I stare at the stone wall beneath the stairs and answer my own question.
Because I assumed if this side of the stairs was walled up, everything under them was solid.
I order myself to let Sloane go, and I disobey my own order to stick my nose in her hair and breathe.
She smells like dusty cinnamon.
Like old, dusty cinnamon.
Living, breathing, heart-beating, coughing, old, dusty cinnamon.
“Are you fucking serious right now?” Chuck says from the top of the stairs.
This time when I order myself to let Sloane go, I also listen.
Chuck’s holding a water bottle.
I lift a hand, and he tosses it down.
I crack the lid and hand it to Sloane, who downs half of it without pausing.
When she’s done, she sighs in relief. “Thank you, Chuck. Much better.”
“Are you hurt?” he asks her.
“Nope. Just annoyed.”
“Good. This place is fucking creepy. I’m sending Rafael if you need a rope to get up. And telling Levi you need to hire your own damn security. I like working for him. You make his kids look like angels.”
He disappears, and I track his path back out of the house by the sound of the floor creaking above us.
Sloane’s already on the move, rising and pointing her phone’s flashlight at the stairs.
I grab my bigger flashlight and aim it at the broken stair too.
“Wouldn’t it be horribly anti-climactic if the treasure’s been buried under a stairwell this entire time?” she says.
No, it would be a goddamn fucking relief. “Sure.”
I step gingerly up about three steps, just enough that I can peer into the hole in the seventh step left by the split board. I grab one end of the broken stair and tug, and it practically disintegrates in my hand.
We shouldn’t be down here.
No,sheshouldn’t be down here.
I’ll be fine. But I don’t like putting her in dangerous situations.
Gonna need a rope to get back up.
Or a ladder.
Sloane stops on the step below me, leans over the hole too, and aims her phone’s flashlight in. “Uh-oh.”
That’s worth investigating.
I lean over and aim my flashlight into the gaping hole too.
Motherfucker.
