Cristian was gone.
Damn.
Atlas popped back into the hall to call for Andrei, but the area was strangely deserted, like it had been the previous night. No one around to talk to at all, in fact. Atlas pulled the door closed, granting him the privacy of the room, before letting his head drop forward to rest against the well-stained wood.
It was a brilliant setup. No one in the house—even those who weren’t part of Cristian’s inner crew—would dare go against the boss’s son. Fine. He could handle this. How hard could it be to find his missing charge?
There was no point returning to the hall. Cristian hadn’t snuck out that way, a fact made obvious by his friends’ slow and steady exits from the room. They’d been buying him time. So where the hell had he gone?
The room looked secure. One door in from the hall, none out. No windows, thanks to rooms on either side. Nothing but sturdy bookcases in the back left corner and a comfortable, if dimly lit, sitting area and small wet bar to the right. Atlas avoided the bar and the scattered wineglasses, still stained with hints of dark wine. There was no chance Cristian would be hiding behind the bar, laughing silently to himself. This was a test. Cristian was trying to expose Atlas’s incompetence, to get him fired before he had a chance to prove his value.
He pulled up the grounds map on his phone. It offered little help and only confirmed his original assessment that the door was the only way out of the room.
Okay, so no obvious exit. Maybe there was some kind of hiding place instead? He’d never personally found or used one during his tours, but some of the diplomats he and his platoon had protected had spoken of them. Small, hidden spaces designed to offer a few hours cover until an extraction team could arrive.
He took another slow walk around the room. The only place he could think to hide such a space would be by the bookshelves, where the seams and joints of the hidden door could be camouflaged by the ornate, carved facing of the shelves. Scanning them was tedious. It was too easy to be distracted by the carefully dusted rows of books. The aged and foreign books lent age and gravity to the space, which even the billiards table couldn’t detract from. Eventually, he gave up reading the spines and instead turned so he could look at the shelves from an angle. That’s when he spotted the book pushed back too far on a shelf.
Another foreign title, the faded gilt letters pressed into the aged leather of the spine. It was almost disappointing that nothing happened when he pulled it out and examined it. No Scooby Doo trapdoor opened beneath his feet, there was no grinding of gears as an Addams family wall split. He slid a hand into the slender gap left behind, feeling for something, anything...and found a loop of wire against the back wall of the bookcase. He tugged it down with two fingers. Behind the bookcase, he heard a metallic cl
ick and a corner of the case shifted forward a half inch. He replaced the book, stepped back, and carefully tugged at the now free corner.
There wasn’t a hiding place behind the door. Instead, Atlas found a narrow hall waiting for him.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he muttered.
Going down a creepy, secret hallway was not on his list of first shift activities. There wasn’t another choice though. He needed to find Cristian and prove himself capable of handling whatever assholery was thrown his way. Regretting every life decision that had led him to this point, Atlas closed the bookshelf behind him and followed the dim lights to the right. The hall eventually met a set of stairs, which led downward to a different door.
This one was jarringly modern, a solid metal thing with a keypad that also didn’t show up on Helias’s map. Refusing to give up, he scanned over the list of codes provided for the property’s buildings.
Every delay meant Cristian was getting farther and farther away, a fact that grated on Atlas as he tried a code and was met with a flashing red light from the keypad. He reviewed the mixture of English and Romanian names, but didn’t see anything in English describing the new lower-level door.
It took a moment for the door pad to reset so he could try the code linked to the first Romanian word. Failure, and another wait. The same thing happened with the second word, and the third. Every failure honed his resolve. If he had to go through the entire damn list, even if it took the rest of his shift, he would. On the fourth attempt, the lights flashed green as the code took. He quickly put an asterisk near that code and slid past the door.
The new space was sleek, contemporary industrial architecture at its best, completely different from what he’d seen in the house above. The rich woods were replaced with smooth, concrete walls whose white paint reflected the warm light from the handful of inset ceiling fixtures. The black and silver pipes overhead emerged out of one wall and crossed to the other, unhidden and unconcerned with aesthetics. The only similarity between the upstairs and this new area was the sense of space. He could see everything, with no hidden corners or lines blocking his line of sight. That openness made up for the lack of windows, hiding the hallway’s subterranean placement well. He tried the same code on the door at the far end of the hall, surprised when it worked again.
His unexpected appearance surprised the people in the next room. They jumped up off the comfortable sectionals. A few steadied glasses of red wine, which must mean they were off shift. He wasn’t, and didn’t have time to waste on pleasantries.
“He was here?” Atlas asked.
The people looked at each other, holding a silent conversation Atlas didn’t have time for. He picked the largest of the group, took a threatening step toward him, and asked again, “Was he?”
The man nodded and pointed a hand toward one of the doors lining the richly decorated walls of the room. Experience had taught him no one gave information away that freely.
“Is that where he actually went, or where he told you to tell me he’d gone?”
The man frowned and dutifully pointed at a second door. Cristian’s game wasn’t over yet. The ploy was frustratingly obvious though. Did Cristian really think he was that dumb?
Atlas went to the first door, ignoring the calls for him to stop. The room beyond was small, with a glittering piano and little else, though a narrow door in the back corner beckoned. Feeling more and more like Alice in some demented Wonderland, Atlas pressed forward. He couldn’t wait to tell Bea this story. Maybe she could negotiate him some kind of bonus for the levels of bullshit he had to go through. No wonder Todd had quit.
At least this newest hall he stepped into was quiet. The doors here were ajar, as if people came and went freely, without concern for privacy. The bedrooms seemed large. They were all painted in varying shades, with a mixture of furniture types, clearly individualized for whoever was staying in them. One even boasted a backlit display of small knives he wouldn’t have minded getting a closer look at. Most of the bedrooms must have shared the decadent bathrooms set here and there between rooms. Supplies littered the counters in some, and it was impossible to miss the reflection of his shadow over large expanses of glass and stone showers as he passed. Flickering light escaped from one of the rooms farther away, an indication that someone was at least watching—though maybe not listening—to a TV.
The thick carpet underfoot muffled Atlas’s steps as he neared the door, but he paused anyway when he heard familiar voices behind it.
“He’s probably panicking right now,” Andrei’s bass rumbled.
“I bet he’s gone to find Helias like the rest did,” Vasilica said. “All bodyguards are the same.”
Atlas wrinkled his nose at her smug tone. She didn’t know him. She sure as hell didn’t know how skilled he was at finding and protecting others, thanks to his training.