Page 19 of Little Dove

He waves me up, and I start to climb. When I reach the top, I have to stifle a shocked gasp when he lifts me out to set me down next to him.

“Stop doing that!” I hiss in exasperation. “I know I’m tiny compared to your giant ass, but that doesn’t mean I like to leave the ground. I don’t need to see what you see.”

He rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t agree to stop. Damn it.

I look around and realize that we are indeed in the middle of the desert. Ahead of us is nothing but open, flat ground with sporadic vegetation, but behind us is a giant rock face that leads up into tall stone peaks above. Not only is this exit not visible from the road, it’s completely hidden; only someone who knows it’s here would ever be able to find it.

But that also means that if we start walking, we risk getting lost or even dying from dehydration. Outside of the bunker, the only protection from the heat of the sun is the shade from the rock face.

“It’s the perfect place to hide something like this,” I tell Lazaro.

He nods his agreement. “I’m glad we found this exit, just in case we have to get out quickly, but it’ll be safer to stay here and wait for Alonzo to arrive. I’ll give them this location as a backup.”

He pulls out his phone and sends a quick message before he turns and indicates for me to climb back in.

“Be careful,” he warns.

I ease my way down before he climbs back in, shuts the grate again, and then just jumps down the last nine feet to the bottom.

“Show-off,” I huff, turning and walking inside.

He chuckles as he follows me. He shuts the door behind us with a click, and I walk back down the hallway, grateful we left all the lights on. A little more than halfway down the tunnel, we find an old water filtration system, and another twenty feet past that is the generator station used to power the place.

We just reach the end of the hallway when Lazaro’s phone rings.

“I need to take this,” he tells me, stepping out of the tunnel.

“I’m going to explore a bit more,” I tell him.

“Be careful,” he warns, giving me a hard look.

He sure is bossy.

I wave him off and head back inside.

We have hours yet before they get here, and I love this kind of stuff. I mean, how often do you get to uncover something like this—something forgotten and full of secrets? Hell, considering it looks like no one has been here since the fifties, maybe the military has forgotten about it too. Or, they just don’t care about it.

If that’s the case, there probably isn’t anything down here that’s valuable or classified, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t secrets to uncover.

I start in the first bunker closest to the door, but after a bit of searching, I come up empty. Undeterred, I head into the next one—the meeting room.

If there’s another hidden exit, I’d bet my last dollar it’s in here, especially considering the room’s purpose.

The first place I check is the table, but I don’t find anything.

“No, that’s too easy, Amara,” I scold myself quietly. “They did that in the other room, so it would be the first thing they’d check in this one.”

I look around the space critically, then move to the cabinet. It’s a good six feet tall, so I can’t see the top or inside it. I drag one of the chairs from the table over to give myself a boost.

The top is covered in dust. The inside of the drawer appears empty, but from my angle, I can just make out something by the wall at the end of the cabinet. I squint a little, but it’s too far for me to make out clearly.

Well, looks like I’m getting dirty.

I grip the edge of the cabinet and jump, hauling myself up with a little bit of effort. It’s noisy, my clothes and shoes clattering against the metal, but I ignore it as I crawl across the top of the cabinet. I huff in disappointment when my reward is nothing but an old pen, laying discarded against a small crack in the wall.

I toss the pen aside and move my hands along the crack, feeling for any air or maybe another hidden notch. When I don’t find anything, I scoot back a bit and look down the wall. The perspective from up here is different, but nothing catches my eye to give me any clues. Guess I’ll have to get down and have a closer look.

I start to slide myself again when Lazaro suddenly shouts, “What the fuck are you doing?”

---