Chapter 12 - What Dad Buried
Police surrounded the house.
Nobody was inside.
At least nobody they found.
The basement was empty.
The bedrooms had been searched.
Closets overturned.
Drywall opened.
Gavin had beaten us there.
I went directly to the sunroom.
Dad had built it when I was nineteen.
He complained for weeks because nothing was square.
I remembered lying beneath the floor with him while he ran wiring.
“There’s an access panel,” I told Ortiz.
We moved a bookcase.
Behind it, near the baseboard, was a narrow wooden door.
Unlocked.
Ortiz went first.
The crawlspace smelled like dirt and old lumber.
We found footprints.
Fresh.
Someone had searched.
Then I saw an old red toolbox behind a support beam.
Dad’s.
I crawled toward it.
Empty.
My heart sank.
“He found it.”
Ortiz shined her flashlight around.
“Maybe.”
Then I remembered something Dad always did.
He never kept important things in toolboxes.
He kept toolboxes as decoys.
When I was a kid, he hid Christmas money inside coffee cans.
I looked beneath the toolbox.
Nothing.
Then at the support beam.
One screw was newer than the others.
“Give me the screwdriver.”
I removed four screws from a thin wooden panel.
Behind it sat a waterproof envelope.
Inside were account numbers.
Passwords.
Names.
Photographs.
And one handwritten list.
Twenty-seven properties.
Twenty-seven families.
Ortiz stared at it.
“This could dismantle the whole operation.”
A sound came from above us.
A floorboard creaked.
We stopped breathing.
Ortiz switched off the flashlight.
Another creak.
Someone was inside the sunroom.
Then a man’s voice.
“Nora.”
Gavin.
Ortiz raised one finger to her lips.
We stayed silent.
“I know you’re down there.”
My heart hammered.
“How?” I mouthed.
Ortiz shook her head.
Gavin continued.
“You found Robert’s papers. Congratulations.”
A second voice spoke.
Dr. Cole.
“She won’t give them up.”
I felt sick.
Both men were there.
Then a third voice.
Valerie.
“Nora!”
I almost moved.
Ortiz grabbed me.
Valerie screamed.
“DON’T COME OUT!”
A slap.
Then Gavin said, “Now she understands.”
I closed my eyes.
My sister was alive.
And trapped above us.
Gavin called down.
“You have sixty seconds.”
Ortiz quietly activated her radio.
Static.
Nothing.
No signal beneath the house.
Gavin counted.
“Fifty-five.”
Ortiz whispered, “Stay.”
She crawled toward the opposite end.
There was another vent opening.
Too small.
She kicked at it.
“Forty-eight.”
I held Dad’s envelope against my chest.
Then Valerie shouted, “NORA, BURN IT!”
Gavin cursed.
A crash.
Valerie screamed.
I couldn’t stay hidden.
I crawled toward the access panel.
Ortiz grabbed my ankle.
“No.”
“That’s my sister.”
“That’s what he wants.”
Another scream.
Then Valerie yelled something else.
Not to me.
To Gavin.
“You idiot. She doesn’t have the account codes.”
Silence.
Gavin said, “What?”
Valerie laughed.
Even through pain, she laughed.
“Dad changed them.”
My eyes widened.
I looked down at the papers.
At the bottom of the account list was a handwritten sentence I hadn’t noticed.
NORA WILL KNOW THE PASSWORD.
I didn’t.
Then I saw the hint beneath it.
THE DAY OUR FAMILY STARTED.
May you like
And suddenly, I knew exactly what Dad meant.
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