“Is that a general question, or do you want something specific?”

“You said you were going to look around. What the fuck did you do?”

My brain clears a little. Mike Lustig. Sam’s FBI friend. He has an escalating curse level. I wish he’d lower his volume, because my ears are ringing constantly, and my head pounds like a bass drum.

“There was some kind of booby trap,” I tell him. “Down in the basement. We didn’t open the door, but someone else did. We were lucky to get out of that hallway before it blew.”

“Not luck,” Sam says. “You smelled a trap, and I didn’t.”

Mike looks from one of us to the other. “And you don’t know what was in the hidden room?”

“No.”

“Damn,” he says. “He could have had anything down there. A captive, even.”

I go cold. “Are you saying that . . . that there was someone down there? Someone we could have rescued?”

Mike just looks at us. Sam shifts finally and says, “Jesus, Mike. What did you know about this guy?”

Lustig ignores the question. “I need to get you to town for a checkup. That cut needs stitches. Favoring your side, too. Broken ribs? How about you, Ms. Proctor?”

“Stop changing the subject!” Sam shouts.

Mike looks past us at the burning cabin. The damage, I realize, is already beyond repair; the place is falling in on itself. He sighs. “This is going to attract attention. Engine company’s probably on the way already; they take fire seriously up in these hills. Come on. I’ll brief you in the car.” He turns and walks away, into the trees, and for a long second, I just stand there, trying to understand what has happened, what the hell is going on. Nothing’s making sense. Maybe that’s shock; maybe that’s the fact my brain has been severely rattled inside its bone cage.

It takes Sam’s hand on my shoulder silently urging me along to make me follow, and I keep looking back at the raging inferno, the sparks spitting high at heaven.

What was in that room? Who the hell are these people? They’re not just hackers. It’s not just a blackmail ring, either.

I’m not sure if I’m brave enough to want to know the answer.

 

We sit in the back of the FBI agent’s SUV, which is both a comfort and a worry; I’m fairly certain these doors won’t pop open at the pull of a latch. He provides us with strong, dark coffee from a thermos before he steps out to make some calls. I drink it thirstily, more for the warmth than the taste. Sam doesn’t say much. Neither do I. We watch the fire, still visible through the trees, and the garland of blinking red-and-blue lights snaking up-mountain toward us.

I finally say, “So that’s your friend. Agent Lustig.”

“Yeah, we served together,” Sam says. “He joined the FBI; I re-upped.” He’s staring out at the fire, but his gaze cuts suddenly toward Lustig, who is on the phone outside the vehicle. Lustig is pacing back and forth, possibly just to keep warm, but I can’t help but think he’s also betraying some anxiety. “He knows something he didn’t tell us.”

“I gathered that,” I say, and I wince when I shift to relieve an ache. It wakes something sharper. Still not broken, I think, but I’ve definitely stressed everything. “Has it occurred to you that maybe he’s using you as much as you think you’re using him?”

I think he isn’t going to respond, but he does. He says, without looking away from Lustig, “He’s a good guy.”

“He’s going to get us killed,” I say.

“No,” Sam says, and he looks directly at me now. “You nearly got us killed. We were supposed to stay outside, not go charging in. You wanted to do that.”

He’s right. I’m angry because he’s right, and I know that’s a terrible reaction to have, so I bite my lip and manage to stop myself from escalating the argument. I’m tired, I hurt, and I have the awful feeling that we started something here that’s out of our control. And what did we get for it? Not much. A backpack stuffed with receipts that probably won’t lead anywhere.

My voice comes out a little shaky when I say, “What do you think was in the room—”

“Don’t go there,” Sam says, putting an arm around me. It’s unexpected, and welcome. We both reek of foul-smelling smoke, but I don’t mind. “We can’t know what he was hiding down there, and he damn sure wasn’t about to let us find out.”

“What if it was someone—”

“No,” he says. “You’ll rip your guts out if you do that. Don’t.”

I sense he doesn’t want to imagine it. I do, because I must: a young woman, maybe the age of Melvin’s chosen victims. Locked up, tied up maybe. Left to burn if anyone comes close to finding her.

“Maybe it was him,” I say. “Maybe he was down there, and he opened the door.”

“That’s a happier thought,” Sam agrees, but he shakes his head. “I was looking at the door when it opened. The knob didn’t turn. There was nobody on the other side. It was like a . . . remote-control release.”

“You mean we tripped some kind of sensor?”

“Maybe. But . . . maybe someone was watching us. Waiting for us to take the bait. And when we didn’t . . .”

That was right; I felt it click together inside. I’d had an overwhelming sense of being watched on those stairs. And I’d been right. Someone had been behind a camera. Probably had watched us going through the whole house. It was only after we’d found the hidden basement room that he’d taken action, though. “He was watching,” I agree. “And he was off-site. He had a remote control to open that door and set off the explosion. He must have been close by.”

“Not necessarily. He could have all of it routed through an app.” He gives me a fleeting trace of a smile. “The way you set up the cameras on your house.”

He’s right. I’d used Internet-capable cameras to monitor my house at Stillhouse Lake, and I could access and watch remotely from anywhere. The tools were common, and commercially available. “And the door?”

“Some Wi-Fi security apps let you lock and unlock doors,” he says. “He was probably watching us from the moment we broke in. Once we’d found the secret stairs, he waited for us to go down and open the door. That was probably booby-trapped; maybe he has some kind of disarming signal for the bomb he sends before he goes in himself. When we didn’t take the bait—”