I nudge again, when something clicks.
A short, mechanical sound, followed by a faint hiss escaping from the wall beside the frame, and I freeze.
A hairline seam I hadn’t noticed in the wall gets slightly deeper. A shadow, and the wall is opening just enough to show me that it’s going to, if I push.
I stand there in the hallway with my hand still raised to the frame and my heart racing in my chest. “Get the fuck out of here,” I whisper to the empty house. I know I shouldn’t open it, but they have a door in the wall?
The door swings inward at my push with a quiet pneumatic release, revealing a set of wooden stairs going down into soft recessed lighting.
I stand at the top and stare. They have a secret basement.
They have asecret basement, and at no point during my stay has anyone mentioned this. I have been sleeping in this house for days, thinking I knew the layout, and there is, it turns out, an entire hidden level I didn’t know existed.
I’m already heading downstairs. The lights at the bottom automatically switch on, and I gasp. A sectional couch facing a wall-mounted television that rivals the one upstairs. There’s a proper bar along one wall, glass shelves backlit with warm amber light, bottles in neat rows. And a pool table. Leather armchairs. It is, unambiguously, a very well-appointed man cave.
“We’ve been sitting in that basic living room watching movies on that basic TV, and thisentire thinghas been here. Who are you?”
I walk farther in, and that’s when I notice the monitors. They’re mounted in a row on the far wall, six of them arranged in a grid, each one showing a different outdoor feed in black and white. I cross to them.
The feeds cycle through the property in quick, clean sweeps from the front gate and driveway, the beach side of the house,the shack and the path leading to it, the road-facing fence line, the back patio, and the stretch back toward the house, every angle covered in the kind of quiet, thorough way that makes it very clear nothing gets near this place without being seen.
I watch the Colonel attack the leaf for approximately eight seconds. He wins.
Okay, I knew they had cameras. They’re careful people with sketchy pasts, so they’re paranoid?
I know this, so I turn on the spot, taking it all in, when I notice the cabinet. It’s on the far wall. I don’t know how I missed it coming in, except that the rest of the room is inviting and this cabinet is not. It’s metal in a matte black finish that absorbs the light rather than reflecting it, with a simple flush handle.
My stomach does the specific thing it does when a room is about to tell you something.
I walk across and tell myself I’ll just look, so I pull the handle and it opens.
I stop breathing for a second.
The cabinet is deep, the inside lit by a soft, cool strip of white light, and every inch of the space is filled with blades and weapons.
Daggers, long and short, in sheaths and without, their handles wrapped in leather and cord. Machetes. Knives of every imaginable size and style, mounted neatly on padded pegs, each one held in place by a small retaining strap.
On the higher shelves, the pieces are clearly more significant. Older. Ornate. The hilts carved, inlaid, one with what looks like abalone in the grip. Small wooden stands under each.
Ancient Hawaiian war clubs, if I’m remembering right. Shark-tooth edges. The kind of thing that should be in a museum with a small descriptive placard beside it.
I stare. They do the luaus—they dance with knives, so of course they collect these. They’re performers and probably trainwith them. Some people collect wine, and some people collect weapons. There are a lot of them.
I don’t touch anything. I keep my hands at my sides. At the bottom of the cabinet, tucked against the back, there’s a flat black case. Rectangular. I lean in and flip the latches on the box, because at this point, what does it matter? The lid lifts with a small hiss of its own. I stare inside to find black masks.
Three of them nested together. Close-fitting—not the kind of mask you wear for Halloween but the kind that contours to a face. When the light from the cabinet hits them at the angle I’m looking from, the material throws off a faint greenish sheen, like the back of a dragonfly’s wing, and for half a second, my brain insists they’re made of reptile skin.
I reach out before I can stop myself and touch one with a single fingertip.
Not reptile, just a finish. Some kind of textured fabric, stretched tight over a rigid base.
The face shape is clear. Two small eyeholes. Two pinpricks at the nostrils. A thin slit for the mouth. Nothing more than that. Cold runs up my spine, because these are the kind you might wear if you don’t want to be identified.
I close the case and the cabinet, my hands trembling.
“Okay,” I whisper. “Okay.”
I hurry back to the stairs, and the door shuts behind me. The picture on the wall is a fraction off again, and I nudge it a smidgen with my knuckle until it matches the other frames on the wall exactly. Next thing, I rush into the living room and look outside, my heart hammering. The three of them are still in the water.
