Page 63

CHAPTER 61

AT THE BOTTOM of the stairs, I come to large double doors, which had been chained shut, but the cables—just like upstairs—now lie in a heap on the floor. The doors contain small rectangular windows, reinforced with diamond-shaped wire in the glass. I can see nothing but blackness on the other side.

There’s a rotten-egg stench in the air. I’m afraid the smell is from some kind of rotting body. Maybe an animal that somehow got stuck down here. Or a human that was dumped.

I swing open the door, aiming my gun and flashlight inside.

The smell intensifies exponentially. A cold chill sluices through my veins when I realize what it is.

Natural gas.

I freeze in my tracks, uncertain whether I should proceed. Apparently they turned off the electricity but not the gas, and somewhere down in this basement is a leak. I know I should alert Carlos and Ava—tell them to get out of the building—but it occurs to me that it’s probably just an open valve, which I could easily close.

I holster my gun—if I fired a shot, I’d blow up the whole damn basement—and I take out a handkerchief from my pocket to cover my mouth. I move forward, cautious but quick, into a spacious room with a dozen or more circular tables and stacks of chairs along one wall. Across the room is a counter for serving food, with a rolling divider—like a miniature garage door—separating the dining area from what I assume is the kitchen. I search the dusty floor for tracks and see them leading toward the kitchen. I head that way.

The basement is warm and stuffy, and I can feel my shirt clinging to my skin. I use the handkerchief to wipe a rivulet of sweat running from my hat band down the side of my face. I shine the light under every table I pass.

The smell is overpowering now, and my head is starting to hurt.

I shoulder the door to the kitchen open and shine my flashlight inside. The air is so thick with gas that I gag. My eyes water. I take a step forward and almost fall over when a wave of vertigo hits me. This doesn’t seem like such a smart idea now, but I’ve come this far and I don’t want to turn back until I see where the gas is coming from.

An industrial-sized grill, like the kind you’d see in a restaurant, sits across the room, and I hobble toward it, careful of my steps.

I hear gas hissing.

I get to the other side of the stove, and panic grips my heart when I see what’s happening.

The pipe coming out of the wall has been cut in two—probably by the same tool that cut the chains—and a thin line of white vapor sprays into the room.

I hear a loud clattering noise in the direction I just came from.

Chains.

I burst out of the kitchen and run across the dining area. Through the small windows on the doors, I spot the light of a flashlight out by the stairwell. The doors themselves rattle as whoever is out there feeds the chains back through the handles.

I draw my gun and give one of the doors a solid kick. The metal door only opens a crack before closing again. I shine my light through the door window to see a man outside the door, his face covered in a gas mask—not your typical paper-thin painter’s mask but an air-purifying respirator. Through the Plexiglas face shield, I can tell the man has a scar going through his left eye, just like the image of Llewellyn Carpenter in his mug shot.

I point my SIG Sauer at him through the window.

“Go ahead,” he says, his voice muffled but audible through the mask and doors. “You’ll blow the whole goddamn building to kingdom come.”