Chapter 31
Matt carried Kara into the house and put her on the couch in the living room. The house was just as hot as outside, but at
least they were out of the sun.
“I could have walked,” Kara muttered.
“Lily is a nurse,” he said.
The woman still looked terrified and said, “You have to disable the gas. Please, right now. If she sees you here, she’ll kill
my son.”
“Okay, show me your son, then please take care of Kara?”
“I’m not letting you alone with my son.”
“Lily,” Matt said with as much calm as he could muster, “Kara has a serious cut on her leg. You’re a nurse. Please look at
it, see what you can do. You can trust me.”
“Not with my son.”
Kara said, “Matt, go. Take care of the kid. I’m fine.”
Matt knew she wasn’t fine, but said, “Can you bring her some water first?”
Lily left the room then returned with a bottle of cool water. “The refrigerator isn’t great, but there’s electricity and it keeps things cold enough.”
Matt handed it to Kara. She took a small sip, handed it back. “You take some.”
“Kara—”
“Matt. Stop arguing with me. Take some, give it back, save the kid.”
Now she sounded more herself.
He drank a big gulp, the cool liquid soothing his raw, aching throat. He gave back the bottle to Kara and said, “Drink it
slow, but drink all of it.” He glanced at Lily. “You mentioned cameras. Where are they?”
“Outside facing the house—she knew when I left. She had to have been watching because she . . . did something.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I stepped off the porch to see what was around, hoping maybe I could see someone who could get help. I started back inside
and when I stepped on the top step, I heard a bang and the stair collapsed. I was lucky I didn’t break my leg. She called
me and said the next time I disobeyed, my punishment would be worse . . . and that’s when she told me about the gas canister.”
Matt had seen the broken stairs outside.
“Any other cameras?”
“In the basement, kitchen, the hall. I didn’t find one in the living room, but a couple were well hidden, so I don’t know
for sure.”
“I’m not a technical person, but based on our experience in the factory, I don’t think she has the cameras on motion sensors.
She needs to log in to whatever system she’s using and look at the feeds. I would say let’s disable all the cameras and then
get to work, but if we miss one, she’ll see what we’re doing anyway. So let’s get your son out of the cage first, then I’ll
figure out a way to get us all out of this mess.”
“If I leave, she’ll kill my husband,” Lily said. “I believe her.”
So did Matt. “Once your son is safe, I can use your phone and get help for your husband. I’ll find a way. I can go out and look for help if I need to. But doing nothing is not an option.”
“Okay,” she said quietly, then reached out to grip his hand. “Thank you, Matt.”
Sunlight filtered weakly through narrow, grimy windows high on the brick walls, casting faint beams across the partially finished
basement. The air was heavy with the scent of rotting wood and musty earth. Water stains bloomed like bruises on the crumbling
foundation. Under the creaky wooden stairs, the basement sloped down and the dim bare bulb above the stairs reflected off
stagnant water left over from the flood or subsequent storms. Matt couldn’t see far into the darkness, but it was creepy.
He heard the slow, steady, drip drip of water in the dark.
Lily must have opened two of the hopper windows, though the hot and humid outside air did little to erase the stench of mold
and mildew. A sharp cleanser scent hit him as he reached the bottom step, and he wondered if Lily had tried to clean up.
A small jail cell had been built into the corner to the right of the staircase, floor to ceiling and six feet square. It had
been there a long time, the rods attached to the wall with large metal screws. Lily’s son—Nathan—sat on a blanket against
the wall, a book and water within easy reach. As soon as he saw them, he jumped up. He looked to be around twelve, take or
leave a year, with dark hair that kept falling in front of his hazel eyes.
“Are you really an FBI agent?” he asked Matt.
“Yes,” Matt said. “Special Agent in Charge Mathias Costa. My friends call me Matt. Are you okay? You’re not hurt, are you?”
“I’m fine. Are you going to get us out?”
“That’s my goal,” Matt said.
“She’s going to kill my dad—will you help him?”
“As soon as we get you out of here, we’ll find a way to help your dad.”
He glanced around and immediately saw two of the cameras—one in the corner of the cell, by the ceiling, and one above the
bare light bulb.
Matt inspected the jail cell, shaking each of the bars, looking for any that were loose.
“I already did that,” Lily said. She stood off to the side, at the base of the stairs, her face full of concern, eyes darting
back and forth from Matt to her son.
“There’s a lock here,” Matt said. Though the cell had been here for a long time, the lock was brand new—a durable Master lock,
the kind you could buy at any hardware store. “I assume you looked for a key or a bolt cutter?”
“First thing I did. I couldn’t find anything.”
“Kara, my partner, is good at picking locks. If we can find the right tools somewhere, and she can make it down here on her
bum leg, it’s an option.”
“You think so?” Nathan said, hopeful.
“Yes,” Matt said honestly. “But first, I want to check the gas. Try to determine what we’re dealing with, and if I can disable
the device.”
“Your partner is hurt,” Nathan said.
“Yes.” He glanced at Lily. “She’s resting upstairs now, and when we’re done here, your mom will help her.”
“Mom,” Nathan said.
“I’m not leaving you alone with a stranger,” Lily said.
“You’re a nurse. Go help her. They’re FBI agents.”
She looked from Matt to her son, clearly torn. “We don’t know that.”
“Mom, I’m okay.”
Matt said, “The faster Kara is on her feet, the faster we can get Nathan out of here.”
Lily said to Nathan, “If he does or says anything wrong, you scream and I’ll be here.”
“I promise,” Nathan said.
Lily sighed, said, “The gas canister is over there.” She gestured across the room. Matt couldn’t see anything but shelves
cluttered with junk and a broken work bench.
Reluctantly, Lily went back up the stairs. Matt breathed easier.
“This has been really hard on her,” Nathan said.
“I can imagine,” Matt said. “You, too.”
“Yeah, but . . .” He shrugged.
“You’re a good son,” Matt said. “Let’s find a way to get us all out of this nightmare.”
He looked around. A mattress and blanket were outside the cage along with a deck of cards and a stack of Harlequin romance
novels. Lily had slept down here with her son, staying by his side, because they were scared. She’d found books and a game.
She was doing everything she could to hold it together after being threatened with the lives of the two people she loved most:
her husband and child.
Matt looked around again, checking out the structure. For being flooded, it seemed sound. The basement was held up by thick
support beams along the ceiling, and pillars roughly six feet apart went deep into the floor, reinforced with cement footings.
The portion of the basement with the cell was eighteen feet by twenty-four feet, a good-sized room. It narrowed under the
stairs, but he couldn’t see how far back the space went.
Along the far wall, an old furnace had been knocked off its foundation and was lying at an angle, muddy nearly to the top.
By Matt’s estimate, the basement had been flooded halfway up the wall, but it had drained either naturally after the hurricane,
or had been pumped out. The cracked concrete floors revealed dark, damp veins where water still seeped in from the outside.
Matt crossed the room and first visually inspected the shelves. To the left was a workbench that was missing two legs. The workbench had been completely cleaned off, and the door on the front was partly open.
He squatted, carefully opened the door. Lily had already found the gas canister, so he wasn’t worried about tripping something
just yet, but it was in the back of his mind that Garrett’s partner liked to set traps and he needed to be on alert.
An army-green industrial canister was tucked into the workbench. A label had been removed, part of the corner visible, which
did not identify the contents. The canister was simple: valve, ring, and safety cap. There was a stripped-down phone strapped
to the canister, and wires extended from the mechanism to the safety cap.
Matt frowned at what he thought he saw and squatted to get a closer look.
“Do you know what it is?”
“No,” Matt said. “The gas isn’t labeled. Definitely a phone with wires here.”
“So it’ll kill us?”
“I don’t know. I’m not taking chances. Just give me a sec, okay?”
Matt glanced over at Nathan. He was standing at the bars, his hands gripping the metal, watching Matt. “I’ll figure it out.”
Though he was tense, he smiled at the kid to reassure him, then turned back to the device.
He wished Michael was here. It appeared to be a simple bomb, but simple bombs were often the most volatile. Michael would
know exactly what to do.
But it was just him now, and he had to make a decision. He stared at the bomb, willing a solution to come to him. Sweat poured
off his brow, from the heat and from the threat in front of him.
Matt was beginning to truly hate Garrett Reid’s partner.
It was an odd feeling for him—he didn’t hate criminals.
He’d faced many violent predators and desperate criminals, and while he didn’t like most of them, he pitied some and had no feelings for others.
He pursued them, investigated them, arrested them, testified against them.
This distinct feeling of hatred made him uneasy, as if he wasn’t in control of his own emotions.
This woman had put him and Kara in a damn warehouse full of dangers. That, he could have dealt with. He was a cop, he was
trained. But she also kidnapped a child and his mother and terrified them. Locked a kid in a cage and threatened to kill him,
kill his father.
Matt didn’t use the word evil lightly. He couldn’t remember a time when he thought one of the criminals he pursued was evil. Some came close. But this woman seemed to take pleasure in setting up these deadly games—for the newlywed couples, for him
and Kara, for Lily and her son. He could still hear her gleeful voice coming out of the tinny speakers at the warehouse.
A game. That’s exactly what this was to her. And if someone got hurt or died, they’d lose and she’d move on to another game.
This damn basement was a trap—a cage for the child, cameras to keep the mother in line, a cloned phone to prevent her from
seeking help.
He breathed in, breathed out. Focused his attention on the task in front of him. Worried that no matter what he did, it would
be game over for all of them.
The wires went from the phone to the safety cap, which wasn’t completely attached. Between the base of the cap, where it could
be securely attached over the valve, and the valve itself, was a chunk of white putty the size of a golf ball. The wires went
into the putty.
Carefully, Matt reached out and with his pinky pressed gently on the putty. It had the clay-like consistency of C-4.
Where the fuck did this woman get C-4?
Then Matt remembered what Kara had told him about the elevator—that she’d heard a bang and spark when she pushed on the door and the elevator fell. It could have been rigged with C-4, and the electricity in the lighting plus Kara pushing on the door could have set it off.
It almost didn’t matter what type of gas was in the canister—something as benign as oxygen could create a fireball that would
kill or severely injure whoever was in the basement. But Matt didn’t think this lone device could take down the house.
Unless there were more like it that Lily hadn’t found.
“Matt?” Nathan said, cautious.
Did he ask Lily for permission to pull the wires? He was 99 percent certain that once the wires were removed, the bomb would
be inert.
Lily wouldn’t do it, Matt was certain. Even a tiny risk to her son was too great. But if Garrett’s partner decided at this
moment to look at her camera, she would see that Matt was here. She might set it off, killing him and Nathan.
“Nathan, I need you to trust me,” Matt said. He forced himself to remain calm, even as his heart raced.
“Okay.”
Matt walked over to the mattress and leaned it up against the cage, a weak buffer between Nathan and the bomb. “Sit down in
the far corner, behind the mattress. I can disable it.”
“The gas?”
“It’s not the gas you have to worry about. It’s a bomb. Even if the gas ignites, it’ll be short-lived. I don’t know what type
of gas, so the fumes might be dangerous, but it’s the fireball that is our main concern. If it goes off, this should protect
you.” Matt hoped.
“Okay,” he said. He didn’t ask for his mom, or for her permission. Maybe he knew, like Matt, that Lily would never agree to
this.
“What happened?” Matt asked as he adjusted the mattress to better protect Nathan should something go wrong. “How did the woman
get you here?”
“She came to the house. Said her car broke down, asked if she could wait on our porch until the tow truck came. My mom invited her in. And then she took out a gun.”
“You saw her?”
“She had on this big floppy hat and sunglasses, at least when she was talking to my mom.”
“But?”
“I saw her put them on, before she came to the door.”
“You saw her. You can describe her.”
“Yeah. That’s not good, is it? In the movies, if you see the bad guy, they kill you.”
“No one is killing you or your mother,” Matt said. He pushed at the mattress; it was as secure as he could make it. Then he
walked back to the device.
Matt counted the wires. Six. He couldn’t see if there was a mechanism that might detonate it if he bumped or moved it, so
he grasped the first wire as close to the C-4 as possible and pulled it out.