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Cora’s eyes widened. Again, her instincts wanted her to pull out her phone and call backup. But how would she explain her presence?
No...no, she’d already made a choice. Earlier, hours ago, calling Saul had been the linchpin of the decision.
She was in it on her own. Johnny had needed a favor and she was here to deliver on behalf of her ex. The payment was secondary to the purpose. The moaning grew louder.
Cora fiddled with the doorknob. Locked. She grit her teeth. She glanced around, spotting a few loose pieces of siding held in place by plaster nails. She spotted where the siding had been broken, a slipshod job, suggesting Mitchell had likely done it himself. Contract work would also open up the man to potential witnesses. She wondered if that was why he didn’t have electronics. Fear of wiring? Of electricians?
She doubted delivery drivers were allowed on the premises either.
The steel door, though, and the reinforced wall and the broken siding suggested to Cora—even more now—that the man upstairs was hiding something.
The question now was whether he was hiding what she was after.
Another sound from within the basement, but it faded, and Cora’s heart quickened. She cursed, glancing about, then reached for one of the smallest plaster nails. She didn’t have a tension wrench, but a bump key was easy enough to manufacture. A door like this, created by an amateur and installed by an amateur, allowed a few points of entry. But the first, most obvious one, would be the door itself.
She didn’t have a rubber washer to help the bump key. But two, thin plaster nails hastily rubbed against the cinderblock stairwell would do for the entry piece.
Then, barring access to a gasket or o-ring, she instead used the tension of her fingers to press the two nails into the small, thin lock. It took some doing. But then, a couple of taps. More tension.
A couple more taps, further tension.
She hesitated, scowling.
No go.
Johnny had always been good with this sort of thing...
But then Cora spotted something else. She frowned, staring. Her eyes widened. The idiot had installed the door with Philips screws facing out.
She tried not to snort but used one of the plaster nails sideways to lodge into the slot of the screw, then she began twisting. She endeavored not to listen to the sounds from within the room, deciding it would only increase anxiety and slow the process.
And it was already a very slow process. She worked hastily, undoing the screws. Four of them, surrounding the handle. A big, thick metal door, but cheap craftsmanship. The sort of thing that sold to people who didn’t know what they were doing.
The sun was rising now, the warmth across her shoulders, spreading her shadow towards the door. The sounds had completely faded from within the basement.
No sound from upstairs either.
Cora continued to work, fiddling. One screw. Two. Three. The panel slipped, and she managed to pull it from the handle. The metal pivoted though and hit the handle with a resounding sound like a struck gong.
She winced, tensing now, and listening for further sounds from within the house. None. Behind her, she heard the steady thump of footsteps on the sandy bike path, but no one stopped to investigate.
Tentatively, with surreptitious motions, she withdrew the metal casing from around the handle and pulled it off. And there, displayed for her pillaging was the entire locking mechanism. She made short work of this with fingers and nails.
Click.
The handle turned, and the door opened slowly. But even this she did with care, an eye out for traps, for any markers in the door that might warn the man upstairs to an intruder. And there, as she cracked the door, she spotted a small, white alarm that—once the door opened wide enough—would engage a magnet that started chirping through the house.
Perhaps Mitchell wasn’t as averse to such devices as she’d first assumed. She reached up and flicked the small, ribbed black switch to turn the alarm off. Then she opened the door fully, peered into the dark basement, and followed her attention with her feet.
Cora closed the door behind her slowly, inhaling the scent of must and mold. The mewling from before was gone. As the door clicked shut behind her, a sort of silence fell.
A rigid, earthy silence. A solemn sound—a silence that had witnessed things in these cold, bare walls that weren’t worth repeating.
Cora moved into the half-finished basement. A small laundry room to the right. Bare ribs of wooden slats forming a half-finished wall to the left.
And then she froze.
Through the light of a small window across the room, which was obscured by both metal bars and blinds, she spotted a figure.
