* * *
“Are you sure about this?” Manny whispered as he and the others peered around the corner of an old warehouse that was one block away from their target.
They had found their way into the area with no trouble. There were no fences, guards or even any signs warning trespassers to keep out. They had simply turned off the main road that ran in front of museum row and found themselves in a secluded little enclave of private streets. Avenue N was several blocks into this secluded area but even so they had no trouble driving through the intervening streets to reach it.
The paving on the streets was cracked and pothole-strewn and the buildings were all stark, cinder-block structures that looked like they had been built decades before. Whatever they had originally been used for, most of the buildings seemed to have been converted to commercial use. Signs above the entrances of many buildings told that they were now manufacturing sites or warehouse facilities for the most part.
Their objective was a nondescript beige building with a glass entrance door on the left and a roll-up truck door in the center. Over the glass door was a faded sign that read: Global Importers. Apart from that there were no other doors or windows on the front of the building.
As the group of friends peered at their objective, Danny checked the paper in his hand, comparing the hard copy of the map he had printed against the street signs around them.
“That’s definitely the place,” Danny said quietly. He folded the paper and put it away. “Now what?”
Everyone pulled back around the corner and looked at Tom expectantly.
Tom folded his arms and thought for a moment. “First, we need to check out the building from all sides. We need to know if there are any other ways in or out and what type of security they have.” He looked at Dimitri. “That’s your job, Tree, if you think you’re up to it.”
Dimitri had woken up shortly before they left the clubhouse. At first he was barely lucid and for a while didn’t seem to know where he was. The others had gone back and forth for quite some time about whether they should bring him or not, but in the end Shay had insisted that they could not leave him alone. They had already lost too many of their group. So they loaded him into the back of Reed’s car and started off for the address they had gotten from the computer. Over the course of their ride Dimitri had slowly become more and more coherent. When they arrived his first steps out of the car had been a bit unsteady, but as the minutes passed he quickly recovered from his drugged state.
Dimitri nodded to Tom. “I’m fine.”
As he turned to go, Shay grabbed his forearm. “Don’t get too close,” she warned. “Come right back at the first sign of trouble. And make sure no one sees you.”
Dimitri smiled and covered her hand with his. “I’ll be right back,” he reassured her. He felt a surge of energy tingling through him knowing that she was concerned for him. After a moment he turned away, leaned around the corner, and vanished.
Although they peered around the corner and looked for him, the rest of them couldn’t see him in the deepening evening shadows. A heavy silence grew around them as they waited. The businesses around them had closed for the day and everything was eerily quiet. At one point they saw a shadowy shape moving between a pair of buildings but it turned out to be nothing more than a stray dog.
The weight of the silence was beginning to wear on them when Dimitri suddenly popped back into their midst. He leaned against the back of the building as he gulped air and held up a finger for them to give him a second.
“Everything looks quiet,” he puffed when he had caught his breath. “There are no doors anywhere else except in front. The only windows are some of those glass block things that you can’t see through clearly. They’re on both side walls but high up. The back wall is completely blank.”
“Are there any cameras?” Reed asked.
Dimitri nodded. “One at each corner covering the front door and the truck bay. That’s it.”
Tom looked at Danny. “That’s your department.”
“Give me a second,” Danny said and closed his eyes. A few moments later he opened his eyes and smiled. “Done.”
Tom set his jaw and looked around the group. One by one they met his gaze and nodded.
After checking around the corner Tom stepped into the open and started toward their objective. The others fell in behind him. When they reached the building he glanced up at the security cameras.
“You’re sure they aren’t recording us?” Tom asked quietly.
“Absolutely,” Danny assured him. “They’re locked in a loop, playing back the same ten seconds of empty street.”
“Good,” Tom said as he turned to study the entrance. “What about the door? Any alarms?”
Danny stepped up to the door and passed his hand slowly along the frame.
“There’s something near the top of the door,” he said. “It’s your basic trip switch…which is now out of action.” He ran his hand around the door one more time. “That’s it.” He stepped back.
Tom looked at Reed. “You’re up.”
Reed traded places with Danny and stared at the door briefly. Then he reached out and placed his palm against the lock. After several moments there was a soft click as the tumblers aligned and the dead bolt drew back. He pushed the door and it opened smoothly on silent hinges. Reed started to go in, then thought better of it and gestured Tom in ahead of him.
“Age before beauty.”
Tom ignored him, checked the nearby streets one last time, and went in. The others followed right behind him.
Inside they found themselves in a large warehouse. The area immediately inside the door was clear. A few yards back into the building three aisles separated by shelves piled with an assortment of boxes and crates ran to the far end of the building. To their right, just inside the roll-up door, was a pallet of metal drums. Hazard labels on the drums warned that the contents were flammable. Beyond the drums and parked in the shadows against the far right wall was a boxy truck. It was difficult to make out details in the low light but it appeared to be an ambulance. As soon as Reed saw it he hesitated.
“Isn’t that the ambulance that showed up when Magda’s car hit the tree?” he whispered. While the others waited by the door he crept over to the ambulance and tiptoed around it slowly. He peered through the windows and studied the markings on its sides. After he had made a complete circuit around the truck he went back to the group.
“That’s the same truck,” he said quietly when he rejoined his friends. “I’m positive.”
“I’ll bet they arranged that accident,” Shay realized.
“That would explain why all those systems in Magda’s car went out at the same time,” Reed said. “They must have sabotaged it.”
“They were probably hoping that one or more of them would get hurt in the crash,” Shay added. “That way they could take them away in the ambulance without anyone realizing what was happening.”
Tom’s expression hardened. “If we had any doubts that this was the right place, that ambulance just erased them. Everybody spread out and look around. Our guys have got to be here somewhere.”
The six friends separated into pairs and slowly headed deeper into the warehouse. Each team chose an aisle and crept through the dimly lit space making as little noise as possible. The rows of metal shelves were crowded with a variety of crates, boxes, and other assorted containers. But the further they explored into the building the less it looked like someplace where their friends were being held. Eventually they reached the back of the warehouse. As they stepped past the ends of the crowded shelves, they found themselves facing the back wall of the room. A wide gap separated the end of the rows of shelves from the back wall of the warehouse. Apart from an old forklift holding a large crate that was parked in the corner to their right, the space at the back of the warehouse was empty.
Several wide windows in the wall gave them a view into the rear section of the building where they could se
e a number of office cubicles. The starkly ordinary appearance of the place hit them like a slap in the face. None of them had had any idea what they would find inside the building but this was the last thing they expected. As a group they all stood there for several moments staring through the windows at the cubicles. Their friends were not here.
Eventually Tom called everyone together. He brought them to the left side of the building where the only door into the office area was located. It was a plain door with a small sign above it which simply read: Office. Set into the wall beside the door was a large mirror.
“Are you sure this is the right place?” Tom whispered to Danny.
“This is definitely the building,” Danny said.
“And nobody saw anything unusual on the way back here?” Tom asked the group. Everyone shook their heads.
“We should check out the office,” Shay suggested. “Maybe we can find something that will help us figure out what’s going on. Don’t forget about that ambulance. Our guys may not be here but somehow this place is connected to what’s going on.”
“I agree,” Tom said as he turned and reached for the door. He tried the handle and found the door unlocked. “Come on,” he said as he cautiously pushed the door open. “We’ll each take a cubicle and look for anything that can tell us what happened to our friends.”
As they filed through the door they found themselves in a small, dimly lit alcove. On the far wall was a second door. In the middle of the wall to their right was another large mirror.
“What’s up with the mirrors?” Reed wondered aloud.
As the last of their group entered the small area, Tom reached the second door. He started to reach for the handle when it suddenly dawned on him that there was no handle. The door was simply a solid sheet of metal. He tried pushing on it but it refused to open. The others crowded in behind him as he searched for some way to open the door.
“There’s no way through,” Tom said, shocked.
“Let’s get out of here,” Manny said as he looked around the small space. “I don’t like this.”
When he turned around he saw that the door they had entered through didn’t have a handle either. He had been the last one to come into the room and hadn’t realized that the door had shut behind him. They were trapped.
“What’s going on?” Tom growled.
At that moment a light snapped on. What had appeared to be a mirror in the wall beside them was now revealed to be a window into a small room. A man in a security guard uniform was watching them across a desk console.
“What are you kids doing here?” the guard said in a hostile tone. “This is private property.”
Tom stepped up to the one way mirror, his hands balled into fists. “Where are our friends!” he demanded. In a fit of anger he hammered the glass with a fist.
The guard smirked. “Save your strength, kid. That’s armored glass.”
Tom bared his teeth, uttered an almost animal growl and hammered the glass again with both fists. This time spider-web cracks appeared in the glass under his fists.
The guard’s eyes goggled. A moment later he lunged for something below the window.
“Manny, stop him!” Tom yelled.
The guard froze in mid lunge, his arm extended toward a control he would never reach.
“Got him,” Manny said.
“Can you make him let us out of here?” Tom asked.
Manny frowned. “I can’t see the panel from this angle. Even if I could I don’t know what each button does. I could end up making him push the alarm by mistake.”
“Dimitri,” Tom said, “can you get in there and figure out how to let us out? There has to be something on his panel to unlock these doors.”
Dimitri glanced around at the walls of the trap room. “These are all solid walls. I can’t go through a solid wall.”
Danny and Reed looked at each other and hurried toward the inner door.
“I’ll check to see if there’s a tumbler lock I can open,” Reed said.
“It’s probably an electromagnet like on an ATM door,” Danny said. “I’ll try to cut the power.”
As Reed and Danny began examining the doorway, Tom took a moment to glare at the immobilized guard, then spun around and gave the door a hard look. “I’ve had enough of this crap. Guys, move!”
Reed and Danny crowded out of the way when they saw the determined look in Tom’s eyes. As soon as it was clear Tom strode up to the door, picked up his foot and gave it a solid kick. The entire room seemed to reverberate from the blow as the door flew open and smashed back against the wall. Tom stormed through the open doorway with Shay close on his heels. Now that the door was open Dimitri could act. In the blink of an eye he disappeared and reappeared inside the guard booth where he grabbed the security guard in a choke hold from the rear, freeing Manny to move.
As the guard struggled vainly against Dimitri’s arm around his neck, Tom and Shay appeared in the doorway to the guard booth, both of them shooting daggers at the man with their eyes.
“Where is my sister?” Shay demanded.
The guard tried to reply but could only make choking sounds until Dimitri reduced the pressure on his throat.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the guard gasped. “I’m just the night watchman.”
“Bull!” Tom yelled. He strode over to the guard, cocked back a fist and delivered a solid punch to the jaw that snapped his head around.
Manny came hurrying into the booth just in time to see Dimitri release the guard who collapsed to the floor.
“What the…?” Manny said as he stared at the unconscious guard. “Why’d you do that? We needed to question him to find out where they have our friends.”
“He wasn’t going to cooperate,” Tom said through clenched teeth.
Manny grabbed Tom’s shoulder and spun him around. “You don’t know that! We might have been able to get him to talk. Now we have no way to find out what they did with Amanda and the others.”
Tom glared at him for several moments while he clenched and unclenched his fists in a frustrated rage.
“We’ll find them,” Tom said finally.
“How?” Manny demanded.
“Guys!” Shay snapped, stepping between them. “This isn’t helping. Let’s start looking around to see what we can find out.”
Tom and Manny held each other’s gaze for a few moments then turned away.
The group spent the next several minutes searching through the office cubicles but couldn’t find anything useful. There was nothing to indicate that the place was anything other than an import business. After they had spent more than fifteen frustrating minutes searching through the offices Tom called everyone together again.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Tom said. “We know this place has something to do with our friends being kidnapped, but there’s nothing here. We have to be overlooking something.”
“Maybe we’re looking at it the wrong way,” Shay said, thoughtfully. “This is supposed to be an import warehouse, right? So what did we find that is inconsistent with that?”
“There’s that ambulance in front,” Reed said.
“And that trap room with the armored, one way mirrors,” Manny added. “Why would an import business even need a room like that?”
“Ever been in one of those check cashing stores in the city?” Danny said.
“But this isn’t some check cashing store,” Tom said. He turned and pointed at the window behind him that looked into the warehouse. “Those windows are armored glass, too. I checked them out when we were looking around. It’s like this whole area was built to be some kind of fortress. But why? There’s nothing here.”
“So what are we missing?” Reed asked.
The group of them stood looking at each other.
“What else about this place is unusual?” Shay prompted.
Everyone stood silently thinking for several moments.
“There was the signal from their server that led
us here,” Danny said.
“Right,” Shay said, looking around. “The only computers I saw were a few desktop PCs, but nothing that looked like a server. How about the rest of you?” None of the others had found anything that looked like a server either.
“Well, a server doesn’t have to be all that big,” Danny said thoughtfully. “If you don’t need to store that much data, a desktop machine might be enough.” Then something dawned on him. “But none of the computers in here are running! To be of any use a server has to be left on twenty-four seven.”
“Then where is the computer that Danny traced here?” Shay asked.
“Hey, guys?” Dimitri called. He was frowning as he looked at the wall beside them. “If the guard booth is on the other side of this wall, and the little hall next to it leads down to the trap room, what’s that?” he said pointing to a section of wall in the back corner of the office area. He wandered over to wall and placed his hands on his hips as he studied it. “There’s a negative space here.”
“A what?” Manny asked.
“A negative space,” Dimitri repeated. “It means this wall shouldn’t be here. There’s something back there, a hidden room or something.” Dimitri’s father ran a construction business and he sometimes worked with his dad to make a little extra money. He was used to looking at the way a room was put together and visualizing the floor plans.
The rest of the group joined him. Now that he had pointed it out, the others could see that the entire back corner of the building had been closed off.
“There’s a power source of some kind in there,” Danny said as he passed his hands along the wall. “But it’s not a computer.”
“Spread out,” Tom said with a note of hopeful excitement in his voice. “Let’s try to find a door or something. They could be in there.”
The group spread out and started running their hands along the wall as they searched for a way into the secret space.
“Here!” Manny called out a few moments later. A palm sized area of the wall pressed in when he pushed on it. The switch had been camouflaged by the patterned wallpaper that covered this part of the office. With a low hum, a door-sized panel sank several inches into the wall and slid aside. As the panel drew aside a light came on inside the concealed space revealing a small room.
“They’re not here,” Manny said, sounding disappointed. He looked cautiously into the room, then stepped inside. He turned around slowly, studying the walls of the empty room until his eyes fell on a panel beside the open door.
“This is an elevator!” Manny exclaimed.
The others stepped into the room with him. Sure enough, on the wall beside the door was what looked like an elevator control panel.
“Where do you think it goes?” Danny asked.
“One way to find out,” Tom said as he reached for the only button. An electronic chime sounded when he pressed the button and the door closed. A moment later they felt the elevator start down.
“Everybody be ready for anything,” Tom said. “We don’t know what’s going to happen when the door opens.”
“Yeah, but are they going to be ready for us?” Manny said.
The group of friends smiled at each other as a sense of excitement began to spread through them. They could feel that they were about to get to the bottom of the mystery.
“What’s that!” Shay gasped. She was pointing down at the floor of the elevator where jets of white smoke were swirling around their feet.
A moment later the teens began coughing as the dense cloud quickly rose around them. One by one the friends succumbed to the gas and dropped to the floor. In seconds only Tom was left conscious. He tried to fight the effects of the gas but with each breath he found himself slipping further and further away. As the darkness closed in around him his last thoughts were that he had failed his friends. They had trusted him to lead them and instead he had let them walk right into a trap.
Chapter Eleven