Page 84 of Jesse

“No,” he interrupts. “Not like this, Jesse. We’ve let it go all these years. We sealed it all up and locked it away and now you want to open up that fucked-up crypt in front of this… stranger? We were gonna do it together. One day. We made a pact.”

“What the hell are you two talking about?” Emma says.

“Us,” Zach continues. “Baby Bostons, right? We get no truth. We get no explanation. Hell, I didn’t even get the damn trust fund. We made a pact.”

I look at Emma, helpless. She’s shaking her head. “If you don’t, I’ll leave. I’ll walk away. I won’t get involved in something… weird after just one weekend, without knowing. Without making that choice for myself.”

I look at Zach. He’s shaking his head too. “I can’t stop you, but I’m going on record that I don’t agree. You don’t know her. She could be setting you up.”

“Setting him up for what?” Emma asks.

“See,” Zach says, “if you had any clue what was happening right now, you wouldn’t have to ask that.”

She turns to me. “Make a choice. We’re talking in circles and I’m getting tired of it.”

“Do you even have the code?” Zach asks. “Because I sure the fuck don’t.”

“I don’t know,” I admit. “I have the old code. But I have no idea if it still works.”

“You don’t think Johnny changed it?”

“Only one way to find out, I guess.” I take Emma’s hand and start leading her down the north hallway.

She resists, planting her feet in place. “Where are you going?”

“To the entrance,” I say. “You can’t get to that floor from this elevator bank. It’s been bricked up. We have to go this way.”

She still hesitates when I tug on her hand. And I give her a minute to change her mind.

But then she relents and follows me down the hallway. Zach follows us, his footsteps echoing behind me, but he doesn’t make any more protests.

My heart begins to beat faster as we approach the end of the hallway. There’s nothing down here but one set of double doors.

They open up to another elevator hallway. This time just one. And it only goes down one floor.

I press the code to call the elevator and part of me hopes it won’t work. It’s an old code so there’s a high chance I’ll be saved from whatever revelations are awaiting me downstairs.

But did I really think Johnny would change it?

Never.

The doors open and the three of us walk inside, then turn around as they close. Zach presses the button on the panel marked with an X and we descend for exactly one second.

The elevator dings our arrival and the doors open.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE - EMMA

It’s dark, so at first I can’t see anything except the faint outline of the floor-to ceiling windows covered with some kind of translucent paper.

Why did I insist on coming down here again?

“Where’s the lights?” Zach whispers as the three of us walk forward. And for a guy who was totally in alpha-asshole prick mode upstairs, he sure is reverent and quiet now.

“Over here,” Jesse says. He lets go of my hand and walks away, disappearing into the shadows. A few seconds later the lights come on in the little lobby. It’s not a lobby like upstairs and I realize that this is on the other side of the building. So somewhere on this floor is that lobby like upstairs, but this is some side entrance, I guess.

There are built-in cabinets on every wall. But more like cupboards, because it’s not open shelves. So what’s in there? I have no clue. I’m just about to ask when I notice what’s covering the windows. “Oh, what the fuck?” I say. “Newspaper? That’s not creepy. Not at all.”

I catch Jesse and Zach trading a look, but they don’t say anything.