“Gonna have to go big to break them,” the voice said in French. “They’ve got to be serious professionals. They’ve been trained hard in interrogation. We’ve worked non-stop for almost three hours now, and neither one is showing signs of weakness. I think we’ve got some undercover government agents here.”
“Not our government,” a second man laughed. “They’re our pals, aren’t they?”
The first joined his laughter. “Man, they love us. We’re keeping them fat and happy. No—these guys must be foreign. We’ll figure it out.”
They walked through the foyer and left out the front door. I didn’t see or hear them lock the door. They must use cameras and a central security team somewhere in the building. If I were to make it to the spot I’d seen those men, I’d need to take the cameras out, but I had no backup. I needed a distraction or another way down.
I searched the upstairs and while I found no cameras in the living quarters, I did find my way into the ducting through a bathroom vent. It was already a snug fit, and I wondered if the old ductwork would support my downward travels. Keeping track of my go bag presented its own difficulties, too. I snagged a couple of towels and tied them around my knees and elbows to help with the noise. I moved quickly while horizontal, then slowed considerably as I hit a spot where I’d be totally vertical. I pushed my hands and feet hard into the metal hole as I lowered myself. I had counted one hundred steps on that staircase with my quick glimpse earlier, and I estimated my progress by them. Each time I readjusted my position, I figured I’d gone down one step, so I counted down from one hundred.
By the time I hit fifty, sweat dripped profusely into my eyes, and I had to keep telling myself that I was in the Swiss Alps, enjoying the crisp air that beat against me. I decided to move a bit faster because the ache in my arms was starting to bother me. I hoped this run didn’t continue to the basement without having any arms leading out from it. I wasn’t sure I’d have the stamina to make it otherwise.
My leg slid the requisite step, and the wall seemed to disappear. I let my other leg slip down and found the run had split two ways. I had to push both forearms into the metal to ease down. I slipped, but since I had my feet angled out they landed in the side runs. A gong sounded around me, and I pushed again on the sides trying to absorb the sound some. I hoped the noise had gone unnoticed or that it would be blamed on old-house sounds. I crouched and then sighed as I lay in the horizontal ducting, rubbing my upper arms and legs to relax them. I only allowed myself ten seconds of rubbing before I searched for a vent opening. I found one, but it had long since been closed off with a board over it. I used some pliers from my go bag to yank the board off. I could see out, but apparently I was still too high up to see what was in the room.
I placed a magnet on the vent and then set to removing one screw. Instead of falling to the ground when it came free, it clung to the vent because of the magnet. Whew! I repeated the process with all four screws. Before I took out the last screw, I bent a twist tie through a metal slat in the vent to prevent it from falling to the ground. Once it was totally free from restraints, I pushed it out, holding onto the long twist tie and lowering it slightly before grabbing the vent and pulling it inside the ducting. I could hear the intermittent clinking of chains.
I then used a mirror to look down. A completely empty cement room lay below me with no soft items anywhere. No rugs, no curtains, no furniture that wasn’t metal. A true dungeon. That’s when I saw them, my coworkers, my friends.
Chapter 17
Jeremy and Ace were chained to the wall right beneath me. Where was Halluis? And how did Ace get here. I thought he was on assignment for Siron. I scanned the room for him, but I couldn’t see him. I also looked for cameras and found none. Did the bad guys really only have cameras around the front door, but nowhere else? I chirped like a bird, and Jeremy tilted his head to the side and looked up. Terror crossed his face, and he shook his head almost imperceptibly before circling his head around as if he’d just been stretching.
Both my team members stood with their arms chained above them. They wouldn’t be able to free themselves with paperclips or any of the supplies I had in my bag. I scanned the room again. There had to be a camera somewhere or he wouldn’t have risked warning me. No cameras were visible to the naked eye. Silently, I took out my binoculars and searched the three walls I could see, one by one. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I leaned just out of the vent and, still using the binoculars, I found the embedded cameras. They were hard to spot, but a glint from a light on one of the cameras put me onto them.
Jeremy was right. This was not the right move. First, I had to find out where the guards were located in the house. Then, I’d need to come up with some distraction to get them out of their hidey-hole and in position to take advantage of that distraction to escape.
