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“Tell me something I don’t know already,” I press. “We’re aware he’s powerful. We know going up against him is a risk. So cut it out with the warnings and tell me something we can actually use.”
Charles’s jaw clenches. He obviously doesn’t want to say anything else, but when he looks at my mother, she glares at him too. I have no idea what’s going to happen to the two of them after today, but I find myself hoping she serves him up with divorce papers… or murders him in his sleep.
Either way, she clearly knows enough about him after their years of marriage that her threat of blackmail has him scared. He doesn’t argue with her again, just grimaces slightly before looking back at me.
“I can help you find something to use against him,” he says slowly. “Fuck. He’ll kill me if he finds out I did this. He has a… an underground storage unit—”
“Another fucking bunker?” I cut in, my skin crawling at the thought.
Charles narrows his eyes at me. He clearly doesn’t like the reminder of where I was kept for all the years Alan had me in captivity, but that’s too fucking bad.
“Call it whatever you like,” he says flatly. “But it’s where Alan keeps important things. Things he doesn’t want discovered.”
I want to ask him how he knows about this storage unit and why, but I keep my mouth shut. If I can find a way to implicate my dad in all of this, I will. But for now, I need him to believe that if he helps us, I’ll walk out of his life and never come back. That I’ll let him get back to business as usual, which is what he so clearly wants.
So I just hold his gaze and nod once.
“Show us.”
Maria watches us closely as we all leave the Davenports’ house and head back out to Gray’s car. She stands in the open front doorway with her arms crossed over her chest, her gaze fixed on her husband as he climbs into the front passenger seat next to Gray.
I almost expected her to insist on coming with us, but I’m glad she didn’t. There’s no room in the car, for one thing. And for another, having her around would muddle my feelings too much. I need to be sharp and on my game, and it’s easy to stay focused with Charles. My feelings for him are crystal clear, and the anger I feel toward him gives me a renewed sense of purpose.
We have to do this. We have to end this. Not just for me, but for all the other family’s that have been destroyed by Alan and the fuckers who make deals with him.
Charles gives Gray directions, and as we get nearer to our destination, he answers my unspoken question from earlier without prompting.
“I helped design the security system for Alan,” he explains. “It was one of the many ways I was required to… pay my debts. Another person who was in his debt helped design it, and someone else built it. He kept me in the dark about a lot of things, so I don’t know the full layout, but I know enough to get us inside. I think.” He curses under his breath, his hands tightening into fists on his thighs. “He’ll kill me if he finds out I helped you get inside.”
“Yeah?” I snort. “Should’ve thought about that before you went into business with him, I guess. Mom must have some serious dirt on you if you’d rather risk pissing off Alan Montgomery than letting her expose your skeletons to the world.”
He doesn’t answer, but his jaw clenches, the muscles in his cheek standing out so rigidly that I know I’m right.
Even beyond giving up his daughter to secure the success of his business, my father is not a good man.
Under Charles’s guidance, Gray pulls off the two-lane road in the foothills onto a narrow road that’s so overgrown it’s practically invisible. We drive for several more minutes over uneven terrain before Charles nods.
“Here. You can stop here.”
Gray parks his car i
n a small clearing surrounded by a grove of trees. Just like when we went searching for Max after she was taken, we head into the thick woods on foot. It’s not a short hike, and the early afternoon sun combines with the adrenaline coursing through me to make my back slick with sweat.
When Charles finally comes to a stop, I glance around at the woods surrounding us but don’t see anything. He moves confidently though, striding between the trees until he locates a rotting stump. He crouches next to it and then pushes it aside. The stump slides away easily, and I realize it’s not an actual stump. It’s just meant to look like one, like those rocks people hide their house keys under—except on a bigger scale and much more lifelike.
Beneath the stump is a metal panel, and Charles brushes away a few stray leaves that fell onto it when the stump was displaced. Then he grabs the handle at the top of the panel and tugs. The panel opens to a lump of cords and wires that he spends a few minutes messing with.
Once he’s done, he heaves himself to his feet. “Come on. Follow me.”
He leads us several yards away, then crouches down again, digging into the soft dirt until he finds some kind of switch. A moment later, a low, grating sound fills the air, and a large panel slides to one side next to us, exposing an opening in the ground. Stairs lead down into the darkness below.
I realize that when he was messing with those wires a few minutes ago, he was disabling the automatic locks and security measures he put in place. Once the entrance is exposed, the five of us take the stairs down into the black abyss, motion activated lights flickering on as we pass them.
My skin crawls as we reach the end of the stairs. It looks so similar to the last bunker I was in, and all I want to do is turn back and run up the stairs into the fresh air and daylight, but I don’t. I can’t.
A few moments later, we’re standing in the main room of the bunker. Charles reaches over to flick on a dim lightbulb overhead, illuminating the large room in front of us.
The broad room is filled with seemingly random stuff on shelves—stacks of money, weapons, other contraband that looks expensive and important, likely items he’s holding as collateral, just like he kept kids. It makes me wonder if he still accepts children as a means of holding their parents to their word. Maybe these items are simply for those who are childless, their most precious items taken instead.
