Her ring light could stay on longer.
She squeezed through as soon as she had enough room and pulled the door back in place. It fit into the wall in a way that camouflaged the access.
She sniffed, expecting the musty smell. What else was she picking up?
The room stank. Body odor and something worse.
Then it hit her. Dried blood.
She pinched her nose and breathed through her mouth as she swept her light to inspect the closet-sized room. Her foot bumped into something that didn’t move. The body of a man in khaki pants and a white cotton shirt was lying in a dried pool of blood from his throat being slashed.
He’d been dead more than one day.
Very likely the hermit owner.
That meant any options were on the table to get Phoebe to safety, even burning this house to the ground to send the Collector’s security running to find the threat.
But only if she located Phoebe and knew she could free her.
Moving around the body, Hallene found a walk-in door, which opened to a larger room ... the basement she’d been hoping to find. Disappointment slammed her in the chest at the silence.
An empty room.
Phoebe was not here. No one was.
As much as Hallene wanted to hammer the Collector into the ground, she’d hoped to find Phoebe kept in the basement. If so, she’d pass on any payback to spirit the girl away to a safe place then send law enforcement to look for the property owner.
She walked around to determine all exit points. Only one besides the tunnel route. A set of stairs led way up to a landing easily thirty feet up.
That had to be higher than ground level.
She pulled out a lipstick camera and found a place to put it near the exit to the tunnel then headed for the metal stairs.
She climbed fifteen steps, then turned and climbed another twenty steps along the wall to a landing when the stairs turned left.
A modern-looking light fixture had been mounted at the side of a door she hoped opened into the living area. Rushing across the landing on her soft-soled shoes, she paused to carefully open the door and peek out.
Yet another closet. Big one.
Passing through that ten-foot-long by six-foot-wide space, she opened the second door into a grandiose ballroom.
The distinct smell of lemon polish replaced the stench clogging her nose.
While the tunnel appeared to still be a secret, the basement was not, but access to the basement had been somewhat hidden.
Where would they have put Phoebe? In a bedroom?
Where were guards set up to patrol?
She lifted a powerful stun gun from where it had been hooked on her belt. She’d brought it into South America broken apart with pieces hidden in her luggage contents, a camouflaged set Coop had created for her.
This gun was not even on the market yet.
Coop had always been getting his hands on the latest and greatest but warned her to stay in top shape. Never depend on the stun gun for more than gaining a moment’s edge in a fight.
She stuck to that rule.
She pulled off her shoes and continued in her socks. Any sound could get her killed.
