He’s being all shifty and it’s bothering me. ‘I don’t think it’s . . .’ Something catches my eye near the bookcase adjacent to Becker’s desk. I frown, tilting my head thoughtfully.
‘What?’ Becker asks. He doesn’t sound too cool and collected now. Now he sounds a little worried.
‘What’s that?’ I ask, making tracks towards what’s holding my attention on the bookcase. It’s a sliver of light running from top to bottom of the old wood, straight down the middle. It becomes more obvious the closer I get, the gap widening to about a centimetre. My feet speed up instinctively, but just as I engage my arm to reach for the protruding wood, Becker barges past me and lands in front of the bookcase, leaning back against the unit. The gap disappears, assisted by his weight pushing into it, and I pull back my outreached arm on a tiny gasp of alarm. The noise of the dislodged piece of bookcase locking into place is a similar sound to what I heard when I was alone in here a few minutes ago. Or, apparently, not alone.
‘That’s nothing,’ he spits out fast before slamming his lips together, a silent sign that he won’t be forced to say anything more on the matter. Is he fucking kidding me? I know my current facial expression pretty much spells that out for him. I must look like someone’s just told me that the government’s upping the age restriction on alcohol to sixty.
He glances away guiltily. He shouldn’t have. I’ve just spotted another speck of powder under his earlobe, but instead of telling him so, I simply reach forward and wipe it away again, this time holding my finger between us instead of dusting it off. His head doesn’t turn, but his eyes do. They fix to the tip of my finger and remain there until I decide he’s had enough time to look at the offending flicks of . . . whatever it is. What is it? I don’t know, but it’s adding to my boyfriend’s nervousness, and it’s rubbing off on me. There’s a room behind this towering bookcase, and I want to know what’s in there.
‘Open the door,’ I demand, jaw tight.
Becker looks as guilty as sin. Appropriate. He’s not going to budge. Fine.
I start to pull books out from the shelves, one after the other, waiting for one to click and release a secret door. I feel stupid, but how else will it open? This is how it’s done in the movies. One has to work.
‘Eleanor, stop.’ He grabs me and pulls me away.
‘Then open it.’
‘For fuck’s sake,’ he grumbles, positioning me to the side, his muttered curses coming thick and fast. Giving me a scowl of epic proportions, one that I return, probably fiercer, he reaches past a book and pulls. ‘Have it your way.’ Something clicks, and a whole section of shelving releases, creaking open a few inches.
I inhale, stepping back, as does Becker, giving me free access. I look at him, and his eyebrows raise, his arm swooping out in sarcastic gesture to go right ahead. I bite my lip and tentatively reach forward, taking the side of the wood and pulling it towards me. It’s heavy, but Becker doesn’t help me out, just stands to the side, watching me struggle. Arsehole. Does he think I’ll give up? Of course he doesn’t. Using my free hand, I haul the huge door open, the hinges creaking eerily.
My mouth falls open when the small room comes into view. Lumps of metal, wood and stone litter the space, as well as chisels and hammers of every shape and size. There are shelves, all packed full of sculptures, all different kinds – busts, animals and figurines. None of them are familiar, but they’re all amazingly well-carved pieces. And then I frown when I see a drawing of a sculpture that I recognise, the surface dusty, the edges curling. ‘Head of a Faun,’ I say to myself, tilting my head, reaching for the tatty piece of paper.
And then I gasp, retracting my hand like the sketch could have just burst into blazing flames before me. Thoughts, lots of them, rush around in my head. His con-move, Head of a Faun, the unidentified dirty mark I’ve just wiped from his face. The fact that my boyfriend is a sweet con artist.
And just like that, the obscenest thought of all starts to poke at the corner of my mind. It’s so crazy, it should be easy to push it aside, disregard it. It’s outlandish. Ridiculous. Yet I can’t shake the suspicious feeling, because many things about The Haven, the Hunt Corporation, and Becker Hunt are ridiculous. And now this hidden room? And these tools? And that picture of the long-lost sculpture?
I study the man before me closely, the poke on my mind becoming more of a vibration as I mentally revisit our time at Countryscape. How composed and prepared he was during the bidding of Head of a Faun. How he knew it was a fake.