Smoke

“She used a fake address for her driver’s license?” said Lydia.

They walked up the narrow flight of stairs, Jeffrey leading the way and testing his weight carefully on each step as they wound into the darkness of the upper level. At the top they entered an almost identical room to the one downstairs. It was empty as well, clean and Spartan. From the window, he could see the Range Rover on the street where Dax was sitting, waiting for them and keeping watch on the entrance. He’d looked dejected when they’d left him behind in the car, like the last kid to get picked for the stickball game. But they all knew he wasn’t in any condition to come along.

Jeffrey could feel Lydia’s disappointment as she swung the beam of the flashlight around the barren room. They both smelled a dead end.

“Is this all there is to this place?” she said. He didn’t really think she was expecting an answer so he didn’t give one. Her voice echoed against the stone, sounding hollow and sad.

The phone in his pocket vibrated. He withdrew it and answered.

“Someone’s coming. He parked down the street and came up on foot; I didn’t see him at first,” said Dax. “Shit. He’s in the gate. Scary-looking dude.”

Jeff hung up and killed the flashlight. A second later, they heard footsteps downstairs. Firm and purposeful, they crossed the span of the downstairs room. Male, medium build, Jeffrey surmised. Expecting to hear someone climb the stairs, he drew the Glock he carried at his waist. He and Lydia retreated quickly and quietly to the separate far dark corners of the space, and waited. He felt the adrenaline start to pump.

But instead of feet on the stairs they heard a door open and then close hard. Then there was silence. They waited a second, two, then met in the middle of the room.

“I didn’t see a door downstairs,” whispered Lydia.

“Neither did I,” he said, moving close to her.

At the bottom of the stairwell, they crouched in the cover of the pitch darkness, waiting. They didn’t see the door that had slammed. There was no back exit, no closet, no other rooms.

“Maybe-” Lydia started to say in the darkness. But then a panel in the floor lifted and a rectangle of light slid across the wood surface. A large man in jeans and a long leather coat emerged from the floor. Before he closed the trapdoor behind him, Jeffrey saw his face in stark impressions. A hard, white face with a granite ridge for a brow, heavy dark eyebrows, a wide, stern mouth. His head was shaved, scalp shining in the yellow light from below.

He let the door drop loudly and he started toward the exit and then stopped, seemed to lift his nose to the air. He turned toward them. They were not ten feet from him, but in the pitch-black corner where they crouched, Jeffrey was relatively sure they could not be seen. Jeffrey heard rather than saw him take a step in their direction and he felt Lydia’s body tense behind him. She was wearing perfume, a light floral scent. He could smell it and he wondered if the man in leather could smell it, too. They both stopped breathing and the air felt electric with bad possibilities.

But the man turned suddenly, as if he’d heard something, and moved quickly toward the front door. They caught sight of him once more in the relative light of the outside and then he was gone, shoes knocking loudly on the stone stairs outside. Jeff took the phone from his pocket and dialed Dax.

“He’s coming back out. Follow him,” he said and hung up without waiting for a response. Lydia was already on her way to the trapdoor they’d seen. She dropped to a crouch and felt the floor with her hands, searching for a seam in the wood. It took them a few seconds to find the latch, sunken into the wood. Lydia tugged at it, but it proved too heavy.

“I can’t get it,” she said, breathless. She moved to the side and he took her place. It took all of Jeffrey’s strength to heave the door open, heavy as it was on stiff hinges, though the other man had seemed to manage it with little effort. When it was open, they peered over the edge. A bare bulb on the wall cast light on a narrow stone passageway surrounding a wooden staircase. They exchanged a look, both remembering what had happened the last time they dipped below the surface into tunnels beneath. Then they headed down anyway.

Lydia felt the adrenaline of discovery flooding her system, as well as the exuberance of hope. Perhaps finding Lily would be as easy as opening this door. But a dark current of fear ran beneath her optimism. Perhaps finding Lily would be as easy as opening this door. Jeffrey worked the lock as she shone the flashlight beam, and after what seemed like an hour-but was really just a few minutes-they both heard a solid click and the door swung open.

Her heart sank with disappointment as they stepped through the door into an empty room containing a cot and what looked like hospital equipment-a heart monitor, a metal tray empty of instruments, and a ventilator. The room was windowless. Drywall had been erected to make the room seem more like a hospital room and there was an odor of antibacterial cleanser, but beneath it all Lydia could smell the decay and rot of old wood. The place made her nervous; nothing good could happen in a room like this. She was sure of that, if nothing else.

“What are we looking at here?” asked Jeffrey, walking around the room inspecting the machines, the space under the bed.

Lydia shook her head slowly. “I have no idea. But I don’t like it.”

“And what was he doing in here?” asked Jeff.

She took her cell phone out of her pocket and thought about taking a few pictures of the room, the hallway leading to the room. But then she realized that they were in the dark except for the beam of their flashlight and didn’t have a flash.

“Let’s get out of here,” said Jeffrey after a minute of looking around and seeing nothing further. “I wouldn’t want to be trapped in here if that guy comes back. And I’m feeling claustrophobic.”

Jeffrey was a tough guy, but in small spaces and airplanes he had to be medicated. Vodka usually did the trick. She stood and walked toward the door. She made a last sweep of the room with her flashlight. Something glinted beneath its beam.

“What was that?” she said, having just caught it out of the corner of her eye as she turned to leave the room.

“What?”

He took the light from her and walked over to the corner of the room. He shone the beam and saw only piles of dust and dirt that had been swept to the edge of the room with a broom and left there. He could see the tracks of the broom bristles, the straight edge to the dust piles. He reached down into the dirt and came back with something delicate and pink. A heart-shaped gem, small in his palm but big enough to be expensive as far as jewels went. He handed it to Lydia and shone the light on it; the gem glittered brilliantly in her hand.

“Wow,” said Lydia, her eyes widening.

“What?”

“It’s a pink diamond,” she said, turning the stone in her hand. “Do you know how much this is worth?”

“It could just be glass or crystal,” he said.

“Look at the brilliance, the fire inside of it. It’s a diamond, trust me,” she said. “This is one of the rarest stones in the world. Less than one tenth of one percent of diamonds can truly be classified as pink.”

He stared at her. “For someone who doesn’t like diamonds, you seem to know a lot about them.”

“Just because I didn’t want a big diamond, doesn’t mean I don’t like them,” she said. She turned those gray eyes on him. “Do you know how many people die in those mines every year? Whole cultures are oppressed and enslaved by the diamond mining industry.”

“I know, I know,” he said, trying not to roll his eyes. “You mentioned it.”

He’d been disappointed when she said she didn’t want a diamond for their engagement last year. She’d lost so much, been ravaged by so much pain and loss; he’d just wanted to give her something that promised a brighter future for them both, something glittering and precious, something only he could give to her.

But it was hard to give Lydia anything; she was intensely independent, had her own money and managed most of his money besides. What she needed or wanted, she generally got for herself. Though she loved beautiful things, he knew they didn’t mean anything to her. They were just objects.

“You’ve been manipulated by the media to think that all women need a diamond as proof of their husband’s love and devotion,” she’d told him. “All I need is to look into your face and I know. Besides, the fact that you put up with all my crap is proof enough.”

So they’d settled on matching wedding bands, sapphires in hers being the only flourish she wanted. He’d