Chapter 16
Irish
The lower level of Croft House had never appeared on a single modern plan, but once Skye pointed out the mismatch in the medical-storage wall, the deception became obvious in a way that made me wonder how many people had walked past it without realizing what was hidden on the other side.
The corridor narrowed by nearly three feet before reaching the end, not enough for anyone unfamiliar with the original structure to question it, but more than enough to conceal a stairwell behind what looked like built-in cabinetry.
Skye ran her fingers along the paneling with the same careful concentration she used whenever a building stopped behaving the way it should, tracing the molding until she found a hairline seam most people would have dismissed as nothing more than age.
Trigger covered the corridor while I kept one eye on her and the other on Isla, who remained seated nearby with Storm and one of the rescued women.
Everything inside me wanted Skye out of Croft House now that we had found her friend, but that instinct had to compete with the reality standing in front of us.
Isla had told us there were people below, possibly children, and Skye was the one person capable of reading the alterations well enough to get us there.
I had asked her to trust me, and I wasn't going to repay that trust by deciding her role ended the moment fear made me uncomfortable.
“There,” Skye said, pointing toward a narrow vertical strip of molding beside the cabinetry. “This section was added later. The panel should swing from that side.”
Trigger examined the frame. “Latch?”
“Probably concealed. Magnetic, maybe.”
Cipher's voice came through my earpiece before I could answer. “Give me ten seconds. I'm seeing an electronic lock tied into a local control panel.”
Skye glanced back toward Isla while Cipher worked.
Her friend's face had lost what little color remained, but Isla kept watching us with the exhausted intensity of someone terrified that even now, after everything she had done to leave clues behind, we might still decide the rest of the building was too dangerous to search.
“You said they used the wall near medical storage?” Skye asked.
Isla nodded. “They brought medication through there. I heard the stairs when they moved people. I never saw where they went because they usually sedated me first, but the wall opened twice when they thought I was asleep.”
Storm's expression hardened. “Do you know what they were giving you?”
“No. Sedatives, I think. Sometimes something that made everything feel slow. They kept changing it.”
The answer tightened something cold in my chest, but before Storm could ask more, the cabinet released with a quiet mechanical click.
Trigger eased it open, revealing a narrow concrete stairwell dropping steeply into darkness.
Cold air moved upward through the opening carrying the smell of disinfectant, damp stone, and something medicinal beneath both.
Skye went still beside me, and when I told her to stay behind me this time, she didn't argue.
That alone told me how seriously she understood what waited below.
Trigger went first, moving carefully down the stairs with his weapon ready.
I followed, Skye close enough behind me that I could feel her presence without turning, while Raze brought up the rear after leaving the upper corridor to Storm, Maverick, and the extraction teams. Hawkeye remained outside on overwatch, and Cipher and Eli monitored everything remotely from the States, trying to manipulate the building's security without accidentally locking us behind one of the same doors we had come to open.
The stairwell descended much farther than I expected, almost two full stories beneath the ground floor before finally opening into a corridor that looked nothing like the carefully curated residential spaces above.
Whatever effort Croft House had made to disguise itself as a luxurious recovery center ended here.
The walls were poured concrete painted an institutional white that had yellowed with age.
Fluorescent lights hummed overhead, medical carts stood pushed against one wall, and every door contained a small reinforced observation window.
The locks were heavy, the hinges external, and the entire level had been designed around controlling who moved through it and when.
Skye stopped just inside the corridor and looked slowly from floor to ceiling. “This wasn't part of the original house.”
“No,” Trigger said.
She stepped toward one wall and examined the concrete surface. “It's much newer. Twenty years, maybe less. The pour, the wiring, the doors, the ventilation. Somebody excavated and added this long after the original basement.”
Raze swore softly behind us. “So they built a holding facility under the damn estate.”
None of us corrected him because there was no softer explanation that fit what we were seeing.
The first room we opened was empty except for a narrow bed, a metal chair, and restraints attached to the frame.
Skye noticed them immediately, her shoulders going rigid even though she didn't say a word.
I wanted to move her past them before she could look too closely, but I stopped myself.
She had spent weeks demanding to know the truth about what happened to Isla.
Hiding pieces of it now because I wanted to protect her would only be another form of deciding what she could handle.
The second room held an older woman asleep beneath a thin blanket.
Trigger checked her pulse while Skye crouched several feet from the bed and spoke softly enough not to startle her.
When the woman's eyes finally opened, fear arrived before full awareness did, and her gaze moved rapidly from Skye to the three men standing behind her.
“My name is Skye,” she said. “We're getting people out of here.”
The woman stared at her as though the words made no sense. “Out?”
“If you want to leave.”
Her mouth trembled. “Is this another test?”
Something in Skye's expression broke for half a second before she forced herself steady. “No. This isn't a test.”
The woman's eyes moved toward me again, and I deliberately stepped farther back from the bed. “We're not staff,” I told her. “You don't have to trust us yet. You only have to decide whether you want to stay in this room.”
“No,” she said immediately. “I don't.”
Skye nodded. “Then you're leaving.”
Raze called Storm down to receive her, and we continued deeper into the corridor.
Every room made the place worse. Two women occupied the next one, both groggy enough that Storm had to help them walk.
Another held a young man who struggled to remember his own surname.
Then we reached a door with children's drawings taped to the inside of the reinforced glass, bright crayon houses and animals pressed against a window designed to keep the people inside from leaving.
Skye stopped so abruptly that I nearly walked into her.
Cipher was already working on the lock before I asked. “Different system,” he said through comms. “Give me a minute.”
“We may not have one.”
A low engine growled somewhere above us, faint but unmistakable through the structure, and Hawkeye's voice came through immediately. “First vehicle stopped at the north gate. Second's stacked behind it. Third is still moving.”
“Can you stall them?”
“Already did.”
Raze came over the radio. “Please tell me you shot a tire.”
“I shot the gate sensor.”
“That is significantly less entertaining.”
“It is also significantly quieter.”
Under different circumstances I might have laughed, but the lock released before the exchange could go any further.
Trigger pulled the door open, and three children sat together inside.
Two girls and a boy, the oldest maybe ten and the youngest no more than five, watched us without moving.
None of them cried. Somehow that was worse.
Skye went in first and crouched well away from them, keeping her hands visible. “Hi. My name is Skye.”
The little boy pulled his knees tighter against his chest while the oldest girl watched the hallway behind us instead of answering.
Skye followed her gaze and lowered her voice. “You're waiting for someone to tell you what you're supposed to do, aren't you?”
The girl's eyes returned to her.
“You don't have to do anything because we tell you to,” Skye continued. “We're leaving this place, and if you want to come with us, we can take you somewhere nobody locks the door from the outside.”
The girl looked toward me. “Are you police?”
“No.”
“Then who are you?”
For a moment I considered every possible answer and discarded all the ones that sounded too complicated or too much like a promise I couldn't make. “People who know this place shouldn't exist.”
She studied me with a seriousness no child should have needed, then looked back at Skye. “Can we take our things?”
The question hit harder than I expected because it meant someone had taught them that leaving usually meant abandoning everything they owned. Skye swallowed before answering. “Yes. Take anything that's yours.”
Raze stepped in to help collect the small bags beneath the beds, and the youngest girl held Skye's hand all the way to the stairs. She only released it when Storm crouched to meet her at eye level and explained where they were going next.
By the time we reached the far end of the lower corridor, we had found nine more people: seven women, one teenage boy, and one elderly man who looked at the open door as though he had forgotten people were allowed to walk through one without permission.
Croft House wasn't a treatment center with an abusive hidden wing.
It was a holding facility built beneath a respectable estate, and somebody had invested years in making sure the surface looked beautiful enough that no one thought to ask what had been buried underneath.