And that's when I realized something was very wrong. Kelly thought it at the same time and caught my gaze.
"The girls…" she gasped.
"…are way too quiet!" I finished.
"That's not good!" we said simultaneously. I felt a little proud. It was almost like those telepathic conferences the girls had.
We began to run…
CHAPTER EIGHT
"Girls!" I shouted. "Girls!"
Kelly ran off as I tried calling Lauren (the one I thought the most likely to answer) on my cell.
Kelly returned, panting in the doorway. "They're not on this level, and I don't hear any footsteps!"
I was already in the hall, taking the stairs two at a time. There wasn't any time to waste as we gave little more than a cursory glance into each room we ran by. The second floor seemed to be all bedrooms. That meant that the dangerous collection might be on the third.
Kelly was ahead of me this time. From behind, I noticed that she had 9-1- on her screen, ready to push the last one if needed. I didn't even know if this town had a cop. Most likely a sheriff was the only local law enforcement. Still, it was a good idea to be ready for anything.
The third floor wasn't so much a floor as a creepy showroom that wound around the staircase.
"Found the deadly things," Kelly said as I came to a stop next to her. Her voice seemed hopeful. "No girls?"
"Nope." My eyes were on the bizarre zoo in front of us.
Aunt June had gone to great zoo-like lengths to set up habitats for each animal. It was pretty amazing. And we didn't have time for it right now.
I looked at Kelly. "The attic?"
Kelly yanked on the rope suspended from the ceiling, and I handed her my cell with the flashlight enabled. She scrambled up the staircase, stopping when she could see inside, and scanned the place.
"Not here." She started to climb down.
"What's next?" I asked. "The basement? The backyard?"
"I've got the backyard." Kelly pushed past me. "You take the basement."
She handed me my cell, and we ran back down to the first floor. Parting ways, Kelly headed to the kitchen door that led to the yard, and me, down the creepy staircase under the main stairs. I wasn't too fond of unknown basements with dubious entrances. But there wasn't any time to think about that. I paused at the bottom of the stairs.
Empty. There wasn't so much as a stick of furniture and nothing in storage. I heard giggling and ran back upstairs. My heart was pounding.
"Girls? Kelly?" I cried out at the top of the stairs.
Kelly appeared. "They're not outside, unless they all jumped into the river and drowned."
I thought of the Cub Scouts. "Is that a possibility?"
"I don't think so. I could see Betty doing it, but someone would've run inside to get help."
"Shhhhh…"
Someone was shushing someone else.
Had I imagined it? "Did you hear that?"
Kelly nodded, looking around. "You don't think this place is haunted too?"
"Ghosts I could handle," I said. "Aliens, however…"
"There are aliens here?" Ava's voice cried out.
"Shhh! They'll find us!" Betty admonished.
I still couldn't see them. But I had an idea of where they were.
"Out of the walls!" I shouted. "Now!"
Kelly and I heard the creak of a door in the study and ran in there. A bookshelf was swinging out from the wall.
"A secret room?" I asked as the girls ran out.
"Yes!" Kaitlyn said brightly.
I doubled over from the exertion. I really needed to get in shape. "Okay, I get that that was fun. But you guys can't do that to us. I almost had a heart attack!"
Ava shook her head. "That's not from the shock. That's from the Pop-Tarts. Betty—"
"Enough!" Betty shouted. "You guys should see this room."
After making a mental note to grill the child about the ingredients of this morning's breakfast, I stepped behind the bookcase and walked into a small room. It looked like a bedroom with a twin bed, dresser, desk, refrigerator and small pantry, and a sink and toilet.
"It's a panic room!" I gasped. "This place is sooooo cool!"
"A what?" Kelly appeared next to me. The girls filed in and pooled around us.
I walked around the room, sliding my hands over the walls. "A panic room. Paranoid people have them built as a place to hide if they ever need to."
Paranoid rich people or criminals, I should've said. Both the Yakuza boss I worked for in Japan and the drug lord in Colombia had had them. And they were elaborate. Midori's panic room had a koi fishpond and a stereo with every album Dean Martin had ever recorded, while Carlos the Armadillo had a hot tub, a slushie machine, and wood-fired pizza oven.
I walked over to where we had come in and closed the bookcase entryway. The door looked like one of the walls. There was no keypad or anything. And it was locked tight.
"This is how it works." Lauren went over to the twin bed and twisted the upper right bedpost.
The door opened.
"How did you figure that out?" I asked.
Tugging on bedposts wasn't something people normally did.
Lauren cocked her head to one side. "Isn't it obvious?"
"How did you find it in the first place?" Kelly asked.
"We pulled a book off the bookcase and it opened," Betty explained. "It was the only yellow book on the whole bookcase, so we figured there was something weird about it."
That made sense.
I searched through the dresser, fridge, and desk but didn't find anything out of the ordinary.
"Aunt June was paranoid," Kelly said, thinking out loud. "Was she nuts? Who would attack her in this town?"
"It could've been here before she bought it. Perhaps it was a stop on the Underground Railroad?" I wondered.
"Or," Betty suggested, "it was a hideout from river pirates. She probably had a getaway kayak."
I avoided her gaze. "Well, we wanted to
