AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Poor little things.” Whisper nudged a large dead eel with her toe. “It had no way to get out.”
I shone my light on the giant blast zone in the floor. “Except for that.”
“Well, it probably got disorientated.” She snarled at me.
In the center of the wardrobe was what was left of a set of drawers, and the shattered glass that may have been on top of the cabinet sparkled like treacherous diamonds on the floor.
“This is where they cut the wall to get Chui’s body out.” Whisper used her flashlight to show us a large rectangle that had been carved into the wall, and we followed her into the secret room.
Three computer monitors lay on the floor, covered in the same chalk-like residue that I assumed were the remains of the ceiling that had dislodged and fallen down. Along one wall, a custom-built desk had seven monitors still attached to the wall above it. All were covered in slime, and three were cracked.
“I assume that desk has been thoroughly searched?” I shone my light on the open drawers that had miraculously remained intact.
“Yes,” Maya said. “Apparently, Aria found some USBs in there, but they were all useless. She also found a journal, but the ink was ruined, and the pages had turned to mush by the time anyone examined it.”
“Here’s where someone exploded their way into another room.” Whisper shone her light on a large, jagged hole in the back wall. “Aria hadn’t seen this room the first time she searched the wreck.”
Ducking my head, I followed Whisper and Aria through the hole to the next secret room.
Maya shook her head. “If anything had been in here, it was stolen.”
A set of timber shelves was still attached to the wall, but there was nothing else to indicate what had been displayed on them. The wall behind the shelves was swollen and warped, and the marine ply had some delamination and patches of green mold and algae over it. I rapped my knuckles on the wall, and it sounded hollow.
“Let’s start in here,” I said. “We’ll do a quick search first, then if we don’t find anything, we start again, doing a more thorough search. You two start on that wall. I’ll do this one.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Whisper raised the hammer and pounded the wall so hard, the heavy ball on the end went right through the wall. “Whoops.”
We attacked the walls like reckless bank robbers. Splinters flew as my blade destroyed the shelving in a matter of minutes. Behind me, Maya and Whisper’s rhythmic thuds were like choreographed drumming.
“It’s like looking for treasure.” Whisper’s eyes lit up.
“Or a skeleton in Chui’s closet.” Maya’s laughter echoed in the hollow room.
Between Whisper and Maya’s aggressive hammering and my ax chopping, our quick search revealed nothing. We moved back into the first secret room.
“This is where Chui’s body was found.” Whisper aimed her light beam on a stain high up the wall. “That’s his blood. He had a bullet wound in his hip. Apparently, it was self-inflicted.”
My jaw dropped. “He tried to kill himself?”
“Nope.” Maya’s face lit up in a brilliant smile. “According to the forensics, they believe he tried to shoot the lock off the door, but it ricocheted back and hit his hip.”
“Huh. From what I’ve heard about him, he deserved to die in pain,” I said.
“You’ve got that right. Drowning would be a truly rotten way to die.” Maya’s magnificent smile lit up her eyes, and I was fascinated by how blue they were.
“Hopefully, his final moments were pure hell.” Whisper’s eyes were as black as molasses, dramatically different from Maya’s.
After our quick, yet destructive scan of the four walls in the second secret room, we moved back to the wardrobe area as we swept our flashlights across the water ravaged remnants.
“You guys start on that wall.” I aimed my light at the hanging wardrobe. “I’ll work on these.”
I tapped my ax handle on the broken glass on top of the centered set of drawers.
As I attacked the sides of the drawers with my ax, Maya and Whisper took turns removing the soggy suit coats from the hangers and fishing through the pockets.
“Why does anyone need so many suits?” Whisper asked as she dumped an electric blue suitcoat on the floor and reached for another.
“He probably never wore half of them,” I said, recalling the one time I secretly searched Albert Bolton’s wardrobe. He had enough suits to stock a men’s clothing store, yet I’d never seen him wear anything other than a plain white business shirt with expensive cufflinks that he changed every day. If he hadn’t died in that warehouse shootout at the end of my mission, he would have hated the orange suit he would have been forced to wear in prison. I hated that he died a quick death. That man was evil, and he should have suffered ten lifetimes in maximum security.
