Page 84 of Deadly Aloha
Fucking ridiculous.
In addition to no security, Neo also couldn’t find evidence that he had working staff. No housekeeper, cook, butler… The sort of domestic servant that someone might expect for a man of wealth. Yet, the house was immaculate. There was nothing out of place, no dust on the tables or marks on the floor. Who was cleaning? I highly doubted it was a man who had monogrammed dinner plates withWDJoverlapping a giant roman numeralIV.
From the dining room, we journeyed into what could only be described as a sitting room, due to the overabundance of couches and high-back chairs. The carpeting was white. Not off-white or a cream, but white like a blanket of freshly fallen snow.
We moved on. From the large kitchen to another living room, to the massive foyer and up the stairs to an ungodly number of bedrooms. We found a trophy room celebrating everyaccomplishment Weatherby Dalton-Jones IV had ever won and what looked to be a shrine dedicated to a dog. There was an indoor golfing room, an elevator, and a Japanese sand garden and koi pond.
But no Nishi.
No sign of the wife either.
The fucking satellite was right: no one was in this house.
I sentSpirit outside to discreetly check the yard. Maybe there was a storm cellar or something outside that we missed. A shed, or fuck, a treehouse. I was desperate at this point. We’d followed the trail, and the breadcrumbs led here. What was I fucking missing?
“Check the floorboards, tear the walls apart,” I ordered the others. “There has to be something here.”
Tangaloa grabbed my arm as I made to storm past. I was going to find a hammer or a sledgehammer or something and tear this house apart. “And if she isn’t here?” he asked quietly. “We have no other leads.”
My jaw ticked. “You think I don’t fuckingknowthat?” I pulled my arm from his grip. “Find her!” I ordered loud enough for the entire house to hear.
It was a good half hour later before the twins shouted they found something in the library. I had to admit, the damn thing was impressively massive. Stacks of floor to ceiling bookshelves in a large U-shape. But just like with the rest of the house, there wasn’t a speck of dust in sight. The entire room felt almosttooclean.
“Check this out,” one of the twins said, gesturing to the book shelf behind them.
“It’s like a fucking escape room,” the other one added.
The first pulled a book from the shelf. “All of these are real.”
“But over here,” the other one said, “they’re fake. Most of these are just a front plate.” He pulled off a section of books that was a piece of plastic or maybe cardboard that was just the covers. It was hollow behind, showing off an empty book case.
“I don’t get it.” Tangaloa looked around. “It’s a fake?”
The twins shrugged. “A good part of it,” they said together.
“Start pulling everything down,” I said. “He’s hiding something in here, and I doubt it’s just a false fondness for classic literature.”
We started pulling all the books down. Bottom to top, shelf by shelf. This was taking fucking too long. I didn’t care if the man came home from work while we were still searching, but the longer it took us to find what he was hiding, the longer Nishi was a captive, a victim.
Beyond that Lu was counting on me, I had an obligation to Nishi. She was one of my people who had been taken from my island under my nose.
Tommy was bringing a handful of real books over to where we were dumping them in the middle of the room. When he placed them on top of a previous stack, the entire thing toppled over into an end table beside the couch, making the lamp fall. Only…it didn’t.
There was no crash or shatter of broken ceramic. Instead the lamp tipped backwards and there was a mechanicalclickbeneath the floorboards. The decorative rug shifted under the bookshelves. It wasn’t much. But enough for us to notice.
I wasn’t the only one who climbed down from a ladder as Tommy quickly removed the fallen books from the table that blocked our view of the lamp.
The bottom was connected to the table by a hinge. Tommy lifted his eyebrows at us before reaching forward and pressing the lamp back all the way.
Theclickfrom under the floor was louder this time, and the rug was pulled completely under the bookshelf. And then…nothing. We all looked around, not sure what it was that we were missing.
“That’s it?” the twins asked.
Reacher squatted forward, rubbing his hand on the wood paneling. “Maybe there’s another trigger. Something that opens a trapdoor in the floor?”
Tommy pressed on the lamp again, making it go forward and backward. Even turned the light switch on and off. The only thing he accomplished doing was making the rug move.
Then he cracked open the drawer of the end table, and the floor beneath Reacher’s feet shifted. The man dropped with it, his hands outstretched, knees bent, and anoh shit!expression on his face.
