Twister nodded.
“I spend my life looking at buildings.”I shrugged.“I might notice something you don’t.”
The room went quiet.
Twister studied me for several seconds.Finally, he nodded.“Makes sense.”He looked at Wheels.“You stay with her.”
Wheels answered immediately.“Already planned on it.”
Twister looked toward Hodge.“You’ll post at the top of the basement stairs.”
Hodge pushed away from the wall.“You got it.”
Twister stood.“Finish your coffee.”He looked around the room.
“Then go see if you can figure out what the basement’s been hiding.”
I wrapped both hands around my mug and nodded.For the first time since finding those signatures, it felt like we might finally be getting somewhere.
And if there really was a hidden tunnel beneath this clubhouse, I had every intention of finding it.
Chapter Fifteen
Wheels
The basement looked worse every time I came down here.
It stretched beneath the entire clubhouse in one massive open space that smelled like old lumber, dust, and machine oil.Shelving lined three walls, packed with boxes nobody had bothered labeling when we’d moved in.Half of them were still taped shut.The other half had been opened, rummaged through, and shoved somewhere else.
At the time we’d moved, every one of us had said the same thing.We’ll deal with it later.
Later had turned into over a month, and then we’d started searching for tunnels.
Now it looked like a tornado had ripped through the place.Boxes sat open.Old furniture leaned against support posts.Pieces of drywall, crates, old club records, broken tools, and enough random junk to fill another building had been shifted from one side of the basement to the other.
And right in the middle of all of it...Goldie.
She stood with a folded map in one hand and a flashlight in the other.Her reading glasses rested low on her nose while she looked from the paper to the concrete floor.
“No...”she muttered.She took three slow steps to the left and looked down, back at the map, then at the ceiling.“It doesn’t make sense.”
I leaned against an old workbench, folded my arms, and watched her.
Hodge sat upstairs at the top of the basement steps.He couldn’t see us from where he was, but Twister had insisted someone stay nearby while Goldie worked.None of us were taking chances anymore.
Goldie barely seemed to notice anyone else existed.She crouched beside a crack in the floor before standing again.“The measurements are right...”Another glance at the map.“...but if they’re right...”She slowly turned in a circle.“...then this should be right.”She sounded more confused than confident.
I smiled to myself.Watching her work was something else.The rest of us had charged around down here moving boxes and looking for hidden doors.
She studied.She noticed.She questioned everything.
I’d never met anyone whose brain worked quite like hers.The morning kiss drifted back into my head before I could stop it.
I’d kissed women before.Plenty.
But none of them had stayed with me the way kissing Goldie had.I’d spent half the day catching myself smiling like some damn fool.
She sighed loudly.“No...”The map drooped at her side.“I know I’m missing something.”She pinched the bridge of her nose before pulling off her reading glasses.Frustration settled across her face and I pushed to the side of the workbench and patted the edge of it.“Come here.”
