“Hidden?” Desiree asked. “I thought we were going to fight?”
“Not yet,” Brett said. “Not until we know for sure who it is.”
“Brett has a plan,” I said. “Desiree, I need you to trust us.”
“Okay.” She sounded worried, confused, but determined. “What’s the plan.”
Brett walked a few feet away, pushing the coffee table back and off a rug that lay underneath it. Then he peeled back the rug to reveal a door in the floorboard. I smirked. Rumrunners were full of lots of old tricks in the Tennessee mountains.
“I prepared it the other day. It’ll be tight, but I made it as comfortable as I could. Get in,” he said.
Brett opened the door, and Desiree looked at me. I nodded, and she looked back down into the room in the floor. Outside, I could hear the grumbling of an engine, wheels on gravel. There wasn’t much time.
Desiree went down first, and then it was my turn. The room was small, about five feet wide and four feet deep. I climbed in beside her and found that Brett had put down a few pillows and sleeping bags, along with a small pack of bottled water and some jerky. It was rudimentary, but it would let a person survive for a bit.
I opened the water I got out of the fridge and took a sip, then handed it to Desiree. As she took a sip, Brett closed the door above us, and things went dark. I could hear him put the rug back over the door and move the coffee table into place. The sounds were muffled but clear enough that I could hear the door shut of the car outside and Brett sit down in the chair. He wanted to look like he wasn’t expecting company. The gun holstered on his back, covered by his T-shirt, was the only giveaway that maybe he was.
There were footsteps on the porch and then a knock on the door. Brett crossed above us to the front door and opened it. The voice that answered him was instantly recognizable. It was the man who had come for her at her place. The man she said had called her.
“Good afternoon,” he said. “My associates and I represent the United States government. We are looking for two fugitives who escaped into the mountains the other day. You wouldn’t happen to have seen anyone, would you?”
“Me? No,” Brett said, playing dumb. “What branch of the government are you from?”
“FBI,” the man lied. “Do you happen to know an Aiden Beckett? Lives down the way from here?”
“I do,” Brett said, smartly not pretending he didn’t. “Is he okay? I haven’t heard from him in a while.”
There was silence for a moment as more footsteps made their way onto the porch.
“What was your name, sir?” the man said.
“Brett. Brett Mooney,” he said. “Excuse me, do you have a warrant?”
“We don’t need one, Mr. Mooney,” the man said. “Search his cabin.”
“Hey, you can’t do that!” Brett shouted as footsteps thundered over us.
I could just make out Desiree’s silhouette as she clasped her hands over her mouth, and I pulled her into my chest. She was shaking but doing a good job of not letting out any noise. The pressure and weight of the revolver on my hip was at the forefront of my mind. If the door above us opened while they were there, I would have no choice but to start firing. We’d be a fish in a barrel, but I’d take at least one of the bastards down with me.
“We can do what we want,” the man said, and I heard him shove Brett out of the way. Gone was the pretend niceties and attempt at looking legit.
Above us, and all around us, I could hear doors being opened, cabinets slammed, and voices speaking. They were looking for us, but all I could think of in this very moment was about the extra toiletries we had packed away under the sink in the bathroom. My neatness had been in full force with the extra anxiety, and I had made sure everything Desiree and I used was routinely packed and put away until we needed it again. If they went into the guest bathroom, they weren’t going to find extra toothbrushes and shampoo lying around unless they searched the closet and saw them on the second to top shelf, conveniently beside a stack of towels and washcloths.
“I don’t know anybody else around here,” Brett said. “I live here alone. What are you looking for?”
“You know Aiden Beckett, so he might have come here when he was in trouble. If he’s here, I need to know,” the man said.
“He isn’t. I told you, I haven’t heard from him in a while. Probably two weeks. Maybe more. We aren’t that close; we just go fishing sometimes.”