Her eyes shot to the space of the wall at her back. Beams of light splintered along the right-angled edges of the shelf from floor to ceiling. With a little effort, the heavy case and a third of the wall shifted toward her on a hinge and opened to reveal large, flat slabs of stone that spiraled downward into the unknown.
This couldn’t be good. Not for her anyway.
She pulled the door open farther until the arch of the doomed ceiling came into full view.
Brightened by sconces fastened to the curved walls, Rhia considered her options. Descend into the bowels of Haven or cut her losses and get the hell out of there?
She mentally ran over the various schematics she’d procured from the local library. Decades of updates and remodeling showed several additional sections, but none of them showed secret passages within the walls of the former convent.
She pulled her lips between her teeth and dragged her gaze around in a panic. What if one of the men came in to find her standing at the mouth of their secret cave? She didn’t need to guess what would happen next. The last thing she’d need to worry about were hidden rooms in a centuries-old building and more about what secret room they’d stuff her in.
Curiosity, and a bit of lunacy, pulled her over the threshold despite her less-than-favorable odds. The answers she needed could be down there. Everything in her pointed to that conclusion. Her last hope lay at the bottom of these darkened stairs.
Determination and dedication drove her forward one step, and then another, and the deeper she descended the farther back in time she traveled. Smooth rock against her bare palms anchored her to reality and helped tame her wild imagination that threatened to rebel against her better judgment if she were not careful.
“This is a bad idea. Very bad,” she reprimanded herself in a hushed whisper, still weighing a bad idea versus the worst option before her. Getting killed for being reckless didn’t sit high on that list, but she needed answers.
She wasn’t blind to the fact every step she took could lead straight into danger. Her gut and her less than nerves of steel pushed her forward.
When the light of the sconces vanished, she let out a shaky breath and took two more stairs, pushed flush against the cool rock wall that spiraled downward in a sweeping curve.
Motion sensors buried somewhere within the walls triggered a string of lights to flicker on and flood the end of the stairwell. That or someone awaited her at the bottom of the stairs. She really hoped for the former option.
It took several seconds for her eyes to adjust to the sudden brightness.
Slowly Rhia took the last step and her entire body wanted to clench with fear, but she refused to give in.
Three walls towered over her by a good six feet. From stone ceiling to marble flooring, high-tech computers attached to wall-mounted banks of monitors gleamed back at her with a heavy hum of electricity.
In case she wasn’t alone, Rhia edged deeper into the room, dungeon, cellar… her coffin— only to find the space void of other life. Rhia had no idea if the room was monitored, but if no sirens and flashing red lights signaled anyone to her presence, it was probably a safe bet to say this section of the club didn’t have the same level of security.
Whatever this place was, not a hint of the deeply rich hues and tones used upstairs to bring about thoughts of sexual delights and decadent rendezvous could be found. Void of color, the stone walls arched over her, their mighty force oppressive, if not a shade menacing.
She simply couldn’t believe what her eyes saw. Situated dead center, a long mahogany table ate two-thirds of the room. A damp chill clung to the air and forced a shiver up her spine. Trying to ignore all the sensory input, she shoved aside the unsettling feeling and scrubbed her palms down the length of her leather skirt, but it didn’t do much good. The day she could kiss this deplorable outfit goodbye couldn’t get here soon enough.
She scanned over every chair, piece of paper, and crack in the wall, taking a mental picture, unable to believe any of what lay before her. Not what she expected to find in the basement of a sex club. Not a flogger, gag, or spanking bench in sight.
Anything warm and inviting began and ended with the several leather chairs that encompassed the heavy table. From there everything else came off as cold, hard, and mysterious. State-of-the-art equipment flashed images of persons she couldn’t identify.
From her position, the deep bass of music couldn’t penetrate the thick walls and silence reigned.
Several legal-sized folders drew her eye on the end of the table. Not a marking or label to be found on the manila-colored paper. The hair on the back of her neck prickled.
That wasn’t the case for what she found inside. Her brain couldn’t focus on a single detail but drank it all in at once. A flicker of light from the side of the room caught her eye.
Image after image scrolled across the screen. She’d seen something like this process before on some cop show or another. They’d been hunting some fictional murderer through a database. But nothing about this screamed fake.
Thousands of questions popped up faster than she could process.
She took a step back and slowed her mind long enough to let her brain play catch-up and digest what her eyes were seeing. An assortment of images were displayed along the bank of monitors.
Various faces stood out from bits and pieces she could recall from the evening news, only these shots didn’t feature men in flashy suits and broad smiles with some socialite clinging to their arms or stepping from some fancy restaurant. In these shots their faces were bloated, and from her untrained eye, she’d definitely say tortured, from the black stains on their mutilated bodies. As if a predator had ripped them apart.
No glamour, no glitz. Then again, crime scene shots rarely were. A shudder of fear started in the tips of her toes and worked its way up until her hands shook. What the hell was going on here?
To her left, another monitor was sectioned off in six angles, each shot showcasing different rooms within Haven, constantly rotating. She suspected they hid cameras throughout the dungeon-like structure, but she couldn’t help the surprise at seeing how closely they monitored the rooms.
Hello blackmail material. “I guess nothing is kept a secret for long.”