I turn on the lights. I go in. The closet is nine feet square, maximum, so it doesn’t take me long to look around, my heart pounding.
There are no keys. My heart rises in my chest, the hook in my ribcage twisting.
“No keys?” Grady asks. Silas is behind him, his back to us, keeping a lookout.
“They’re not here,” I say.
“It’s fine,” Grady says. “Come on.”
Now he’s smiling. I’m starting to wonder if asking Silas and his military buddy for help was the greatest idea I’ve ever had, but I turn out the light, close the door, and lead them to the security office.
There’s only one camera on the hall, and I point it out before we walk past it. For a moment I’m afraid that one of them is going to whip out a can of spray paint and black out the lens, but thankfully, they both just nod and turn their backs to it.
When we reach the door to the security suite, Grady stops. He holds his hand up. Silas and I both stop short. My palms are sweating, and there’s a single bead of perspiration making its way down the back of my neck.
I’m not cut out for this. I’m not the sneaky type. I’m not good at doing things undetected and unseen, and all the quiet and subversion here is making me ten times more nervous.
Without warning, Grady goes down on one knee. He pulls something from one of his many cargo pockets, a tube about a foot long, sticks it under the door, and puts an earbud in his ear.
I look at Silas. Silas is standing practically at attention, fully alert, both hands on his belt.
I close my eyes briefly and pray he didn’t bring a firearm. This is not a firearm situation.
“Clear,” Grady murmurs, putting the tube and the earpiece back into his pocket, pulling out a small black pouch from another one.
He unrolls it. It’s full of small silver tools. He selects a few and gets to work.
The door’s open in twenty seconds. He nods at Silas, and Silas slips through, into the dark. I follow, and practically trip over Silas the moment I get inside.
“Sorry,” I whisper.
The door closes. A red light shines on the ground, and I jump.
We set something off, I think. Not now, we’re so close…
“You don’t lose your night vision with a red flashlight,” Silas explains, and waves the light around the room as I try to still my heart. “Where to now?”
I point at the back room where the monitors are glowing. We go in. We sit. The monitors are all quiet and still, except for the ones on the Lodge, and even those are boring: the receptionist typing at her computer, someone in the lounge reading a paperback.
Grady opens the laptop, and the desktop comes up.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” he mutters. “Do you people even know what a password is?”
“You can get it, right?” I ask.
“If you give me a second,” he says.
Silas is outside the door to the tiny monitor room, standing at attention again. He has a laptop bag slung over one shoulder, and he has one hand on the zipper like he can’t wait to get those night vision goggles out.
“Sorry,” I apologize.
Grady says nothing. Silas says nothing. I point out the folder with the pool’s security footage. I point out the missing date. Grady just nods, then pulls a thumb drive from yet another pocket.
“Two minutes,” he says, and gets to work.
I stand up. I can’t keep sitting. There’s not enough room to pace in here, so I just stand there, arms crossed, watching the monitors, my stomach in knots.
It’ll work, I keep telling myself. This will work.
What if the camera doesn’t show anything?
What if Martin knows how to really delete something?
And what if it works? What then?
I don’t know what then. I know I send Montgomery the security footage anonymously — Grady gave me detailed instructions on that when we spoke on the phone.
He’ll get fired. I’m almost positive. There have been rumors swirling about Kevin’s mom, a personal injury attorney, suing Bramblebush for negligence. If the footage shows that Martin unlocked the pool and brought the bull, that means he opened Bramblebush up to a nasty lawsuit.
A lawsuit.
That gives me another idea. It’s sneakier. It’s more devious. It might even be mean.
I shove it aside for now.
“Is it working?” I ask.
“Yes,” Grady says, tersely.
I swallow hard and take a deep breath. All I need is that file in my pocket, and I’m done. I don’t care what happens after that, though, like Grady and Silas, I’d prefer not to get arrested.
Then Grady leans in, frowning, his face lit by the laptop screen.
“Huh,” he says, and my stomach lurches.
“Boys,” Silas says, before I can ask Grady what’s wrong. “We got company.”
He points to the bank of monitors. I look up. Grady doesn’t.