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Cassie moved in tandem with the detective, making sure she kept the phone’s light over Harris’s left shoulder.
The wooden stairs creaked, each one sounding like a gunshot in the silence. Baker would know where they were, and Cassie was terrified he was underneath them, waiting to sever her Achilles and send her sprawling.
But Harris was unconcerned. Maybe it was practice. Muscle memory. She had performed the moves so many times, they just happened. She took each step at an agonizing pace, sweeping her head left and right, making sure every movement was purposeful. She would pause on every stair to stop and listen, but Cassie couldn’t hear anything except water moving through the old pipes.
Halfway down the stairs, Cassie got a glimpse of the basement opening in front of her. Unlike the rest of the house, it wasn’t finished. It looked old, more like a food cellar than an actual basement, and she was certain that this room was in its original condition.
The hair on the back of Cassie’s neck tingled and she felt her skin crawling, starting from her ankles and going right up her back. More than anything else, she wanted to get off those stairs. She couldn’t ignore the feeling that Baker was lying in wait, ready to pounce.
They were about three steps from the bottom. Harris started to take a step down, and as Cassie went to follow, she misjudged the distance to the next step. She stumbled, and knocked into Harris, who had to rush down the rest of the steps to stay on her feet.
“Sorry!” Cassie whispered. “I’m sorry!”
“Stay with me, Quinn.” Harris looked to the left.
“I’m with you.” Cassie turned the light in Harris’s direction. In front of them were rows of wooden shelves. They looked new and each one held various canned goods. It was quite a stockpile. There was enough food to last several months, if not longer. What was this guy preparing for?
Harris kept spinning, guiding the light to the staircase they had climbed down. Cassie didn’t like putting her back to the room, but despite the invisible bugs crawling across her skin, she stayed connected to Harris.
At the very least, she knew that Baker hadn’t been hiding under the stairs like she had feared.
Harris kept moving and as the light swept the room, Cassie saw the altar from her vision. Her memory of what she had seen was vague but familiar, almost déjà vu. She leaned closer to Harris.
“That’s what I saw.”
“Let’s move closer,” Harris whispered back.
The detective kept her head on a swivel and Cassie stayed with her. There was a door on the far side of the room, opposite the stairs. Harris wasn’t concerned about busting her way through it.
They got closer to the altar and the smell made Cassie’s eyes water. On top of the table were seven candles colored a deep blood-red, almost black. Four of them were lit, the other three remained untouched with fresh, wax-covered wicks. A dull, red glob sat in front of the four that had flames and Cassie knew, without a doubt, that it was a piece of the heart from each of Baker’s victims.
“Shine the light on the wall,” Harris said.
Cassie lifted the phone to look at the wall behind the table. Blood was smeared this way and that. It appeared random at first. Cassie’s eyes took a minute to adjust to what she was looking at.
In the center was a square with four spokes leading to red splotches that formed a half circle on the outside. Surrounding that were the symbols Cassie had seen in her vision, but she couldn’t make heads or tails of what they were supposed to be.
“That’s the house in the center,” Harris said.
Cassie nodded her head. The light moved with her, casting shadows around the altar. “And the dots are the hearts. But what are the lines?”
“Something to connect the hearts to the house,” Harris said. “Maybe the blood?”
Cassie was about to open her mouth to say that made sense but saw something pale move in the corner of her eye. She was quick-witted enough to call out, “Left!” and wait until Harris turned to look before she shined the light in that direction.
“I don’t see anything,” Harris hissed.
Cassie breathed a sigh of relief. “It’s Elizabeth. Jesus, my heart’s pounding.”
“I can’t decide if it’s better or worse that I can’t see her.”
“I would answer that question, but I don’t want to offend the ghost who’s helping us.”
“What’s she doing?”
“Right now? She’s standing outside the door staring me down.” Cassie blinked and Elizabeth disappeared. “And now she’s gone. She wants us to go through the door.”
“Then let’s go through the door. You with me?”
