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“Then you should know.”
“I didn’t even know they were there,” I said, my voice barely audible. What the heck was going on?
“You just showed us where they were,” he countered.
“I came home yesterday,” I said faintly, gesturing at the hole. My mind was racing. Was it booby-trapped? I lived right on top of it. What if I’d climbed down there the night before? “And someone had been in here. They put wood on the fire.”
“Okay?”
“I noticed that there was a lip in the floor that wasn’t there before.” I looked at him. “So I opened it. I don’t think I was supposed to know they were there.”
“Where were you yesterday?” Otto’s dad asked.
“The doctor.” I looked at Otto and then quickly away.
“No car outside. How’d you get there?”
“My uncle and aunt picked me up.” I crossed my arms over my chest, uncomfortable with the interrogation. He was asking questions so fast that I was having a hard time following.
“Not your parents?”
“No.”
“Why is that?”
“I don’t know.”
“How long you been livin’ here?”
“Fifty-five days,” I replied, making him frown.
“Since the day after Thanksgiving,” Otto murmured, running his hand through his short hair.
“Good guess.” I looked at him in surprise.
“Let me take a look,” one of the younger guys said, pushing his way to the edge of the hole and laying down on his belly at the edge of it. “Can you turn on the lights?”
I opened my mouth, closed it again, my cheeks heating. “There are no lights.”
“What?” the big younger guy asked.
“There’s no lights,” I repeated. “There’s no electricity.”
“You’ve been livin’ here for two months with no electricity… in the middle of winter?” the older guy asked incredulously.
“There’s a fireplace,” I said, gesturing toward it with fake nonchalance. “It keeps things warm in here. Plus, it puts off light at night.”
Otto cursed and spun away, walking toward the small kitchen area.
“It’s really not a big deal,” I said, knowing even as I said it that these men were looking at me like I was a complete freak. “I’ve got everything I need.”
“Well, I still need a goddamn light,” the man lying on the floor growled, his voice vibrating with anger.
“Here,” someone else said, handing him a phone with the flashlight turned on.
It was quiet in the cabin for a few moments.
“We’ve got wires down here,” the man on the floor said grimly. “A fuckin’ spiderweb of ’em.”
