The Last Straw (The Jigsaw Files #4) - Sharon Sala Page 0,64

it to her.

“What?” she asked.

“You’re crying.”

Wyrick sighed, wiped her face and handed it back.

“We’re almost at the end of the passage,” Charlie said.

“It doesn’t end,” Wyrick said. “I’m still feeling that pull to fall down. Like I did in Rachel’s apartment. I think, now, that I’m feeling stairs. Hidden doors. Hidden staircases. We need to go down. Find a door, Charlie. Find a door.”

“Maybe it’s another way down into the basement,” Floyd said. “There’s one set of stairs on the main floor that leads down.”

At Wyrick’s urging, Charlie moved the last few feet to the end of the passage, and began shining his flashlight all along the crevices on the wall to their left, where all the other access doors had been found.

“No. The other side, Charlie.”

He pivoted and began shining the light and feeling for a similar trigger again, and within moments found it. The door swung inward onto a landing, and then a set of stairs going down into darkness.

“Is there a tunnel?” Wyrick asked.

“I can’t tell,” Charlie said. “There’s no light. I’m going down. Don’t come off the landing until I say so,” he said.

Wyrick was clutching the scarf with both hands now. The urgency of getting down there was almost sickening.

“Hurry, Charlie. Find a light.”

He saw the way she was holding the scarf, and remembered all the other times when she’d keyed in on someone’s location like this, and didn’t hesitate.

He aimed his flashlight down the steps and started down into the dark. But before he was halfway down, lights came on, revealing yet another secret to Detter House.

“It’s a tunnel,” he said and stopped and turned. “Safe to proceed.”

Wyrick reeled on the first step down. Charlie was already running up to catch her when Mills caught her from behind.

“Are you feeling sick?” Charlie asked.

She shook her head. “No, no, but I do have that same feeling I had in Rachel’s apartment, like I have to brace myself to keep from falling forward.”

“You already knew the steps were here,” Charlie said. “You just had to find them. So...here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to get on the step behind me, hang on to my shoulders and we’re going down together.”

And so they did, until they were all on the ground floor and staring down a long tunnel.

All of a sudden Wyrick pushed past Charlie and started walking, her stride long and hurried.

He didn’t bother to question why.

She was a dozen yards ahead of him when she suddenly slid to a stop and turned and shouted.

“Hurry! Hurry!”

By the time the men arrived, Wyrick had her phone out and was rapidly searching for something online.

“Oh, my God! Look at the size of this metal door,” Floyd said, then swung his flashlight. There was no doorknob. Just a handle, and then he saw the security panel on the right. There was no key to this thing. They needed a code to open it.

“We’re going to have to get someone in here with a cutting torch,” Mills said.

“No. Wait,” Wyrick said. “I can get it open.”

Charlie peered over her shoulder, watching her fingers flying on her phone, then pulling up the specs to a security panel just like this.

“This won’t tell you what the code is,” Floyd said.

Wyrick just ignored him.

“Charlie, can you get the face off the security panel?”

“Does it matter if it’s still in one piece?” he asked.

“You don’t have to smash everything. It should pop right off,” she said and kept typing and searching, and then she stopped, muttering to herself as she scanned the specs. “Pull off the front,” she said.

Charlie pried it off with his knife, revealing a conduit of tiny colored wires. “Now what?” he asked.

“Officers, you did not see me do this,” Wyrick said, then pulled up an app on her phone that Charlie had never seen. “Stand back. It might spark a little,” she said.

All of a sudden a light came shooting out of the camera lens on her phone and straight into the panel. There was a loud pop and a flash of fire. When the smoke cleared, there was nothing left but smoldering wires.

“Holy shit! What was that?” Floyd asked.

“Um...a kind of laser,” Wyrick said, then closed the app and put her phone back in her pocket.

Charlie pushed the door.

It swung inward to a total absence of light, so he swung his flashlight to the right of the door.

“There’s an old mattress in here,” he said and stepped inside and swung the flashlight into the corner, and what he