Page 69 of Toxic Things I Love About You

“Good. I always liked chemistry.”

I knew he wasn’t asking, but memories of blowing shit up at our lake house came to mind.

“Great. In that pack, there should be some basics to make a few different things. I have no idea what we will find.”

I watched the little lights sitting over one specific spot. We were close.

“You make that look easy.”

He didn’t say a damn thing. I was guessing by his lack of response that it was not easy to keep the small craft in one spot. Lucky for him, we’d made it to the spot in no time.

“There’s a spot right around here that is colder than the ground around it, and it extends in a tunnel-like pattern.”

He started to stomp around, so I did the same, having no fucking clue what I was actually trying to find, but I could assume it was the manhole.

The thud from Park’s boot had him pausing and me running to join him. I grabbed the flashlight from my phone and looked at the ground. We pushed off any leaves.

“At least he didn’t do this in the dead of winter.” It was all I could think of. At least one damn thing was going our way, and I wasn’t digging under feet of snow.

“Look in your bag for a crowbar.”

I dropped the pack, and it was easy to find a long metal bar. I was already linking it under a small space on the cover. It wasn’t a manhole like in the city and I wasn’t sure if we’d be fighting a lock or what. To the average person, this didn’t exist. To a few nosy kids? They’d found it, but it still seemed like no one had done anything about it.

I sent a prayer off in case there was a God.

“It’s not…” I was about ready to say not moving when it budged. Parks put down the controller for the drone and was using another tool, maybe another crowbar. Hard to say, since I’d had to pocket my phone a minute ago to get leverage.

“I’ll be damned.”

The thing moved, and Parks was able to get his hands around it while I kept it from closing as he pulled it aside.

“Not the most secure, but I have a feeling it wasn’t meant to keep anyone out. It was meant for escape.”

Who cared?

“Fine, let’s get in there and worry about what’s on the other side later.”

The alarms hadn’t stopped.

“That’s got to be Emilee.”

Parks grabbed the bag.

“Do you think she got out?” I asked.

Fuck. If she had, this was a futile effort.

“Okay. Parks, you go up to the house and I’ll head down here. Any idea how far this is from the house?”

There was a light coming from the house now, but it was still deceiving.

“Not far. Again, this was an afterthought. Maybe even a rush job. Who knows? Okay. I’ll head that way. If we haven’t found her in ten minutes, we meet at the front door. At this point, I think she’s given us a good distraction at least.”

I nodded and headed down into the dark. The musty smell accosted me. No one had been down here, possibly ever. Great. I could handle anything, except maybe a spider in my fucking face. I really preferred the city right now.

TWENTY-FOUR

emilee

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