AFTER CHECKINGout the backyard in detail and finding nothing other than a scrape on the back gate latch, Atlas returned to where Bazel sat in one of the kitchen chairs with Evie’s head in his lap. The sun was setting, and Atlas was pretty sure that whoever had shown up was definitely bold as brass. After all, he had broken into a police officer’s property. That took balls of steel.
“It’s okay,” Atlas told Bazel. “You did the right thing.” He pulled out his phone to check the backyard camera. He saw a man enter through the gate, keeping his head down. He was exactly as Bazel described, his arm and the back of his hand elaborately tattooed, but the face was obscured by a hat. Atlas silently cursed to himself. He had fallen into the usual trap with things like this. Cameras were focused up in order to try to prevent tampering, but someone keeping their head low and partially covered could obscure the face.
“But what if he come in?” Bazel asked, pulling Atlas out of his thoughts.
“Come with me,” Atlas told him, leading Bazel down into the basement. “If I’m not here, you bring Evie if she’s with you and take her down to the basement. You see that room back there…?” He pointed and then led the way over to open the door. “You come in here and then bring Evie through here….” He pulled at the hidden door in the back corner, the wall swinging open. “Once the door is closed, it can’t be seen. Bring Evie, and youcome in here and close the door. Sit down, push that bar right there upward, and just wait. Upstairs that activates an indicator in the floor under the sideboard in the dining room. No one will ever see it, but I know it’s there. So when I come back, I’ll know where you are.”
“Why you have this?” Bazel slowly sat in the chair, looking around the less than three-by-four-foot area. There was a case of water that Atlas knew was relatively fresh and a box of power bars on the small table. It wasn’t meant to stay in for a long time, but hopefully it would be enough.
“It was built as a fallout shelter many years ago. I adapted it as a safe room. I’ve never needed to use it, but I want you to feel safe if you need it.” He stepped out and closed the door. “Don’t turn on any of the lights down here when you come down. Just make for this room. Okay? I will find you. I promise.”
Bazel nodded. “Why you show me?” he asked, looking kind of surprised.
“You need to be safe.” He would figure out what was going on and why a man had been prowling through his yard. “And you need to keep Evie safe.” He had never shown anyone this little room before. It had been his secret. Not even the real estate agent had known about it. The only reason he’d found it was because he had noticed the missing space in the basement, and that had been after he had lived here for six months. Atlas doubted the previous owners of the house had known it was there. “Now, come on. We’ll go back upstairs and have dinner. It’s my turn to cook.” He waited until Bazel left before closing the secret door. “Just make sure that if you do need to use it, you don’t leave any sort of trail.”
“Okay. I be sneaky.” Atlas loved the way Bazel said that, like he was being naughty.
“I hope you don’t need to use it.” Atlas was aware that Bazel was going to be spending time alone at his house. There waslittle he could do about it, especially when he was at work, and if someone was willing to come onto his property once, then they would probably do it again. This time he had been lucky and Atlas had come home in time. Atlas went out to the backyard and checked each of the cameras. He had placed one focusing on the gate, but there was a second one that also covered that view. After taking down the camera, he placed it at the corner of the house behind one of the downspouts just above the ground, angled upward. He stepped back, but the camera was white and visible against the dark house. Thankfully he still had some of the paint he’d used a year ago, and he got it, then colored the camera so that it blended right in. Now if someone wanted to hide their face, it was going to be a lot more difficult.
Bazel sat in the living room when he returned. Evie padded over, and Atlas fed her some dinner before heating up some beef taquitos in the air fryer. It wasn’t haute cuisine, but it would be something to eat, and Atlas was tired.
Chris called just as he was finishing up, and he let her speak with Bazel, who talked for a few minutes and handed him the phone, smiling. “They like food.”
“That’s really good.”
“They ask to see me. Can we go visit them?”
Atlas shook his head. “No, we can’t. It’s a shelter for women, and men aren’t allowed. Also, I don’t know where it is. The location is secret. What did Chris say?”
“That you make arrangements?” he asked. “I no understand.”
Atlas nodded. “I will call her, and we will make plans to meet somewhere. Then you will be able to see and talk to them.” He could only imagine how lost the women felt. Heck, Bazelcouldspeak English and Atlas was fairly sure that he was lost to a large degree. The culture was different and so was the food,and Atlas wondered just how much Bazel understood of what was being said.
“Okay.” He handed Atlas back his phone. “You make call.”
“I will tomorrow. She is going to need to find out when it’s convenient for her to get the women. Then we can arrange a time for you to see them. Did you know any of them before you were put in the truck together?”
“No. They are from different towns, but as a true man, it was my job to try to protect them, and I did my best. None of them speak English, and I not let on to the man who put us in truck that I understand him. Maybe I hear something, but no.” He seemed disappointed.
“Did anyone hurt any of you or threaten you?” Atlas asked.
Bazel shook his head. “They yelled sometimes, but then we got in the truck and they put the stuff in front of us and closed it up. After that there was no place for us to go.”
“Where did they do that?” Atlas asked.
“After we got off the boat, at night. They put us in a room a little way from the ship and then into the truck. They did all that before it got light. Then we started moving.”
Atlas’s mouth hung open. “So you’ve been here for what? Less than a week?” Jesus, that had to be one frightening time. And so much change with none of it in their control.
“Do you know the name of the ship you were on? They all have names,” Atlas said.
“I know that. It was theAzerbaijani Star.” He seemed pleased with himself.
“Good. That might help us a lot.” He wrote it down as well as made notes on everything else Bazel told him. “How did you ride on the ship? Did you have a cabin?”
Bazel tilted his head slightly as though Atlas were stupid. “We were in a big box. There were twelve of us. We were all in the box together, and it was hot and it stink. Someone on theship came at night. He brought food and water for us and took the pot away. It was dark, and there was no light except when he open door.” Jesus, to say that Bazel had gone through hell to get here was an understatement. This man had literally been through hell on roads and the high seas. God knows what had happened to him before he left his country to have gone through all that and be happy to have gotten here.
Atlas swallowed hard and wasn’t sure what to say. He made his notes and knew he needed to call Wyatt in the morning to give him this information. And as much as it twisted his gut, he was also aware that he needed to call the damned FBI agent with what he’d found, though he hated that closed-minded jackass getting credit for anything. It was the right thing to do, and if theAzerbaijani Starwas being used to smuggle people, then it was something they had likely done more than once.
