The feel of this neighborhood was high-society suburbia. There was a good chance that at this time of the morning, the wife was at some country club fucking her tennis instructor or out for brunch with her equally prissy, rich friends, looking down their long noses at the waitstaff.
From our hiding spot in the backyard, the shortest entry point was a small window on the left side of the house. Spirit unlocked it from inside, and one by one, we slipped across the grass to enter. The house might be empty of the Mr. and Mrs., but we had to be careful that no neighborhood watch party spotted our presence. Neither us, nor Weatherby Dalton-Jones IV, were going to jail today.
As soon as Reaper was through the window, we closed it and had a look around. In addition to no security, Neo also couldn’t find evidence that Weatherby Dalton-Jones IV had working staff. No housekeeper, cook, butler… The sort of domestic servants that someone might expect of a man of wealth. Yet, the house was immaculate. There was nothing out of place. No dust on the tables or marks on the floor. I was sure I wasn’t the only one wondering who had been cleaning the house.
From the dining room where we entered the McMansion, we journeyed into a very regal-looking living room with an overabundance of couches and high-back chairs. The carpeting was so white it looked like freshly fallen snow.
We split up, continuing our search. Aloiki and I stayed on the first floor while the others traveled up to the other three floors. From the large kitchen to another living room, to the massive foyer and up the stairs to an ungodly number of bedrooms, we searched the entire house. The twins even reported finding a trophy room celebrating every accomplishment Weatherby Dalton-Jones IV had ever won and what looked to be a shrine dedicated to a dog. On the top floor, Tommy said there was an indoor golfing room and a Japanese sand garden with a koi pond. A wall I thought looked funny turned out to be the doors to an elevator between the four floors.
But no Nishi.
No sign that a wife lived here either.
Aloiki was wrong. No one was in this house.
“Check the floorboards.Tear the walls apart,” Aloiki ordered harshly. “There has to be something here.”
To anyone else, he appeared pissed; I, alone, likely saw and heard the desperation on his face and in his voice. Beyond that Aloiki did not handle failure well, he’d made a promise to Lu that he would return Nishi to her, and he would not—could not—break another promise to hiswahine.
Spirit went back outside to discreetly check the yard, while Reacher and Tommy headed up the marble staircase and the twins ran off in another direction.
I grabbed Aloiki’s arm as he made to pass me. I had no doubthe was going to look for a sledgehammer to start tearing the house apart. Personally, I didn’t care. I had no desire to see this house remain standing any longer than it had to, but I wouldn’t be doing my job as VP if I didn’t point out the obvious. Even if it was something neither of us wanted to hear. “And if she isn’t here? We have no other leads.”
Aloiki scowled at me. “You think I don’t fucking know that?” He pulled his arm from my grip. “Find her!” His steadfast order was loud enough for the entire house to hear.
A half hour later, the twins shouted they found something in the library. Running in, my eyes landed on the stacks of floor to ceiling bookshelves in a large U-shape. And just like with the rest of the house, there wasn’t a speck of dust in sight. The entire house was far too clean for my tastes. I wasn’t a slob, but I’d been known to leave a dish in the sink or shorts on the floor.
“Check this out,” one of the twins said, gesturing to the bookshelf behind them.
“It’s like a fucking escape room,” the other one added.
The first pulled a book from the shelf, holding it up to show us. “All of these are real.”
“But over here,” the other one said, “they’re fake. Most of these are just a front plate.” He pulled off a section of books that was a piece of plastic or maybe cardboard that was just the covers. It was hollow behind, showing off an empty book case.
I spun around in a circle. I’d searched the library earlier, but I hadn’t bothered pulling any books from the shelves. “I don’t get it. It’s a fake?”
The twins shrugged. “A good part of it,” they said together.
“Start pulling everything down,” Aloiki ordered, a spark of hope in his voice. The others might not hear it, but I did. “He’s hiding something in here, and I doubt it’s just a false fondness for classic literature.”
We started pulling all the books down, bottom to top, shelf byshelf. There were so many, and it soon became like an assembly line to try to speed up the process. One twin climbed up on the other’s shoulders as Aloiki and Spirt grabbed the two ladders attached to the rail above the shelves. Tommy brought a handful of real books over to where we were dumping them in the middle of the room, but when he placed them on top of a previous stack, the entire thing toppled over onto an end table beside the couch. The lamp started to fall over…and then it stopped.
We all froze.
There was no crash or shattering of broken ceramic. Instead, when the lamp tipped backward, there was a mechanicalclickbeneath our feet. The rectangular, decorative rug moved. It wasn’t much, but enough for us to see it slide a little under the bookshelves.
Tommy quickly removed the fallen books from the table that blocked our view of the lamp as everyone came closer to the end table. The bottom of the lamp was connected to the table by a silver hinge. Tommy lifted his eyebrows at us before reaching forward and pushed the lamp over the rest of the way.
Theclickfrom under the floor was louder this time, and the rug was pulled completely under the bookshelf. And then…nothing. My eyes flicked around the room to see what the fuck we were missing.
“That’s it?” the twins asked together.
Reacher squatted forward, rubbing his hand on the wood paneling the rug revealed. “Maybe there’s another trigger. Something that opens a trapdoor in the floor?”
Tommy pressed on the lamp again, making it go forward and backward. He even turned the light switch on and off. The only thing he accomplished doing was making the rug move.
Then he cracked open the drawer of the end table, and the floor beneath Reacher’s feet shifted. The man jolted with it,his hands outstretched, knees bent, and eyes wide in anoh shit!expression.