AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Checks out,” Simmons said as he examined the card.
“You have ID as well?” Martinez asked me.
“Same place,” I affirmed.
“Then do the same thing,” he directed.
I turned slowly, knowing that each minute we kept the cops busy, they couldn’t pursue Charity and Shai.
“What did you find?” Martinez asked Nadia as I handed my ID to Simmons.
“She checks out too,” Simmons said before Nadia could answer.
“Tunnels. Doors to rooms that should never exist,” Nadia said.
Officer Martinez’s face looked haunted. It was evident he’d seen the tunnels under the other bar. The one where we’d lost Aria.
“Find anyone?” he asked.
Nadia shook her head. “The place feels vacated.”
“Anyone else down there?” Martinez asked as if he already knew our answer.
“Two of ours,” Nadia replied honestly. “One checking doors and the other going farther down the tunnel.”
“Looking for the second exit?” he asked.
We eyed him. Did he know there was another way out, or was he just assuming? I didn’t have the nerve to ask, considering we were already on thin ice. Although they knew who we were and weren’t treating us like suspects, we still had six guns trained on us.
“Yeah,” Nadia replied.
Martinez nodded.
“Simmons, you stay up here and get their statements. The rest of you, come with me,” he ordered. Obviously he was a boss of some sort.
Before he descended the stairs, Martinez paused. “I know you’re missing one of your own, and I don’t blame you for going after her. But let us do our jobs.” With that warning he disappeared down the stairs.
“We deserved that,” Nadia muttered.
“And then some,” Simmons agreed. “But I’m sorry about Aria.”
I fought against tears. We could handle reprimands, but when this gruff officer recognized that we were hurting, that we were missing one of our own, it almost undid me.
“How did you guys know to come here?” Simmons asked.
We’d covered this during the car ride. We couldn’t share the full story of how we’d gotten our information. Shai’s roommate and best friend had found an email to her police officer brother, Colt, and had called Shai. We had assured her we would do everything in our power to keep her actions a secret. And the best way to do that was to let Nadia do the talking. I might be the best at drawing the truth from people, discerning truth from lie the moment it was said, but—maybe because finding truth was such a big part of my job—I was a terrible liar myself.
“Shai found a card in the tunnels under the bar,” Nadia said, giving as close to a truthful answer as she could. We all knew that keeping lies close to the truth was the easiest way to remember them.
Shai hadn’t found the card, but someone had. And it hadn’t been in the tunnels, but Shai hadn’t been allowed in the garage where the card had been found, so that was the closest to the truth we could give.
Officer Simmons nodded, accepting her story. “These guys sure like tunnels, don’t they?” he muttered, mostly to himself.
They did. Just like the rodents they were.
FOUR
aria
