by LENA DIAZ,
Her mouth dropped open. “Do you always carry lock-picking tools? In your hair?”
“Always. And that’s not all I carry with me.”
Was he teasing this time? She wasn’t sure. “Okay, I’ll bite. What else do you carry?” Her gaze slid down his chest to his hips and back up. “And where do you hide it?”
He grinned. “A gentleman never tells. Come on. Help me search this place. Quietly. We don’t want to alert Silvia when she gets back in the house. And make sure that you move only one thing at a time. Put it back exactly the way you found it before moving something else.”
It wasn’t very comforting that he seemed to be an expert on performing illicit searches. Then again, if he carried lock picks—and other items—all the time, what did she expect?
He weaved his way around the couch and two recliners that formed a conversation group on the left side of the room and went straight to the floor-to-ceiling bookcases.
Melissa chose to start with her father’s desk, which dominated the other side of the room in front of a wall of windows. If she took sensitive files home, that’s where she’d put them. So it made sense that her father would, too.
She sat in the huge leather chair and feathered her fingers across the smooth, glassy surface of the massive cherrywood desk. It was completely devoid of papers or anything that might mar its beauty, except for an old-fashioned desk phone. But even that was stylish and classic, with cherrywood accents built in. Even the buttons were wood. Expensive, tasteful objects and furnishings were always her father’s preference when it came to decorating.
When she opened the top, middle drawer and saw five boxes of fine-quality pens side by side in a neat row, she couldn’t help but smile. Only the best. And always in ridiculous quantities. She supposed it was because his parents had grown up during the Great Depression, painfully poor, in a shack that was practically falling down around them. He tended to overcompensate now, buying only the finest, durable goods, and far more than he’d ever need.
Since there was nothing else in the drawer, she closed it and opened the first of three much deeper drawers on the right side of the desk. This one contained folders, but the contents of each one pertained to the tour company. The second drawer down was more of the same, except that the folders were hanging instead of stacked. But again, none of the information would help them.
“Finding anything?” Jace whispered from across the room. He was already halfway through searching the bookcases, and she’d barely gotten through three drawers.
“Nothing so far.”
“No laptop anywhere?”
She frowned. “Actually, no. And knowing how my father likes to have backups of everything, I’d expect at least one laptop in addition to the one he takes back and forth to work every day.”
“Keep searching.” He turned back to the shelves.
The bottom drawer didn’t contain a laptop, or folders, or boxes of office supplies. It was completely empty. She closed it and slowly opened each drawer again.
“Something bothering you?”
She started in surprise to see Jace standing beside her.
“Could you please not sneak up on me like that?” she whispered.
“Sorry.” He motioned toward the desk. “What is it about those drawers that has you frowning?”
“The bottom one. It’s empty. It’s a big drawer. It could hold a lot of supplies, but it’s empty, while the other drawers are completely full. I suppose it could be so he puts his briefcase inside it each night. That would make sense. I suppose.”
“Or it could be empty for another reason altogether.” He knelt on the floor and ran his hands along the sides of the drawer. Then he angled his left arm so he could rub the underside of the wood above it. “Ah-ha.”
“You found something?”
“Maybe.” He sat back on his haunches and looked under the desk. Then he looked at the floor underneath and around it. His eyes lit with excitement. “I think we may have found where your father keeps his confidential files.”
She studied the floor beneath the desk. “I don’t see anything.”
“Not there.” He pointed to the rectangular pattern to the right of the desk. “There. See anything different in that section of the floor?”
“No.”
He stood and held out his hand. “Come on.”
She put her hand in his, and even though she was prepared this time for the heat that flared inside her at his touch, it still amazed her how something as simple as holding this man’s hand was like running a blowtorch over every cell in her body. She just wished she wasn’t the only one who felt that way. Numb, cold, and lonely was way better than being the only one on fire. And way less embarrassing.
“Do you see it?” He pointed to the eight-by-eight pattern. “The way the sunlight plays along the edges of the rectangle, where the border meets the other rectangles?”
She focused on the floor, trying to see what he saw. She stepped back, letting the sunlight from the windows behind the desk flood across the rectangular patterns. And that’s when she saw it—an imperfection, a slight indentation along the edges of two sides of the rectangle that she wouldn’t have noticed except for the light slanting through the windows.
“The two longest sides are dented.”
“Yes. They are. I think it’s a trapdoor.”
She blinked. “Seriously? A trapdoor?”
“Seriously. Step back and let me see if I can get it to open.”
She eagerly moved back by the couch, not wanting to fall if a trapdoor suddenly swung down.
After rolling the desk chair out of his way, he dropped to his knees behind the desk. He reached underneath the bottom drawer again. A slight clicking noise sounded, but nothing else happened. He tried again. Another click, but again, nothing.
Melissa shook her head. No matter how hard she tried to see it, she couldn’t picture her father getting down on the floor like Jace to press a button. He was always proper, obsessed with manners, and looked his best at all times. Which meant he wouldn’t risk getting his pants dirty kneeling on a floor, no matter how clean that floor might be.
She hurried to the desk. “I have an idea.”
He clicked the button again, but when nothing happened, he climbed to his feet. “Be my guest.”
“Out of the way.”
He cocked a brow but moved back by the windows. Melissa rolled the chair up to the desk and sat down. She scooted it closer, trying to picture her father’s long legs and how close he might sit, adjusting her position.
“What are you doing?”
“Trying to think like my father would. He definitely wouldn’t kneel on the floor to open a trapdoor. He would sit in the chair. It’s more dignified.”
“Dignified?”
“If you knew my father as well as I do, you’d understand that dignified describes him perfectly.”
“I believe you. And that’s good thinking. But how would he reach the button if he’s sitting down? I have long arms, but I couldn’t do that.”
“Are you sure that button is the mechanism that operates the trapdoor?”
“I don’t see any other purpose for it. However, it’s possible it’s a return device, rather than the initiating switch. Systematic, not manual or meant to be pressed by human hands.”
“In English?”
He grinned. “He might use one mechanism to open the door from up in this room, and a different one for operating it from wherever the trapdoor leads. The button under the drawer might depress remotely from below, and only works if triggered from below. Essentially, it’s a decoy. That would certainly explain why nothing happened when I pressed it.”
“Okay. Not sure I get it, but I’ll go with it. He wouldn’t leave a drawer open if he doesn’t need to press that button. So we’re looking for another button somewhere else.” She slid the drawer closed and tapped her hands on the desk. Her gaze slid to the only item within her reach with the drawers closed: the phone, and it w
as covered with buttons. “Could the phone operate the door?”
He strode to the desk and studied the buttons, then flashed her another grin. “You’d make a good spy, Mel.” He pressed the red button first, then two of the numbers. Nothing happened, but he didn’t seem worried. He pressed the red button again, and the same two numbers, in reverse order. This time a click sounded, followed by a low, barely perceptible hum.
He jumped out of the way as the rectangle with the indentations dropped down about two inches. Then it slid back underneath the rectangle beside it, leaving a large hole in the floor. Lights flickered on below, revealing a set of carpeted stairs.
“Holy cow,” Melissa exclaimed.
He pressed his finger to his lips, then motioned toward the double doors.
In her excitement, she’d forgotten about Silvia. “How did you know which numbers to press?” she whispered.
“The red one seemed obvious. But the other two numbers were the most worn.”
“So, basically, you guessed.”
He smiled. “You’d be surprised how often my guesses pay off.”
Jace pulled her chair back. “I’ll grab our box. If we find anything worthwhile down there, we can throw it in with the other folders.”
She warily eyed the opening in the floor. “You mentioned a return mechanism. That implies that the trapdoor might close after we go down.”
“Probably. But I’m sure we’ll figure out how to open it again.”
“On a scale of one to ten, how sure are you?”
He shrugged. “Seven?”
“That doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.”
He smiled and retrieved the box from beside the double doors and a decorative table covered with picture frames and waited by the trapdoor. “Ready to explore?”
“No, but I will anyway.” She joined him on the top step. A desk and chair were visible below, with bookshelves behind them that were bursting with binders. They might very well have found the secret files that Jace had hoped to find by coming here. “I have to admit that when you suggested the floor might be a trapdoor, I was skeptical. And I’d hoped to find another explanation for those indentations.”
“Why?”
She smoothed her hands down the front of her jeans. “Because only people with secrets have trapdoors and hidden offices.”
He put an arm around her shoulder. “This will all work out. You’re a strong woman. Whatever happens, you’ll face it, you’ll see it through. You’ll be okay.” He dropped his arm and headed down the stairs, carrying the box.
She drew a shaky breath as she stood at the precipice and looked down. Jace thought she was strong. Was she? She’d certainly worked long and hard to make it through a difficult course load in college. And she’d been helping steer an incredibly successful company for several years now. But succeeding in the academic world, succeeding in business, required a completely different set of strengths than what she was facing now. And she already knew that she might not want to discover whatever was at the bottom of these stairs. Because if it was anything like what was on her boards back home, the truth was a very scary thing and could change her world forever.
Jace came into view again, looking up at her. “You coming?”
She blew out a shaky breath and nodded. No point in avoiding the truth any longer. Whatever the future held, she would have to face it. And, somehow, she’d have to find the strength to deal with it and do what had to be done. She started down the stairs.
She’d just cleared the opening when a low hum sounded. She turned around. As Jace had anticipated, the trapdoor automatically began to slide over the opening. When the floor clicked into place, and the humming stopped, she rubbed her hands up and down her arms, unable to dispel a feeling of impending doom.
Jace smiled up at her sympathetically, as if he could sense how nervous she was. He set the box of folders on the desk and leaned toward the wall of bookcases behind it, examining one of the hundreds of binders crammed together on the shelves.
Melissa started down the stairs again. But the frayed hem of her jeans caught on a piece of baseboard beside one of the steps, and she lost her balance. She cartwheeled her arms and let out a gasp of alarm. She just managed to grab the banister before she would have hurtled down onto the concrete floor.
Jace whirled around, his brow furrowed in concern. “You okay?”
She shoved her hair back from her face. “No thanks to whoever built these stairs, but yes, I’m fine.” She noted how narrow the spacing was between each stair. “The contractor didn’t follow building-code regulations, I guarantee that.”
“You know all about building codes I suppose?”
“As a matter of fact, I do. I had a ton of renovation work done on my house after I bought it. And I researched everything they did to make sure it met safety standards.”
“I wouldn’t expect anything less.” He pulled one of the binders out and thumbed through it.
She narrowed her eyes. “Are you making fun of me?”
“Nope. Just stating a fact. You’re a savvy businesswoman. I wouldn’t expect you to blindly accept the word of a contractor without checking behind him.” He flipped another page.
“Her.”
“Sorry?” He looked up.
“You said checking behind ‘him.’ How very sexist of you. My contractor was a woman.”
His lips twitched. “Touché. And you’re absolutely right. I shouldn’t have made that assumption. My apologies.”
She waved her hands. “Forget it. I’m sorry. That was rude of me.” She pointed at the ceiling above them. “I’m just spooked about the door. I hope you’re right that we’ll be able to figure out how to open it from down here.”
“We’ll find our way out. No worries.” He set the binder down and made a circuit of the room, which was a large rectangle about thirty feet by twenty feet.
Melissa paused on the last step. As with everything associated with her father, this surprisingly large room was clean and orderly. The office portion consisted of the desk, a chair, bookshelves, and filing cabinets along the right side of the room. No laptop though, which was disappointing. They might have been able to find something useful there. The remainder of the space was filled with dozens of neatly stacked boxes in straight rows. And each box had a label. She vaguely wondered if her father had ever lost anything in his life, as organized as he was. Probably not.
“Looks like my father’s been storing paperwork down here ever since he created the company.”
Jace thumped one of the boxes. “Unfortunately for us, it might be the wrong company. Everything I’m seeing is for the tour side of the business.”
“Are you sure? I can’t imagine his going to the expense and trouble of creating a room like this just to store regular paperwork. And the attic still has plenty of room. I know he stores paperwork up there, too. I saw the labels earlier.”
“Then maybe the labels on these boxes are decoys. I’ll open a few and see.”
“I’ll help.” She stepped off the last stair onto the concrete floor.
The lights went out, plunging them into darkness.
CYPRIAN STOOD AT the window in his daughter’s office at EXIT Inc., looking down at the parking lot. Normally, he’d see her Jaguar parked below. But, of course, the Jag was still in the body shop getting dents pounded out of it and being repainted.
He pressed his fingers against the windowsill. Whoever had forced her off the road was proving to be an elusive foe. All of his usual contacts had yet to figure out who was responsible. But he wouldn’t give up. He would find the man who’d frightened and almost hurt her. And justice would be swift.
He turned around. The desk he’d bought her sat in its usual place, of course. Full of papers, folders, office supplies. But even though the surface was far more cluttered than he would have liked, it was still neat, tidy, organized. Everything had a place and everything was in its place. She was a lot like him in that regard. She was a lot like him in a lo
t of ways.
Like coming to work every weekday, no matter what.
Neither of them took vacation days. They worked leisure time into their business trips. If they were sick, they suffered through it. And holidays? Sometimes they’d work those, too, when the rest of the company was off with their families celebrating. It all depended on what needed to be done at the time. Fortune 500 companies didn’t run themselves. And yet, here it was, midday, and her office was still empty.
“Mr. Cardenas?” Jolene stood in the doorway. “Is there something that I can do for you, sir?”
“Yes. You can tell me where my daughter is. I’ve been in meetings all morning, and apparently, she never came to work. Sebastian tells me she might have called you?”
“Oh, yes, sir. She did. She’s working off-site today.”
“Off-site?”
“With that new employee, I mean bodyguard, Jace Atwell. They’re touring the outposts. She said he wants to get his bearings with the company and what all we do. Something about planning his security detail around her day-to-day operations.”
He smoothed his suit jacket. “Since when do her day-to-day operations include going to outposts?”
“Sir?”
“Never mind.” He crossed the room and stopped in front of her. “I need to speak to Melissa. And she’s not answering her cell phone. I’d appreciate it if you could find out which outpost she’s at right now and ask them to have her call me.”
She stepped out of his way. “Of course, sir. Right away, sir.”
He gave her a curt smile and headed into his own office. A few minutes later, the desk phone rang. He grabbed it without looking at the caller ID. “Melissa?”
“No, sir. It is Silvia.”
He frowned and leaned back in his chair. “Is something wrong?”
“I don’t know. Miss Melissa, she came here earlier with Mr. Jace.”
He stiffened and sat up straight. “Melissa’s at my house? With Jace Atwell?”
“Sí. But I can’t find them.”
“What do you mean, you can’t find them?” A sound had him glancing up to see Sebastian standing just inside the doorway. Watching him. As usual. And behind him, Tarek’s retreating back as he headed into the hallway. “Silvia?”