“We should tell someone right away,” Poppy said.
Shelly leaned on her shovel. “Tell them what? That we found a World War II bunker with a squatter?”
The implications of their discovery dawned on Ivy. This might slow the development for the library. Or even halt it.
Ivy pulled out her phone but hesitated. If it was Vanz staying there, calling the police might not end well for him. They might never have a chance to help him. She put the phone back in her pocket.
But leaving an underground bunker with someone living in it unsupervised also seemed dangerous. The tunnel might be unstable. If it collapsed while he was inside, he might never be found.
Ivy shuddered at the thought. “We need to bring Bennett and Forrest in on this.”
Poppy nodded slowly. “The sleeping bag looked cheap, and the backpack was pretty banged up. Whoever is sleeping down there doesn’t have much.”
Shelly cast a look at her, and Ivy could tell what she was thinking.
They gathered their shovels and walked to the car.
Ivy glanced over her shoulder. The lot looked likevacant land waiting for construction, with no sign of the secret beneath.
Poppy opened the car’s rear door. “How will we figure out where the entrance to that tunnel is?”
Ivy considered that. “Maybe we’ll ask around to see if there are any old tunnels here.”
“Then people will wonder why we’re asking.” Shelly shook her head. “Operation treasure hunt just got a lot more complicated.”
“Operation rescue mission,” Poppy corrected. “That’s what this is now.”
As they drove away, Ivy couldn’t shake the image of that sleeping bag in the darkness. Someone was hiding in a bunker built to protect people from threats that might have ended decades ago, but not for them.
11
Ivy peered at the computer screen in the library at the inn, scrolling through historical sites about World War II bunkers in Southern California. Others, also hidden for years, had been discovered in nearby Solana Beach and Huntington Beach, the latter known as the Bolsa Chica bunkers. Most were built by the Army Corps of Engineers to scan the horizon for enemy ships, but civilians also built bunkers and shelters.
She suspected that’s what the Ericksons had done.
This discovery would be a historian’s delight, but there was more to it than that.
Ivy needed to decide today, if she could. Shelly hadn’t spoken to Mitch yet, but she’d promised she would.
Ivy remembered the photos she had on her phone. She pulled them up, but the lighting was poor, so she transferred them to her computer to view on a larger screen.
She scanned them, noticing details she hadn’t seen before. On the last one of the sleeping bag and backpack,she zoomed in, hoping to see a name tag or some other identifying mark. Instead, she noticed something else.
A paper bag. She zoomed in again to see the printing.
Java Beach.
Ivy passed her hands over her face, then picked up her phone to text Shelly, who was outside planting seasonal flowers in the garden.
Shelly, come inside. I saw something in one of the photos you need to see.
A few minutes later, Shelly appeared in the doorway.
“What’s up?”
Ivy motioned to the screen. “Look at that.”
Shelly sucked in a breath. “Do you think Mitch knows?”
