes sense because we were walking for so long. The second thing I notice is the light is just starting to change from night to early morning which means we have been out here a lot longer than I thought we had.

Unfortunately, this vantage point only allows me to see what is directly in front of me and a small amount of space on either side, which doesn’t give me a great view since I can mostly see trees. Standing on this ladder isn’t going to get us very far, and we need to know exactly where this comes out; not only that but there’s a good chance that Luc’s mom and whoever was in that room with her are still out here and we can take them in, waiting here is only going to mean that the gap between us and them is widening even more.

With this in mind, I push the door further up and climb through keeping my eyes glued to my surroundings and quickly turning before I am even fully out of the hole to make sure that there is no one behind me.

“All clear,” I say as I move out of the way so that Jensen can climb up.

“The sun is coming up?” is the first thing that he says when he peaks his head out.

I chuckle, “Yeah. We have been here for longer than I thought. I think they are long gone.”

Something behind the hatch catches my eye, and I move around the hole and head toward it.

“What have you found?” Jensen asks as the slamming of the door's echoes around us. I give him a raised eyebrow look, and he winces, “Whoops, sorry. I didn’t realize that it would slam that loudly.”

Shaking my head and trying not to smile, I point at the marks on the floor, “Tire tracks, someone was waiting here with a car.”

“This is just getting weirder and weirder.” Jensen mutters as he looks around with a frown, “When we were kids, we didn’t spend that much time here for obvious reasons. Luc really didn't like to spend time here, but I don’t remember any of this. I have no idea where we are.”

"Really? You guys never came out here?" I ask.

He shakes his head, "I had no idea it existed."

I don't really know what to say to that, so I change the subject, “Fortunately, it’s light enough now that I can take some photos of these and get them sent back to our techs at Headquarters to see if they can match it to a vehicle."

“Good idea. I’m not sure what good it will do now, but we might be able to match it to a person of interest later on,” Jensen replies, and then adds thoughtfully, “whoever it was that was in that safe room when Luc’s mom went in must have known the house really well. They either came in this way and were going to enter the house that way, or they knew enough about the house to know that it was there and that they could use that exit to escape.”

“It’s certainly curious.” I reply, “I think it’s probably safe to say that whoever was in there was the one that messed with the cameras.”

“Yeah, definitely. We need to get back to the security room and get Pete down here to see if he can find anything. He has also got all of the equipment to clone it or copy it or something so that he can take the footage away, and we can go over it back at ours.”

“I am so ready to go home,” I mutter, the words slipping out even though I didn’t really mean them to.

Jensen steps closer to me and pulls me under his arm; kissing the top of my head, he replies, “Me too, Angel. Let’s head back; the sooner we get this sorted out, the sooner we can head home.”

I nod, “That is assuming that they’re going to let Luc out of the hospital any time soon.”

“I don’t see why not,” Jensen replies as he moves toward the doors in the floor and reaches for them, “he said he was feeling okay, and the doctor said that he only wanted to keep him in for observations. Besides, it’s Luc; there is no way that he is going to let them keep him in any longer than truly necessary.”

“Yeah, you make a good point,” I reply and then pull out my phone. I have had it on silent this whole time, which is standard protocol when we do something like this. You can’t sneak around if your phone suddenly goes off; it would be incredibly dangerous.

The guys also will not have messaged or rung in that time, just in case one of us had forgotten to silence our phones, and judging from the light I know that we have been gone far longer than we had intended, and I am sure that they are worrying now.

“Are you calling Trick and the guys?” Jensen asks as he tugs on the door, which seems to be stuck.

I nod, “Yeah, they are probably going crazy waiting for an update.”

“Put it on speaker?” he asks.

I nod as I dial.

“Are you okay?” is the first thing Trick demands through the phone, worry lacing his tone.

“Yeah, we are both good. We have had some unexpected developments here, which we can fill you in properly when we are together; for now, can you send Pete to the house? We need him to have a look at some of the security footage; we're fairly certain it has been tampered with, but of course, we have no idea how.”

“Yeah, of course.” Trick replies and quickly relays the message to Pete.

“Wait!” I say, far more urgently than I intend to; I then add somewhat sheepishly, “Can you get him to bring coffee for me and Jensen, please? We’re going to need it.”

“I love you, Angel,” Jensen mutters, still fighting with the door, which makes me frown.

“Yeah, of course.” Trick replies. “He’s on his way now. We are just waiting for the doctor to discharge Luc, but they had a team come in last night who were pretty messed up, so it could take a bit longer than usual. The doctor seemed pretty confident that he would get Luc discharged today. I don’t particularly want him going back to the house. I think we have risked it enough for one day, so we will meet you back at the safe house in the next town?”