Part 24 (1/2)

spoke.

That was good enough for Kane, so he flipped the switch. Several naked bulbs awoke to provide enough light to see by.

As soon as the three of them started down, Faith felt the damp

chill that was so familiar she stopped in her tracks.

”Faith?” Daniels, behind her, didn't touch her.

Three steps below her, Kane turned and looked back. ”Is this it?” he

asked softly.

She swallowed. ”We're close.”

He took her hand. ”Come on.”

Faith didn't know if she would have been able to continue down into that

place without his grip. It was more commanding than comforting, but at least it was contact with something warm and alive.

I have to stay grounded, he said, connected to the here and now.

The water sounds were louder 'inside her head. She hung on to Kane's hand as if to a lifeline.

At the bottom of the long flight of stairs, they found themselves in a square concrete room hardly larger than the office above. There was no sign that it was intended for anything other than extra storage; open

metal shelving units lined two of the walls, though all they containednow were a few dusty stacks of paper and other ancient office supplies.

Faith turned immediately toward the bare wall the farthest from thestairs, and realized she was silently counting only when she reachedtwelve steps-and that rear wall. Her free hand lifted to touch itgently.

”This shouldn't be here,” she murmured. ”It ... She was past this,beyond this point.”

Daniels took out a penknife and dug into the mortar between two concreteblocks. It crumbled easily, still visibly damp. ”This is a new wall.

Only a few days old, if that.”

It took them a while to find tools that would work-a dull ax and a heavymallet from upstairs in the warehouse. Kane and Daniels were able toknock several blocks loose and open up the wall.

Standing several feet away, Faith stared at that gaping maw and toldherself there was no reason to fear what lay within. just the other halfof this room, that was all. Bare concrete floor and block walls and ...Kane and Daniels went through the wall.

The chair wouldn't be in there, she thought. That would have beendestroyed, maybe burned. But they must not have been able to get thebloodstains out of the concrete floor, and so they'd walled up theplace, concealing all evidence. Everybody knew the police had all kindsof forensic tricks now, chemicals they could spray on surfaces to makebloodstains show up, even when they'd been scrubbed, even when they wereinvisible to the naked eye, perhaps painted over.

Closing off that part of the room was safest, that's what they wouldhave thought. Move Dinah some- where else, somewhere even darker andcolder, where the sounds of water were loud and constant and maddening,and then build this wall to hide what had been done in this place.

Faith drew a deep breath and went through the hole in the wall to joinKane and Daniels inside.

The more powerful flashlights they had brought for this interior searchhelped to delineate the shape and size of the small bas.e.m.e.nt, but therewas almost nothing to be seen. Walls, ceiling, floor.

Stained floor.

”They tried to clean it up,” Daniels said with detachment. ”But concreteis porous and stains below the surface. They might have painted it, b.u.t.the entire floor would have had to be done in order not to look suspicious, and who would bother painting a floor in a place like this?

Easier and simpler to just make the s.p.a.ce down here match up with thesize of the office above by building a wall to hide this part. Withoutthe original blueprints, it isn't likely that anyone looking down herewould have guessed. The new wall would blend once the mortar cured, andtheir ... secret would have been safe.”

Faith looked down at the rust-colored stains on the floor, then turnedher gaze away with a shudder as she remembered blood dripping from mangled wrists.

Kane was staring down at the floor, unmoving.

She wanted so badly to reach out to him that her hand liftedinstinctively. And then hung there between them, meaningless andimpotent.

He didn't want to be touched. And most especially, she thought, hedidn't want to be touched by her.

In that same steady, unemotional voice, Daniels said, ”Kane, we have toget out of here. We have what we came here to get evidence to convince usthat something happened here, that Dinah might have been held here.” Thepolice,” Kane said in an odd, still tone.

”There are still no legal grounds for a warrant.

We're in here illegally. If the police even listened to us and came inhere, they couldn't use anything they found in court. Worse, storming inhere openly before we know more could panic whoever's got Dinah, forcethem to- We have to find a way to uncover other evidence that will leadthe police here logically. It will take time, but it has to be done. Wewon't help Dinah by rus.h.i.+ng off to confront Cochrane before we knowmore. But we have a place to start now. We have somewhere to look.”

Faith forced her hand to drop to her side and made herself speak calmly.

”Won't they know we were here?”

”Not if we're careful. And lucky. Kane, we have to go. Now. That dogwon't be out much longer.”

Faith thought it was a toss-up as to whether Kane would listen to theRI., but in the end he did. Or perhaps he simply had to get away fromthose terrible stains on the floor.

He and Daniels replaced the blocks they had removed, using the crumblingmortar for the joints.

The result would fool no one close-up, but when Daniels loosened thebare lightbulb hanging closest to the wall until it went Out, thedimness made their handiwork much less evident.

They were careful to replace the tools and to close and lock the doorsthey had found that way, but there was no time in getting out of thewarehouse and back to the gate. The sleeping dog was just beginning tostir as they slipped past him.

Daniels didn't come in when they returned to Kane's apartment; he wantedto do his own checking on Jor- dan Cochrane and the warehouse, and saidhe'd return first thing the following morning to report in- sooner if hediscovered anything even remotely likely to help them find Dinah.

Kane was pacing.

Faith wasn't sure he was ready to talk, but she needed to. ”There'ssomething bothering me.”

It was, on the face of it, an absurd thing to say, but Kane merely sat down in the chair across from her and said calmly, ”Something inparticular? What is it?”