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The trees that seemed to practically grow into one another gave way to a small slice of grass.
“This is it,” Aria said, her breaths too shallow. I could almost hear her heart beating.
But I kept my mouth shut and continued to let her lead the way at her own pace.
She walked forward until her feet nearly touched a piece of metal on the ground. Upon closer observation, I realized it was a trap door. It was the only thing indicating there was anything here other than trees and grass.
This was the place Aria had somehow escaped? The girl had way more grit than I’d ever acknowledged, and I’d always known she was tough.
I rubbed my arms, keeping the goose bumps at bay.
Without warning, Aria threw open the door and started down the stairs.
The rest of us followed apprehensively.
I looked around as I entered the stairwell. Cement walls on either side, cement stairs under me. A dank odor hit my nose and the light from the sun was already waning. We each pulled out our flashlights, high beams we’d taken from the office in preparation for this.
“Did Officer Jordan tell you anything about what they found?” Aria asked. She was plunging forward in a seemingly fearless manner, her flashlight bouncing from wall to wall. It was only from my years of reading people that I knew Aria wasn’t fearless, but was determined to conquer her fear. I had to admire her even more for that.
“No,” Shai answered. “But I’m guessing it’s because they found a big, fat nothing. Not that Colt tells me everything, but he knows how much this case means to us. I think they’re resting their hopes on questioning the two guys they brought in. Colt did say that if his interrogators weren’t able to get anything out of them he’d give Ella a crack at them.”
I smiled gleefully at this news. I may not be able to fight physically like Aria and Shai, but I had my own ways of getting back at the men who’d held my friend hostage. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on them.
“What are we looking for?” Nadia asked as we went deeper into the tunnel. There were a few scattered dim sconces on the walls, but they did almost nothing against the darkness of the underground hole we stood in. How had Aria managed to find her way out of this place? I imagined that without our flashlights it would have felt practically pitch black.
“Anything out of the ordinary,” Shai responded.
“Which down here, would be everything,” Nadia muttered.
She wasn’t wrong. Everything was bare in the tunnel. The tunnel interior was completely bare except for a few doors on either side. Those doors hung open, showing that each of the rooms was a lot like the tunnel we stood in: bare cement floors and walls. Why did they have all of these rooms if they weren’t using them?
“Colt said they think this was a sort of satellite office for the group,” Shai said as if she was reading my thoughts. Granted, all of our thoughts had probably strayed in the same direction. Where else would they go when presented with these cell-like rooms? Especially because I was sure we were all trying to forget that Aria had been trapped in one of these rooms. “He thinks they knew Aria had a high likelihood of escaping. They didn’t want to take her to one of their main compounds for fear she’d let us all know where she’d been held.”
Shai’s pride was evident in her voice and I glanced down the line at Aria. I could only see her back but she held her shoulders a bit higher, seeming to appreciate Shai’s praise.
“This is it,” Aria said as we all slowed. Somehow it seemed to grow darker in the tunnel at her words. It was just an open door in the middle of the hall, looking innocuous, and yet I felt my hands tighten into fists as I got ready to examine this room. Aria stood in the doorway, everything about her relaxed except for the tension around her mouth. She was working hard to appear unaffected by coming back here, but of course she wasn’t. I hated that she felt she had to put on an act for us. Or maybe the act was for herself.
Aria finally moved into the room and we filed in after her.
The room looked very similar to the others. We saw wet spots along the walls where rainwater had apparently leaked in. But this room had a couple of pieces of furniture: a chair and a table.
“The police must have taken the EEG with them,” Aria said as she swiped a finger along the table.
It was then that I saw a mess of ropes at the base of the chair. Fingerprint powder was sprinkled over the rope. Crime scene investigators must have found nothing if they left the rope behind. When I saw Aria flinch at the sight, I wished they hadn’t.
I bit my lip, trying to focus on anything other than those ropes, but now that I’d seen them I couldn’t unsee them. Those had been used to tie Aria to that chair.
I felt my stomach tilt and roil. I swallowed back the nausea.
“Nothing here either,” Shai said. It was disappointing, but we’d all known this would be the case. If there’d been any real evidence, the cops would have already taken it. We were here as a precautionary measure, in the small chance they’d overlooked something, but mostly for Aria’s sake, so she could see this place with new eyes. Free eyes.
Aria pushed off of the table and walked out of the room, going deeper into the tunnels. She passed a few more open doors before the tunnel made a sharp right turn.
“I couldn’t see beyond this turn when I came out of that room,” Aria said quietly, almost as if she were speaking to herself. “What if I had come this way?”
It was obvious that the way out of the tunnel was the way we’d come in. One way in, one way out. We walked around the corner into a square, open area. A few tables and chairs were scattered around the room and there were a few more lights in this space, but it was still barely enough to keep from running into what was right in front of me. Since the lights had been on when we came in, I assumed they were battery operated. That was probably easier than trying to wire electricity through this place.
“They’d all been here for me,” Aria said, her voice seeming to get even quieter.
