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“Let’s go.”
They found a stairwell that smelled like garbage and walked up the steps. There was a half-eaten hamburger in the breezeway, and ants worked on devouring it.
“We don’t have a key,” he reminded Kira. “What’s the plan when we get to the—”
The door hung open, falling off the hinges, the Do Not Disturb sign clinging for dear life to the handle.
“That answers my question. It looks like the place has been ransacked. We’ll clear the room in case the burglars are still here.”
Kira nodded and pulled out her weapon. He stood on the other side of the door and did the same. They entered, and he turned on an additional light, trying not to gag at the smell. It didn’t take long to clear the room and bathroom. To-go containers with rotting leftovers sat in a trash bin. “So, not great at housekeeping, was he?”
Kira lowered her weapon. “Something isn’t right. Why was he here? He’s from this area and we have an address for his house. Why would he stay in such a shady place? Let alone own it?”
“Maybe he needed to get off the grid. Find a place where the Russians couldn’t track him. I’m assuming this made a great place to hide. It took Everly a while to find this place, and she’s good at what she does.”
Kira holstered her weapon and slid her hands into a pair of gloves. Bryce did the same. “I’ve got the bathroom,” he said.
“You can have it. I’ve got under the beds and the drawers.”
Bryce breathed through his mouth. The bathroom was nasty, and the last thing he needed to do was touch anything, even with gloves on. They had probable cause to enter, but once they called it in, it wouldn’t be long before the police and FBI swarmed the place.
He stared at his reflection in the mirror. Was the gray around his temples more pronounced or did the dim bulb cast shadows? No doubt this case had aged him.
Nothing in the bathroom seemed out of place. Just decades’ worth of dust on the floorboards, peeling paint, and a whole lot of grossness. But . . . a new full-length mirror covered the space between the sink and the toilet.
“Kira.”
She poked her head in the cramped space. “I’m not coming in there. No thank you. What is that smell?”
“The whole place stinks, but why is there a brand-new mirror in an ancient motel room? See?” He pointed to the silver scroll on the sides. “It’s fancy and ecompletely out of place.”
She squinted her eyes and surveyed the area. “Some drunk guy probably smashed it in a fit of rage and they had to replace it?”
“Sure, but they’d buy something cheap, wouldn’t they? This looks like a fairly expensive mirror. And why put a full-length here? It should be a smaller mirror over the sink. I think Theo did this.”
He felt around the sides and then popped it off the wall. Only it didn’t come off the wall. It swung open.
“A secret door?” Kira’s eyes widened and excitement flickered. “It’s worth risking disease to check that out.”
Bryce stepped over the ledge of the thin rectangular opening and shone his phone light around until he spotted a string dangling from the ceiling. He pulled. The single bulb illuminated a space that was roughly seven by seven.
Kira followed. “Whoa.”
A marker board took up one full wall, loaded with pictures, notes, and maps. On one side of the board, Theo had a timeline, and on the other, it looked like a genealogy. Of the Young family.
“Yeah. Whoa is right.” He snapped pictures of the board. Then moved to the other wall and got the Post-it notes and more photos, connected by yarn.
“Theo—aka Henry—has been at this awhile. He must have become convinced that the treasure was real and made himself a lair while he searched the area for clues.” Bryce stopped short at the papers tacked to one wall. He pointed and Kira moved closer. “That’s my grandfather’s handwriting. Well, now we know Theo was the one to take the journals. And he made copies before selling them.”
Kira took out her phone and snapped close-ups of the journal. “The pages have hand-drawn maps, with X’s and dates. Your grandfather was definitely looking for something. But did he find it?”
Bryce’s mind spun. The whole time, his own grandfather had been so close to uncovering a treasure, and the man hadn’t even known the extent of his find. “Let’s take as many pictures as we can and get out of here. I’ll call this in and have the scene processed.”
Bryce stepped into the main room to contact the Pittsburgh Field Office, which oversaw most of West Virginia. They could assign some agents from the resident agencies in the state to open an investigation. He returned to the secret space and continued documenting as much as he could alongside Kira. They took pictures and videos of Theo’s hidden chamber.
When they exited, Bryce moved the mirror back in place. They headed outside to the breezeway, where Kira called her SSA to report their findings. The FBI would arrive soon to secure the place before anyone else arrived and figured out that Theo had been hiding a secret room. The man had constructed a puzzle and was only missing a few pieces. Maybe Bryce and Kira could figure out the location of the Young family’s hidden bunker.
About twenty minutes later, a car arrived with two agents who would secure the crime scene. “Let’s go to that diner we passed right off the highway,” Bryce said to Kira after filling in the agents on what they’d found. “It was open twenty-four hours and we can look at the photos and regroup before heading back.”
