“What’s wrong?” Benji asked.
“I don’t know,” she replied miserably, passing the burning sage bundle and the small bowl she used to catch any ash that fell from it to me. “Things that never bothered me before suddenly make me want to hurl.”
“I’ll go with Benji,” I told her. “You just sit and rest. You’re working really hard and making a baby in there.”
She glanced up at me, and I saw her eyes fill suddenly. “Have I told you lately that you’re a very nice man?”
I chuckled and followed Benji.
He took the sage from me and went around the bathroom, but when he got near the sink, the weirdest thing happened. The smoke was sucked under the medicine cabinet.
“Wait,” I ordered Benji, and had him stay where he was. “Put the sage at the bottom of the mirror.”
He did as I directed, and the smoke was sucked in a second time. Quickly, he put his hand there, just above the sink. “Shaw, there’s a draft,” he told me, turning. “Why would there be a draft?”
“Lemme in there,” I ordered, and we changed places because the room was barely a few sizes up from a broom closet, so there was no way we could both fit at the same time. Once I was in front of the medicine cabinet, I ran my fingers around its frame and could feel the cold air seeping in around it, and noted the hairline cracks and more obvious chips in the surrounding paint. Taking a hold of the top and the bottom, I tugged gently and immediately felt the give.
“Shaw?” Benji sounded worried.
“Step back,” I warned him. “I don’t know what’s behind here.”
Pulling harder, the cabinet gave, and I heard the small pieces of plaster rain into the sink basin as I lifted it free.
“Holy shit,” Benji breathed out.
“Well said,” I agreed, staring into the space beyond the hole. Someone had left a stepladder there, two, actually, I noticed as I leaned in to look. I was guessing that there was one to get into the space—the bathroom wall was high on the non-sink side—and another to get back out when whoever was taking their leave.
“Oh my God!”
Saffron was standing in the doorway with her hand over her mouth. “Has someone been coming in and out of our place?”
“That’s what it looks like,” I said, moving the cabinet aside so it leaned against the toilet, not wanting to disturb it any further, as it was evidence.
Turning on the flashlight on my phone, I leaned into the hole and looked around and saw that there was a passageway running both left and right down a tight corridor. Leaning back out, I noticed Tara had joined her friend in the doorway, and her eyes were welling with tears. Sian and Delly were there as well, Sian with her arm around Tara, Delly taking video on her phone.
“So––” Saffron choked. “So someone’s been, what, coming in while we sleep, when we’re not here?”
“I doubt anyone came in while you were asleep,” I told her. “There’s no way you wouldn’t have woken up.”
“Then someone came in when we weren’t here.” It was a statement.
“That would be my guess,” I replied solemnly.
“To do what?”
“I don’t know, but we’ll find out,” I promised them. I couldn’t even begin to imagine how violated they both felt.
“What if there are cameras in here, or listening devices?” Tara asked, the panic evident in her voice.
If I found a hole in the wall of my home, my brain would jump to the same conclusion. “I’ll check,” I assured them. “If there’s anything else here, I’ll find it.”
Both women nodded their appreciation.
“Now, do you have an onsite landlord or a maintenance guy?”
“Den––” Saffron answered, her voice going out on her for a second. She cleared her throat. “Dennis Schmidt.”
There was a thump then, on the other side of the wall, and I looked back into the hole, searched the shadows with the flashlight, and saw a man crouched beside a toolbox he must have accidentally kicked. “Are you Dennis?” I asked him, even though I knew.
Springing up, he turned and darted down the corridor, having to wedge himself through one part, and then running on.
“Call 911,” I yelled the order, and everyone got out of the way fast, like we’d rehearsed it, Benji pressing up against the wall of the bathroom, the rest of them crowding the other side of the hall that I ran down.
I was out the front door just in time to see Dennis pop outside five doors down. He bolted for the parking lot, and I noticed a car there, already running and obviously waiting for him.
I didn’t have time to stop and pull my gun, so I ran after him, knowing it was futile, but at least committing the plate to memory.
The Dodge Charger came out of nowhere, and Dennis couldn’t stop his forward momentum in time to avoid flying into the side of the car. He bounced off, fell backward, flat on his back, and could do nothing more than lie there as all the wind had been knocked from his chest. The other car, the Ford Taurus, turned hard, threw up gravel, and would have been gone, but it was stopped by a police car that penned it in.