Page 60 of Grave Kisses
“What?” I squeak out. He turns my face and points under the bed.
“Trapdoor,” he repeats.
I gasp, and he chuckles and leans up, letting me jump to my feet and shove the bed out of the way. It’s a simple metal frame, so it slides with little effort. I then drop down to my knees and pull the door open, revealing a cardboard box.
“Decan!” I call out as I get my phone from my pocket. When I pull the lid off, there is just a black leather notebook inside.
“Hey,” Bellamy answers. I place the call on speakerphone and open the notebook. On the first page, there it is.
“I have it. You ready?” I ask.
“Oh God. Yeah. Uhhhh… Okay. Yeah. Go ahead.”
“Kilo Lima dash Alpha Bravo nine xylophone two dash eight four frank Quebec zero one dash alpha seven,” I say, but repeat it back one more time to him.
“KL-AB9X2-84FQ01-A7,” Bellamy parrots.
“You got it. Who is there?”
“Everyone,” he says. “Searching.”
After a minute, he still hasn’t spoken. “Hello?” I say.
“Uhm… Chrissy… It says it’s at the same location as you,” Bellamy says, sounding utterly defeated.
“Ah, shit. Okay. It’s pretty accurate. What part of the house is it in?” I ask, standing up.
“The… kitchen area. So the south side of the house,” he says. I have never heard my brother sound so fucking broken before.
“Hey. You stop it,” I say. “Let's find the tracker and go from there. Okay? I’m going to hang up and search. I will call you back as soon as we find it.”
“Okay,” he says, sniffing back tears.
I end the call and swipe away my tears before I openly cry. We go to the kitchen and start tearing everything apart to look for the necklace. Eventually, we give up and go to both the dining room and the guest bathroom, since they are all on this side of the house. When that proves to be unsuccessful, we go back upstairs to check the rooms up there again.
I am teary-eyed as I search, but eventually my eyes are blurry and I can’t see. Decan pulls me to his chest, and I fall apart. “Shhh. This doesn’t mean she’s gone, baby. You know that,” Decan reminds me, holding my face between his hands while I snivel and hiccup. “Now, it’s here, but where?”
“I don’t know,” I sniff. “I saw the blueprints, and we’ve gone into every room. We could check the attic, but…”
“There’s not a basement on the blueprints?” Andre asks.
“No,” I tell him.
“Come here,” he says, grabbing my hand and pulling me out of the room and downstairs. He doesn’t stop until we are out of the house and on the north end of the property. This side faces a wooded area, so I am confused why we are over here. It’s dark as hell, and I can hardly see anything.
“What are we doing out here?” I ask. He pulls a flashlight out and shines it on the side of the house, and I sigh. “Can I get a hint?”
“The window, Chris,” he says. “I walked around the property when we first got here… If there isn’t a basement, why is there a window level with the ground?”
“Well, how the fuck do we get in there?” I ask. I go to move toward the window, but he stops me.
“You have no idea what is down there. Don’t go sticking your face down there and making it a target,” Andre says. “Hidden doors like this, I’d imagine they would be tucked away in a closet. Let’s go back through the house and check the floors and wall panels.”
“Okay,” I say with a sigh.
Chapter Twenty Three
Kendra
