Page 68 of The Last Straw

She was a dozen yards ahead of him when she suddenly slid to a stop and turned and shouted.

“Hurry! Hurry!”

By the time the men arrived, Wyrick had her phone out and was rapidly searching for something online.

“Oh, my God! Look at the size of this metal door,” Floyd said, then swung his flashlight. There was no doorknob. Just a handle, and then he saw the security panel on the right. There was no key to this thing. They needed a code to open it.

“We’re going to have to get someone in here with a cutting torch,” Mills said.

“No. Wait,” Wyrick said. “I can get it open.”

Charlie peered over her shoulder, watching her fingers flying on her phone, then pulling up the specs to a security panel just like this.

“This won’t tell you what the code is,” Floyd said.

Wyrick just ignored him.

“Charlie, can you get the face off the security panel?”

“Does it matter if it’s still in one piece?” he asked.

“You don’t have to smash everything. It should pop right off,” she said and kept typing and searching, and then she stopped, muttering to herself as she scanned the specs. “Pull off the front,” she said.

Charlie pried it off with his knife, revealing a conduit of tiny colored wires. “Now what?” he asked.

“Officers, you did not see me do this,” Wyrick said, then pulled up an app on her phone that Charlie had never seen. “Stand back. It might spark a little,” she said.

All of a sudden a light came shooting out of the camera lens on her phone and straight into the panel. There was a loud pop and a flash of fire. When the smoke cleared, there was nothing left but smoldering wires.

“Holy shit! What was that?” Floyd asked.

“Um...a kind of laser,” Wyrick said, then closed the app and put her phone back in her pocket.

Charlie pushed the door.

It swung inward to a total absence of light, so he swung his flashlight to the right of the door.

“There’s an old mattress in here,” he said and stepped inside and swung the flashlight into the corner, and what he saw made his skin crawl.

“Oh, my God. You did it, Wyrick, you found her. Hold this,” he said and gave her the flashlight.

She moved in behind him, focusing the beam on the tiny body curled up beneath a blanket, while the police moved in behind her.

“Is it Rachel?” Floyd asked.

“Yes,” Charlie said.

“Is she alive?” Floyd asked.

Charlie was on his knees beside her, feeling for a pulse.

“Barely. She’s burning up with a fever.”

“Call it in!” Floyd said.

“There’s no signal down here,” Mills said and turned to one of the officers with them.

“Go back up and—”

---