AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Who’s going to save me from the mice? I am deathly afraid—I get it from my Auntie Heather, you know.”
Haldyn looked at Murdoch, who stood beside Hope now. Zoey stood on her other side. Zoey looked at her husband. “I’m sure you’ll do just fine.”
“Hold my hand, though?”
Zoey sighed and wrapped her fingers around his.
They were so cute together sometimes.
They all followed Powell downstairs.
It was a fun little parade, right down to the basement. Powell led the way. Jarrod scooped Hope up with an arm around the kid’s waist, after asking if she needed a lift. He’d noticed the Hope-gremlin had the same startle reflex as her older sister.
The stairs were too steep for someone in a foot cast with a crutch to be climbing. And she just…looked so sad for a minute there. He liked her—he didn’t like seeing that look on her beautiful monster face.
“Thanks for the lift, Foster.” She shot him an adorable grin.
“Of course, and I think you are the star of the show with this one.”
“But aren’t I always the star?”
Jarrod put her on her feet. “So where is the entrance?”
“It’s kind of complicated—at first. Alex’s was in the same spot, so I think that…”
Jarrod watched Hope as she led the way through a ridiculously large fully finished basement. Where the help had lived. Scott had had two doofuses who had been his top guards and his lackeys. They’d lived in. Jarrod had been in those apartments right there a few times. They weren’t anything special.
“Right here. I think.” Hope went to a small closet at the rear, right between the two small apartments. “There are towels in here. How boring, really. I would have thought there would have been a bathroom down here, but there isn’t. If you flip these shelves up, they slide a mechanism?—”
Hope pulled linens from the top two shelves. Haldyn was there to help her. Haldyn looked at Jarrod and the people behind him. Jarrod could see the questions and curiosity in Haldyn’s eyes.
“Secret doors are actually usually pretty simply designed. Levers, pulleys, wheels. Bars,” Haldyn said, poking her head in next to Hope’s. She was going into science-nerd mode right in front of him. He smirked. He liked seeing the curious look on her gorgeous face.
“The trick is finding the right pattern,” Hope said, the same look on her adorable little face.
“It’s a jib door!” Madison’s, too. Yep, science nerds were always so curious. So cute. Jarrod bit back a smile, seeing the intrigued look on Madison’s face. “Wicked.”
“That’s what Cris and I found in ours. It’s a jib door with a special hinge. But it has a few added features that really disguised it. I don’t even know if Grandpa Otis knew about it—well, not really my grandfather or anything. Just Cara’s. He was Bonnie-Mom’s father-in-law. Her ex didn’t want my mom to take in Cashie; he said two kids were too many, so he took off the day after mom said she was taking Cashie, come hell or high water, whether he liked it or not. She was like almost seven months pregnant with Cara then. To be honest, I don’t even think he wanted Cara either. He’s never even met our Cara-Beara. Jerk.”
Jarrod had noticed before—Hope chattered a lot. Probably because her brain was usually going a thousand miles a minute. She chattered as she kept pulling towels off the shelves. The chattering reminded him a bit of Gabby, at times. No denying that.
“If he’d have stuck around another three years when the rest of us came along… But anyway…Cris and I poked around and then we were trying to see what was on the upper shelf—it’s a good eight feet up—and then the shelf moved. And another panel slid open. Not so great for Crispin at the time, since she was hanging from the top shelf and everything. She landed on me. Cara was the smart one—she’d stayed back.”
Hope did something with her hand. Missed. “I’m too short to do it one-handed. One of you tall persons will have to do it.”
Lake stepped closer. “Tell me what to do, Auntie Hope.”
“You have to move the top shelf up. That’s going to release a lever. Then the second shelf will come down. They are actually not secured to the wall. They hang on the jig door. It’s a simple, but very ingenious design. If you don’t know to look for it and hit it exactly right?—”
Lake sent the door swinging open. “Well, son-of-a-b—banana. Sorry, working on the language now that I am a daddy and everything…”
His wife snickered behind him.
“Ours has a small hallway to the left. It looks like this one might be on the right.” Hope already had her phone out, line shining deep into the closet. Jarrod got the feeling the woman was just itching to shoot in there and see what was in there. Hope Coleson probably needed a keeper. No denying that.
“I know one thing—Scott wasn’t a fool. And this little Sherlockian hallway wasn’t really locked. All anyone had to do was lift the shelves out of the way,” Jarrod said. “Scott’s people would have known that. And he would have known ‘no honor among thieves.’ There is another lock somewhere between here and there. And that could be dangerous.”
He looked at the women staring at him now. Haldyn, Powell, Hope and Zoey, Shelby and Madison. “You ladies aren’t going in there first.”
