“No, I just need to see some ID,” he tells me plainly.
Bemused, and more than a little concerned, I cautiously root out my passport from my handbag and open it to the picture page without handing it over. Mick squints at the photo and then my face before rereading my name once more. He lets out a huff, clearly as baffled by the situation as I am.
“Okay. So, Nina. Obviously, we just needed to check it was you before discussing the NDAs. But here they are as you requested. Signed.” He opens the folder to show me two slightly dog-eared, signed nondisclosure agreements. I bend to inspect the counter signature: it is my name but it is not my handwriting. I pull up quickly to find them both staring at me.
“You think I made you sign these? You think we spoke on the phone, emailed?” I ask Mick.
He nods, then turns his desktop screen toward me so I can see the email chain I have apparently been involved in. It has been running for months. I look at the email address, apparently my email address, and I do not recognize it. But I make a mental note of it.
“You first got in contact just over three months ago now. It’s been on and off since then.”
I take in the horror of what he is telling me and quickly jump to my own defense.
“Well, that’s not me. I don’t know who you spoke to. I only found out about the house a week ago.”
The father and son share a look again.
“What was this person in contact with you about?” I ask. They hesitate for a second, unsure whether to tell me, confused as to whether the NDA they both signed prevents them from telling me, as I am not the person they contracted it with—or if the NDA itself is null and void for precisely that reason. They land on the side of the latter.
“She wanted the plans. And then she wanted the plans to be unavailable to third parties, hence the NDA. But it seems we might have made an error of judgment in terms of this person’s credentials. Though why anyone would request the information she did, if she wasn’t you, is beyond me. It’s not like she could have done anything with it. And then to prevent us from passing on the information—I can’t see why anyone would bother,” Mick confides with a shrug.
“Can I see the building plans?” I ask.
Joe wordlessly turns to look in a large filing cabinet.
“Of course,” he says, before continuing, “I mean, it was an impressive job, no doubt. A big dig, sure, but big digs aren’t unusual out here. They’re our bread and butter. So I don’t know why someone would be particularly interested if the property wasn’t theirs.”
“Did the NDA she made you sign prevent you from passing information on to anyone? I mean, did anyone ask for the information and have to be turned down?”
Joe looks up. “Yeah, a solicitor firm a few weeks, maybe a month ago. But aside from that no one else has ever asked.”
I realize that the solicitor firm must have been James’s firm trying to sort out probate. But he told me he came up with nothing.
Joe lays out a partial architectural blueprint in front of me. I lean in to take a closer look, still wary of the two muscular men sharing this confined space with me.
The plan shows a partial outline of the basement. The locked room’s dimensions are suddenly visible. I catch my breath.
“Oh my God. It’s big.” I jab a finger at the locked room’s outline. “It’s so much bigger than I thought.”
Joe frowns. “You haven’t visited the house yet?”
“No, I have. It’s just locked. I can’t get in there. That room. It’s why I came here, to ask you.”
“So you can’t access the connecting rooms then,” Mick asks. I flounder for a moment before his gaze draws mine back to the plans. Before the plans cut off, three additional rooms are visible branching off from the main locked room.
“Oh my God,” I whisper. “And this is only a section of the plans. There could be more down there, can that be right?” I ask.
Mick’s gaze holds mine.
“Yeah, we took a lot of bedrock out of that site. A lot.”
CHAPTER 16
JOON-GI
Y ang Joon-gi has thought about the woman in the house a lot. Maria. It has been three days ago now since he took the boat from Tortola to inspect the woman’s property on Gorda. His sleep has been off since. Strange dreams. He wakes now, in his tiny apartment, sweating. This new dream was too real. He was trapped in the walls of the house—and they began to close in.
The dream had started with the woman, the house.
