Page 59 of Summertime Rapture

“Oh no.” Mallory closed her eyes, her face scrunching. It was all an act, but even she had to believe in it, at least for now. “Sorry. It’s my time of the month. They’ve been so weird since Zach was born. More painful.”

“Oh.” Agnes, who’d never had a child of her own, matched Mallory’s pained face. “Honey, the bathroom is just down the hallway and to the right.”

As Mallory swept toward the doorway, she was careful not to meet Elsa’s gaze. She didn’t want Elsa to give her that look of,what the heck are you doing?Obviously, their plan wouldn’t work as far as Elsa had built it. Nothing would be said over blueberry pie. Mallory needed to dig further.

Mallory reached the bathroom, entered, and closed the door with a resounding click. She needed Agnes to know she’d “made” it. Afterward, she slowly eased the door open and tip-toed into the hallway, glancing left and right through the shadows.Where was the basement?She wracked her memory for some sign of it. Hadn’t she, Cole, and Alexie played down there sometimes? She could half-remember big cement pillars and gross couches and a PlayStation that Peter had let them hook up to. Peter and Aiden had played along with them, crashing racing cars into the sides of racetracks and howling with laughter. Another time.

Mallory tip-toed down the hallway, her breath held tight.We should have asked when Peter planned to come home.

Most of the rooms on the ground floor were themed. There was the nautical-themed room, the jazz piano room, the French-inspired room, and the casino room, to name just a few. None of them seemed to have any doorways that led to a basement setting. All of them seemed like ridiculous wastes of money, the sort that enforced your wealth to yourself and no one else.

“I hope Mallory is all right?” Agnes’s sharp tone followed Mallory down the hallway.

“She’s fine.” Elsa’s voice was high-pitched and shivery. “Why don’t you tell me more about the reconstruction you’ve had to your house?”

“Oh, yes. But can you believe it? The carpenter we’d hired for the redesign took off in the middle of construction! It was all for our second kitchen— what we call our ‘show’ kitchen, plus the dining room that we use with guests.”

Mallory’s stomach twisted.Bertrand Thomkins, where are you? Why did you run away? Did you know something?

Suddenly, a dark shadow crossed her face. Mallory nearly leaped from her skin as she turned to catch the reason for the shadow. There, incredibly, stood a six-foot-tall statue of a gorilla, something carved to perfection and hulking next to a closed door.

“Uber-rich people do the most insane things,” she whispered as she walked toward the doorway, pressing it open to find a long staircase that led to the basement below. “Bingo.”

With each step that Mallory took into the depths of the basement, her heart seized with alarm. After all, if Agnes caught her down there in an empty basement, she would struggle to explain what had gotten into her.I just wanted to see what kind of theme you came up with for the basement. You and Peter are just so clever with your interior design.

Mallory knew enough about the world to always compliment the people you wanted to trick.

Downstairs, Mallory swatted around for a light switch, standing in the heavy darkness. After a long time, she found it, illuminating the same sad couches from her memory, which had no relation to the rest of the decor of the house. She wouldn’t have been surprised if the couches came straight from Peter’s college partying days.

But nothing in this part of the basement suggested that Peter had been involved in the robbery of the Remington House.

Groaning, Mallory shifted her gaze back up the staircase. A crack rang out from the first floor, followed by the creak of footsteps. Agnes? Probably just Agnes and Elsa, looking at the new construction in the dining room.

The basement wasn’t just one room. Mallory had flashing images of herself and Cole, scrambling from one end of a basement hallway to the next, hollering over the sound of the PlayStation’s beeps and boops. She flung herself through the main room and ducked into a hallway, searching again for a light switch. With this hallway illuminated, a wooden doorway at the far end came into view. It was shorter and wider, meant for storage. Mallory’s heart thudded with fear as she approached it. A lock hung open, as though someone had just hurriedly gotten in and gotten out again.

Slowly, she undid the lock and pushed the door open wide to reveal a twenty-foot by twenty-foot underground bunker, filled wall-to-wall with thick furnishings. Their ornate detail sprung to life as the soft light from the basement hallway filtered through. Mallory grabbed her phone to send her flashlight into the deeper corners, where piles of what looked like china plates and silverware sat, lying in wait.

Are these really my family’s heirlooms?

They looked so different without the context of the rest of the Remington House, like a puzzle that had been ripped apart, the pieces shoved back in a box. Mallory took a delicate step through the door and bent to inspect one of the bedside tables, upon which four eagles had been carved with a precise hand in each of the corners.

As her finger curved over the beak of the first eagle, there came the sound of a man’s voice, hollering from upstairs.

“Agnes?”

Mallory’s jaw dropped with surprise. Peter was home.

“Agnes, where are you?”

Mallory leaped back from the storage room, leaving the door partly ajar to avoid making any abrupt noises. She cursed herself for having left the lights on. Her adrenaline spiked. Peter would come to the basement first, just to check on what he’d stolen. He has to protect his crimes.

“Agnes?” Peter called again.

Mallory scanned the walls of the basement, hunting for an emergency exit. Each wall cut into the ceiling without a single window. There in the center of the basement room, she heard her mother’s voice, greeting Peter with the fear of a child.

“Peter! Hi! You’re home early, aren’t you.”

Mallory’s hands formed fists.

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