Page 12 of Unraveling Connections

What I can’t explain is why the stairway went down. The security room, where we were checking the cameras is on the ground floor. My curiosity is practically eating me alive at this point, and I have to remind myself that I need to go slowly, and cautiously, this is not just some random old house that I am exploring, we are following someone dangerous, someone who most likely has seriously injured Luc’s mom.

The corridor, being cramped, is actually pretty fortunate for us because it means that there is nowhere for someone to hide and potentially surprise us with an attack. My relief over this doesn’t last very long though as we suddenly and somewhat abruptly come to a dead end and a sharp corner. It is so abrupt that I honestly didn’t notice it until we were right on top of it. Thankfully, there is nothing waiting around the corner for us, but if possible, I move even more cautiously forward from that point onwards, just in case.

After a while I notice that the floor is starting to tilt upwards, like we are walking up an incline. We have been walking for a really long time, longer than we should have been walking if we were still in the house. Considering that there has only been two of those sharp turns and otherwise we have been going straight, there is absolutely no way that we can still be in the house. It’s impossible.

Which begs the question, where the fuck is this tunnel leading. The further we walk, the more rough the walls become, instead of smooth plastered walls and wooden floorboards it changes into stone floors and rough stone walls, interspersed with big wooden beams that seem to be holding the walls and ceiling up.

One thing is for sure: this tunnel that we are in now is old. Really, fucking old, it certainly predates the house, although Ihave no idea by how much. Finally, we come to a set of wooden doors, the path has slanted upward so much that the doors are actually in the ceiling of the tunnel and there is an old wooden ladder leaning against the wall in order to help you get to them. Jensen and I share a look, still not willing to speak aloud just in case someone is waiting on the other side of the door.

We have come too far to turn back now, and the chances of us finding the doors from the other side of them are pretty much impossible since we have absolutely no idea where they are. I head up the ladder first, unhook the latch, and then push the door up as slowly as possible. The first thing I notice is debris, like leaves and sticks, that sort of thing; we are outside then, which makes sense because we were walking for so long. The second thing I notice is the light is just starting to change from night to early morning which means we have been out here a lot longer than I thought we had.

Unfortunately, this vantage point only allows me to see what is directly in front of me and a small amount of space on either side, which doesn’t give me a great view since I can mostly see trees. Standing on this ladder isn’t going to get us very far, and we need to know exactly where this comes out; not only that but there’s a good chance that Luc’s mom and whoever was in that room with her are still out here and we can take them in, waiting here is only going to mean that the gap between us and them is widening even more.

With this in mind, I push the door further up and climb through keeping my eyes glued to my surroundings and quickly turning before I am even fully out of the hole to make sure that there is no one behind me.

“All clear,” I say as I move out of the way so that Jensen can climb up.

“The sun is coming up?” is the first thing that he says when he peaks his head out.

I chuckle, “Yeah. We have been here for longer than I thought. I think they are long gone.”

Something behind the hatch catches my eye, and I move around the hole and head toward it.

“What have you found?” Jensen asks as the slamming of the door's echoes around us. I give him a raised eyebrow look, and he winces, “Whoops, sorry. I didn’t realize that it would slam that loudly.”

Shaking my head and trying not to smile, I point at the marks on the floor, “Tire tracks, someone was waiting here with a car.”

“This is just getting weirder and weirder.” Jensen mutters as he looks around with a frown, “When we were kids, we didn’t spend that much time here for obvious reasons. Luc really didn't like to spend time here, but I don’t remember any of this. I have no idea where we are.”

"Really? You guys never came out here?" I ask.

He shakes his head, "I had no idea it existed."

I don't really know what to say to that, so I change the subject, “Fortunately, it’s light enough now that I can take some photos of these and get them sent back to our techs at Headquarters to see if they can match it to a vehicle."

“Good idea. I’m not sure what good it will do now, but we might be able to match it to a person of interest later on,” Jensen replies, and then adds thoughtfully, “whoever it was that was in that safe room when Luc’s mom went in must have known the house really well. They either came in this way and were going to enter the house that way, or they knew enough about the house to know that it was there and that they could use that exit to escape.”

“It’s certainly curious.” I reply, “I think it’s probably safe to say that whoever was in there was the one that messed with the cameras.”

“Yeah, definitely. We need to get back to the security room and get Pete down here to see if he can find anything. He has also got all of the equipment to clone it or copy it or something so that he can take the footage away, and we can go over it back at ours.”

“I am so ready to go home,” I mutter, the words slipping out even though I didn’t really mean them to.

Jensen steps closer to me and pulls me under his arm; kissing the top of my head, he replies, “Me too, Angel. Let’s head back; the sooner we get this sorted out, the sooner we can head home.”

I nod, “That is assuming that they’re going to let Luc out of the hospital any time soon.”

“I don’t see why not,” Jensen replies as he moves toward the doors in the floor and reaches for them, “he said he was feeling okay, and the doctor said that he only wanted to keep him in for observations. Besides, it’s Luc; there is no way that he is going to let them keep him in any longer than truly necessary.”

“Yeah, you make a good point,” I reply and then pull out my phone. I have had it on silent this whole time, which is standard protocol when we do something like this. You can’t sneak around if your phone suddenly goes off; it would be incredibly dangerous.

The guys also will not have messaged or rung in that time, just in case one of us had forgotten to silence our phones, and judging from the light I know that we have been gone far longer than we had intended, and I am sure that they are worrying now.

“Are you calling Trick and the guys?” Jensen asks as he tugs on the door, which seems to be stuck.

I nod, “Yeah, they are probably going crazy waiting for an update.”

“Put it on speaker?” he asks.

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