At 5:30 a.m., Quaddra’s alarm went off, half an hour before his regular time, but that was because he needed to be on the tarmac at San Francisco International early. When he rolled over to kiss Mary, she pretended to be asleep.
‘Stay in bed, baby,’ he whispered into her ear. ‘It’s too early. I’m going to shower and shave and get ready. I have to be in Seattle by ten.’
Mary moaned a reply and turned to face the other way.
Quaddra got out of bed, entered the bathroom and closed the door behind him.
Mary opened her eyes and turned to look at Quaddra’s side of the bed.
‘What the fuck do I do?’ she whispered the question to herself. She knew that this would probably be the only chance that she would get. She also knew that she didn’t need long. All Mary wanted to do was to have a look behind that filing cabinet to know what it hid. For that she only needed a few seconds.
From the bathroom, she heard the shower being turned on.
Quaddra liked to shave in the shower, and his showers always took around ten minutes… never less.
Mary only really needed one.
If you’re going to go, you’ve got to go now,the voice inside her head told her.
Mary quickly swung her legs from under the covers and off the bed. She was still naked, wearing just her new diamond necklace. She took a tentative step towards the bedroom door… then a second one before she paused.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ she asked herself. ‘If you want to go, then you better go quick. Stop wasting time by tiptoeing.’
Antonia and Gabriela, the two housemaids, would arrive at 6:00 a.m., so for now, there was only Mary and Quaddra in the house.
Without wasting another second, Mary rushed downstairs to Quaddra’s office. She’d been right – he’d never locked it once they came home from the restaurant. The door was still ajar.
She stole a peak at the stairwell behind her to make sure that it was clear before stepping into the office and quickly reaching for the handle on the drawer at the bottom right of the Victorian chest.
Mary grabbed the handle as firmly as she could and twisted it clockwise.
Click. The sound came from her right, disengaging the filing cabinet from the wall. Mary moved to it in a hurry.
‘Please be a vault,’ she whispered, with her eyes closed, practically making a wish. ‘Please be a vault full of gold bars or something.’
She took hold of the cabinet with both hands and pulled it open, this time, all the way. The movement triggered a row of ceiling lights to come on inside the concealed room. The only problem was – it wasn’t a door… it was a stairwell – and this wasn’t a hidden room… it was a hidden basement.
‘What the fuck?’ Mary gasped, feeling her heart playing catch up with her rapid breathing.
‘Maybe the vault is downstairs,’ she told herself, trying to stay positive.
From the gap behind the cabinet, the stairs, which were solid concrete, moved down about five steps before snaking around and back on itself, which meant that the basement would be directly under Quaddra’s office.
Pure instinct made Mary turn around and look behind her.
Nothing. She was still alone, as she knew she would be. It hadn’t even been a minute since Quaddra had gone into the shower.
Mary drew in a deep breath and took the steps going down into hell knows what. As the stairwell snaked back on itself, she had to go down another twelve steps before reaching the basement at the bottom, and as she did, her body went rigid.
This definitely wasn’t a hidden vault.
It wasn’t an armory or a drugs room either.
This was something much, much worse.
Eighty-Five
The room that Mary was looking at was larger than Quaddra’s office – about one and a half times larger. Two rows of fluorescent ceiling lights bathed the entire space in a glow that was more comforting than bright. At the center of the room, there was a rectangular workstation that was almost the same size as their eight-seater dining table upstairs. There was a computer at the center of the workstation and not much else, but Mary’s attention was solely on the wall directly in front of her… on the other side of the workstation.
