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“What the hell?” Leigh shoved the soldiers aside, crawling toward the padlock on hands and knees. Brand new. The arm threaded through a metal cage attached to what looked like a wooden hatch in the floor, but there were at least ten more boxes sitting on top to conceal it. She tugged at the mechanism. It didn’t budge, and she hadn’t come across a key in her search. Maybe there was one in the house.
She dropped the padlock back into place.
A whimper reached through the seams between cement and wood.
Leigh stilled, her heart thudding hard behind her ears. Seconds ticked off, distorted and too long. “Hello?”
Silence.
She pressed her ear against the corner of the hatch peeking out from underneath the boxes. There. She heard it again. Something alive. “Hello? This is Agent Leigh Brody of the FBI. Is someone down there?”
“Help me.” Two words—weak, barely audible—fractured the pressure building inside.
“Carter? I’m… I’m here! Stay right there. I’m here. Okay?” She shoved to her feet, going for the next box in the stack. She threw it behind her without consideration as to what was inside. It didn’t matter. “Don’t worry. I’m going to get you out.”
In minutes, she’d cleared an entire hatch spanning two feet by two feet. Leigh dropped onto her knees and pulled at the padlock a second time. Splinters bit through the thin fabric of her slacks and stabbed at the blisters underneath, but the pain was nothing compared to the idea of Carter Boucher starving to death in a manmade hole beneath a garage. There wasn’t a single photon of light escaping from the seams between the cement and the wood. A voice in the dark was all he had down there. “I just need to break this lock. I’ll be right back.”
“Don’t leave me!” The sob escaping from beneath the wood pierced her resolve. A jolt struck the hatch from inside. “Please!”
She pressed both palms into the floor, pinching her eyes closed as tears burned. She wouldn’t be any good to him unless she got through this door. “I have to. I’m sorry. I’ll be right back. I promise.”
“No!” The frail voice followed her out into the driveway. Seared into her memory the same way her screams filled the courtroom after hearing the guilty verdict at the end of her father’s trial.
Leigh bolted for the house, phone in hand. She dialed straight into 911, gave them the address, and requested an ambulance. Help was on the way. She had to believe that. She had to believe Lebanon PD would come through for a little boy who needed help this time. Because that hope was all she had left.
She tugged on the screen porch door. Locked. This place was a crime scene. She’d even checked to make sure there weren’t any windows or doors left open. Leigh rounded to the back of the house. Every second she wasn’t trying to open that padlock was a second Carter sat terrified and alone and sobbing, and her heart couldn’t handle it.
Overgrown vines snagged at her ankles as she ran for the basement window well. The rocks that’d been left at the bottom back then were gone now. Leigh tested the lock then plunged her elbow through the glass. She didn’t have to worry about being overheard this time. Chris Ellingson wasn’t going to walk her back to her parents’ house with his fingers bruising her arm again. “Hang on.”
Glass sliced through her palm as she hefted herself inside. Blood bloomed across overheated skin and dripped to the floor. Contaminating the scene. “Shit.” Rushing to contain the wound, she grabbed for a stained rag left beside the furnace. She couldn’t worry about what that meant for the investigation right now. She had to find something to break that lock. A shovel, a pair of bolt cutters—anything.
She charged up the stairs and started going through drawers all over again. Nothing. The hooks installed near the back door were empty. No signs of a set of car keys. Ellingson must’ve had them on him when he’d died. Which meant his personal belongings were with the body in Concord. “Why isn’t there a set of pruning shears in this place?”
Her search upstairs was turning out to be useless and had already wasted too much time. There was no telling what state Carter Boucher was in. His small voice had sounded so weak, strained even. He could be on the verge of suffocation, starvation, or bleeding. She wouldn’t know until she got in there, but rushing without letting logic take the wheel could make things worse. She’d trained for this, to work in high-stress situations while finding that center of calm. In and out of the field. Leigh forced her heart rate to come down. Ellingson would’ve needed tools to work on the furnace. There had to be something in there strong enough to break the padlock. “Okay. Tools.”
Leigh jogged back down the basement steps where she’d noted a few tools left behind. She just hoped CSU hadn’t taken them yet.
“Come back! I want to go home!” That same sob that’d burned itself into her brain echoed through the basement.
She stopped dead. She could hear him. “Carter? How… Where are you?”
“Please get me out of here,” he cried. “I want to go home.”
“I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.” She hadn’t imagined it. His voice was somehow carrying from underneath the garage to the basement, but the unfinished space didn’t have any air duct vents. In fact, the HVAC wasn’t connected to this level at all. “Keep talking. Okay? I’m coming. What can you see?”
Wet sniffles grated along her nerves. “I can’t see anything. It’s too dark.”
Leigh gripped the rag to the cut in her palm, pressing both hands to the nearest wall. She knew every inch of this basement from personal experience and studying the blueprints of the original home builder until she felt as if it was her own. There wasn’t anything here but framing, insulation, and… the HVAC and water systems. “What about things around you? What can you feel with your hands?”
“I feel cold. There’s dirt,” he said. “Can I go home now?”
There. Through the furnace. An entire crime scene unit had been in this room, and they’d missed it. Leigh dropped the rag and grabbed for the wrench a few feet from the appliance. She didn’t know how it was possible. She just knew she had to get in there. “I know where you are. I’m coming.”
She twisted the bolts off the sides. The wrench slipped, stripping the already worn edges, and her knuckles hit the side of the HVAC system. She tried again, and the bolt turned with her. “Almost there. Okay? Tell me about the first thing you want to eat when you get out of here.”
The first bolt dropped to the ground, then the second. The wound across her palm and every muscle in her arms screamed for relief, but she couldn’t stop. Not yet. Her lungs threatened to pop as the last bolt refused to move.
Realization struck. He hadn’t answered her last question.
