Three more places to check out. I hoped they were easier than the first three. I didn’t need any more booby traps. I’d run across booby traps in my tracking before. Fish hooks hanging in trees to cut people. A shotgun rigged to blast when a wire was tripped. Trip wires placed to release a warning noise to people watching for me. I was used to being careful about these things. Now that I knew the possibility was real in my searches I had to be extra vigilant. Vigilant for me, and for Agnes. I felt a need to protect her if she chose to pursue her own treasure hunt. She might be stealthy and clever but I didn’t count on her having an eye for the invisible. With my trouble radar tuned I continued my search.
The next location seemed fairly safe. It was even in town. It was a house in an older part of town, and was still standing, although it was windowless and boarded up. A chain link fence kept out the easily dissuaded. I was not easily discouraged and the fence was loose so I parked to hide myself from view and quickly slid underneath.
This time there were tracks around the house. They were only partial tracks because of the thin grass. I examined the tracks closely. They could have been left by Agnes. It could also have been some older neighborhood kid bent on mischief.
The walls had graffiti sprayed on them. Kids probably found their way in there frequently. I did what I thought Agnes would do, slipping around the house to the back, feeling for loose boards over the windows. Most of the particleboard covering the windows was securely bolted down, but one window had three bolts removed. The fiberboard was held in place by one bolt. The other corner rested on a nail stuck in a hole in the siding. Remove the nail and the plywood swung down revealing a dark interior. I stuck my head into the opening and shined the flashlight inside. Yes! It wasn’t positive proof but it seemed more likely to be Agnes than a kid now. Whoever had entered had not just climbed in. They had squatted in the window frame and very carefully placed their footprints where they would be the least noticeable. In my mind there were very few people who would think to do that. Agnes. Me. Chase. Elan? I doubted if Elan would think to do that unless he had scouting lessons with his grandfather and Chase. Neighborhood kids didn’t even enter the picture in my head. It was Agnes. I was ninety percent sure. I hadn’t expected to find her there, but it meant I needed to check out the rest of the sites and senior-proof them. I stalked from room to room doing my cop imitation. When I was sure the house was free of people I turned my attention to Agnes’s tracks. They were not easy to see in the dark. I had to search out each one in the flashlight beam. Only the fact that this was the desert and the house had sat empty for many years allowed me to track her inside. The wood floors were covered with a fine powdery dust, especially thickest near the windows. I could tell that one room was used frequently by teenagers to hide out and smoke and do drugs. Cigarette butts and drug paraphernalia littered the floor. Burn spots dotted the wall near the group’s meeting spot. It was a wonder they hadn’t burned the place down. I’d have to tell Rusty about this house, too.
I didn’t know which was more distressing to me, the risk to my life that was out in the field or this dark side of society that I mostly tried to pretend didn’t exist. I could handle threats to me. I was used to those, but to see kids putting themselves at risk day after day saddened me. Then I wondered what the difference was between these kids doing drugs and me hiking through booby trapped fields, getting myself kidnapped and beaten. I decided the only difference, really, was that I hadn’t done anything illegal. The basic premise was the same and it saddened me to put Rusty through that.
Cassidy, just go home, I told myself, you don’t have to do this.
But I did. If Agnes had come here she would check out some of the other sites as well, especially if she had found anything here. I examined the inside of the house carefully, tracking Agnes as much as I could. It looked like she had followed the walls, probably feeling for inconsistencies that would indicate hiding places. Where she stopped, I stopped to see what had caught her attention. She had a sharp eye and a good feel for the invisible, I had to give her credit for that. Often when she stopped it took me some time to figure out what had caught her attention. I had to read the shallow tracks. Was she standing or squatting, reaching or looking at something? The tracks usually told me but often the house itself didn’t. The walls were buckled from water leaking through the old roof. The floor was buckled from age. The boards creaked. The house groaned when the wind blew.
Pieces of wall had been torn away and Agnes had looked around in the nooks and crannies but she hadn’t brushed away the spider webs to look deeper. A breaker box had been wallpapered over and then cut back out. The door hung open. I wondered if Agnes had opened it thinking it was a safe. I looked at the tracks to see if there was a quick backwards leaning to them but I couldn’t tell. When I had followed Agnes around the house as much as I was able I started looking at other things. A panel covered a hole leading up into the attic. I found a metal bed rail that had been discarded and I used that to push up on the panel. It was hinged and the panel opened upwards. When it fell over with a bang another explosion rocked the house and I jerked the rail down, examining it. I was glad I didn’t have a ladder! Someone didn’t want people poking around up in the attic. If that was true, there was a reason for it.
The bed frame had a bracket on the side. I looked around and found the other half of the frame. I used the brackets like stilts and it gave me just enough height to reach into the hole and pull myself up. The gun up there was trip wired, so it wasn’t going to go off again. I just had to be careful of any other wires up there. I braced myself in the opening long enough to look around. I declared the area right next to the hole to be safe and drew my feet up. I did it. I was in the attic.
Being careful to only step on ceiling joists, I sneaked around the attic, attuned to trouble. Boards had been laid over a section of the ceiling joists and several boxes had been stored up there. One box contained hand embroidered table runners, pillowcases and handkerchiefs. I imagined an antique dealer’s eyes lighting up if presented with this box. Another box contained important papers. Once again there was a box of personal belongings and a small box… of fine jewelry. This was what Agnes was looking for. But she’d missed it. I pulled out the map and looked at it. There were three symbols on this location. Did one of them represent jewelry? I needed to go home and compare this piece of the map to the others, and figure out where Agnes was likely to look next. My curiosity satisfied, I started putting everything back when I heard a boom, boom, boom… “Open up! Police!”
Shoot! Not again. I stuck my head out the hole and yelled down, “I can’t! It’s boarded up! Try the window in back with a board that’s swinging loose.”
“Cassidy?” It was Kent Jacobsen. Double shoot.
“Yeah, Cassidy,” I answered. “All’s clear in here except for me.”
I waited until they had both found the window and made their way into the living room.
“Up here,” I told them.
They looked up through the hole in the ceiling.
“What are you doing here?” Jacobsen asked.
“Do you remember the shots fired report out in the desert?”
“Yeah.”
“And the booby trapped field they called HAZMAT out to?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m doing the same thing as I was then.”
“Come down. Where’s your ladder?”
“You’re standing on it.”
They looked around, saw the bed frame.
“This?”
“It worked. Can you scoot it aside so I don’t land on it?”
He kicked the bed frame aside and I stood over the hole. I calculated my jump and skimmed through the hole, landing on bent knees. The floor gave way and all three of us landed in a dusty, dirty, spider-webbed heap in the crawl space under the house.
When the dust had settled and we all verified we were okay, I said, “You told me to come down.”
“I think you better come with us,” Jacobsen said.
On the way I heard the radio transmissions, getting Rusty’s twenty, telling him to meet them at the station. Rats.
They led me to an interrogation room but it didn’t worry me. I’d been there several times. I’d spill the beans. They’d shake their heads. I’d explain it all to Rusty. He’d give me the hands in pockets safety lecture. He’d take me back to my car. I’d go home and fix dinner.
“We had a report of shots fired,” Jacobsen stated bluntly.
“One shot. Only one. I counted.” I was getting tired of this and I imagined they were too. “They actually call in gun shots in that neighborhood? I thought they were used to it by now.”
Sigh, “Okay, one shot,” he said. “Explain it.”
“It would be easier to explain back at the house,” I said. “The attic was booby trapped. A gun was wired to the panel leading into the attic. I opened it with the bed frame pole and bam! I’m getting used to this now. After the rattlesnakes and the cyanide guns, I’ve become cautious. So one shot, aimed to take out anybody who ventured into the attic. Here’s my sidearm, no shots fired. If you take a look at the attic you’ll find one forty-five, aimed at the opening, one shot fired, no fingerprints.”
“You triggered the shot and you went up there anyway?”
“I figured the gun wouldn’t fire again. I watched for more triggers while I was up there. There appeared to be just the one.”
“Did you find anything?”
“Yeah.” I listed the contents of the boxes as I’d seen them.
“Why? Cassidy, we’re used to your antics by now. We know you’ve got an agenda here. So… why are you doing this?”
“Agnes.”
It took him a minute. “Huh? What does Agnes Cooper have to do with rattlesnakes, cyanide guns and booby trapped attics?”
“She’s got a map. A map that shows where these places are. This is the first one of the spots marked on the map where I saw evidence that Agnes had been there. So I need to check out the other locations before she gets herself killed. In the process I was hoping I’d run into her, but so far that hasn’t happened. I’ve got two more locations to check out.”
“Why did she choose this house?”
“I don’t know. She has a different map than me. Maybe her map has a key to the symbols on it. Mine doesn’t.”
“And how did you come to be in possession of said map?”
“Ummm, the rattlesnakes gave it to me? I’ll put it back when I’m done. Actually I could put it back now, except Rusty won’t let me. I have pieces scanned and printed out so I only carry one little section at a time. That way I can’t give out any information except what the people already know.”
“And who are the people?”
“I don’t know. I only have two last names and I don’t know who the good guys or bad guys were in the situation. It happened in the late 1920’s so it’s not like you can go after them.”
The door opened and Rusty stepped in.
“Enough?” Jacobsen asked him.
“Enough,” Rusty answered.
Jacobsen left and we were alone.
“I should have Jacobsen question you more often. You’ll tell him more than you’ll tell me.”
“That’s because Jacobsen won’t ground me and make me feel guilty for holding back. I’m not worried about Jacobsen’s feelings.”
He put his arms around me. “I guess I can understand that. But I need more information than that. You said there were two more places left to check out?”
“Yeah.”
“Where?”
“The map is at home. I only have one piece with me. See?” I handed him the little four by four inch square. “I need to get to these places before Agnes does. She wouldn’t watch for a rifle in an attic. She wouldn’t wonder about trip wires in a field.”
“You’re doing this to protect a jewel thief?”
“It didn’t start out that way, but, yeah. And the house I was in did have jewelry in it. Agnes just didn’t find it. But it gives me a hint to look at on the big map. The homesteads have symbols next to them. Since we know the contents of this house we can figure out where Agnes is most likely to look next.”
“I should have known you were up to something.”
I spread out the big map and compared symbols. The house in town had three symbols: I, $ and *. The homestead I first stumbled on had: $, I, ^. So comparing the two I had to guess I was information, papers, financial statements, accounting books. $ would be money, although I didn’t see a box of money at the house, like I did at the homestead. Perhaps I needed to be a bit more thorough in my investigating. I had been focused on jewelry. The two symbols that varied were the * and ^. If I had to take a wild guess I’d say the ^ was the roof of a house and the homestead had contained household belongings: China, personal belongings, silverware, that kind of thing. So the * was the mysterious symbol that might mean jewelry. Maybe it reminded the owner of the facets of a diamond. I looked on the map for other * signs. There were two others. One was a place I hadn’t checked out yet. The other was the homestead in the hills with the well that I had spent all day investigating.
“I’ll go back to this one alone,” I told Rusty. “I’ve already been out there. I searched all over the area and didn’t run into any booby traps. Whatever is hidden there is just hidden very, very well. Seems like each family hid their valuables as well as they could. I guess how they chose to hide their possessions depended on their experience with the people they were hiding them from. One thing I don’t understand is why these things are still there. You’d think someone in the past eighty years would have ventured up into that attic. I don’t get it.”
“Maybe they weren’t put there eighty years ago.”
“But then why put them there? Why not rent a storage unit or a safe deposit box? There are better ways to keep things around than hiding them in ruined houses.”
“That, I don’t know. I’m only speculating. We have two choices. The new site or the old one.”
“The new one. Agnes went for the house in town first. The one I have already been to is the most remote. Agnes would probably visit the closer one first.”
“Think we’re too late?”
“Not if we hurry.”
“You want to go out there today?”
“Why not?”
“Getting shot at and falling through a floor wasn’t enough for one day?”
“I wasn’t shot at. I was very careful not to get shot at. And I didn’t exactly fall through the floor. I jumped.”
“Did you have to take two guys down with you?”
“If they’d stepped back one more step they wouldn’t have fallen through. Let me put on some desert gear if we’re going out there. The tracks I saw at the house were recent, yesterday, maybe today. If we’re going to catch Agnes or prevent her from walking into danger we have to get out there.”
“Wear your vest,” he reminded me.
“I don’t know if I should. I’ve been shot at more in the vest than without it. I think it has a sign on it that says ‘shoot me.’”
“Wear it.”
I always put on my bulletproof vest with mixed emotions. It was a gift to me from a father whose son I found dead from hypothermia. It was a reminder of a failure. A tragic failure. Yet it had saved my life more than once. What an ironic twist. I couldn’t save Carl Cranston but his father had saved me.
I dropped the rental car keys in Rusty’s hand as we went out.
“What’s this?”
“You’re used to your Explorer. You don’t remember how limited a car is. See how far it gets us. I bet we end up walking a mile or more.”
“We don’t have time to be walking a mile to this place.”
“Sure we do. I’ve been doing it all week.”
“Okay, I get the point. Let’s take the Explorer.”
I thought we’d end up taking it anyway because that’s where all Rusty’s gear was.
It bothered me that all the places I’d been to on the map were almost obliterated. There were plenty of houses around from the 1920’s but not these houses. And they all belonged to one family. A big family to be sure but it seemed someone at one time must have had a vendetta. I hoped it didn’t carry on for eighty years but the traps we were running into were not eighty years old. It was a little worrisome.
This site, as well, was mostly just an abandoned burned out house. Only one charred wall and the foundation remained. The foundation was cement. No place to hide things under there. We searched the edges of the foundation for a way underneath but found nothing. I searched the area for tracks.
“Now what do we do? We can’t stake out this place hoping Agnes will walk up to it. She could see us from a mile away. I know I could do it if I was alone but I don’t think we want to dig foxholes for a team of cops to lay out here in wait. If Agnes didn’t show we’d never hear the end of it.”
“Do you think Agnes knows what to look for? She may be looking for a structure like the house in town was.”
“Well, so far that’s the only one that has had some of the building remaining. Most of them are like this. But the map had symbols by this place. Where could they have hidden things here?”
“Maybe they burned with the house.”
“I’m not counting on it. I’m going to do some poking around.”
“Where? There’s no place to look.”
“There are always places to search. Maybe I’ll only find rabbit tracks but there’s always something.”
I began walking. There was a little dip in the land that I couldn’t see a reason for so I followed that. It was almost like a path and it bugged me. It wasn’t a place where water had run off. Those kinds of little dips in the land were common on the desert but they were unmistakable for what they were. They looked like itty bitty pre-arroyos. This wasn’t one of those. Another reason for small dips in the land were man made ridges, again, to channel water and prevent erosion in some unwanted place. This wasn’t that either. The only other reason I could think of for that little dip to be there was a very well-worn path. A human game trail.
Rusty followed my actions knowing something was brewing but he couldn’t imagine what. He probably thought I was wasting my time. As far as I was concerned the time spent exploring homesteads was more worthwhile than puttering around a clean house looking for things to do.
The path didn’t go very far. I almost didn’t see what it led to. At first I thought it was the hole where an outhouse had once stood. Then I thought it was something that had been buried and dug up. But then I noticed a roof of sorts. It almost looked like another foundation but as I examined the layout of it. I realized it was like a root cellar. The desert winds had blown in sand and it had filled in the doorway and covered over the roof. Rusty watched me as I walked around what looked like a dent in the ground. I walked around on the roof, noticing it gave underneath its load of sand. I kicked at the edges of it and heard sand filter down through the shake shingles.
“Go get the flashlight,” I told Rusty.
Starting at one edge I pulled the sand away until I found the corner of the roof. I found the shingles loose and wobbly. They were cracked with age and a couple of them broke apart when I tried jiggling them. I pulled the shingles off until I uncovered enough of the roof to slip through. All the wood was rotten. Water had seeped through the shingles and settled on the planks beneath. After the planks had rotted, water had seeped into the cellar. Rusty handed me the flashlight and I shined it down in the hole. It was a damp and clammy place.
“If there was ever a gun positioned down there it’s rusted together with age. Take a look.”
Rusty shined the light down into the hole.
“How do you see these things? I’d have walked right over it thinking it was a sand dune.”
“Walk on it. You’ll see it feels like an old roof. I’m going in.”
“Cass, you jump into these things too quickly. There’s no use in going down there. You’re not going to find Agnes down there and it could be another trap.”
“If it is, it’s a very old trap. Hand me the flashlight.” He hesitated. “If there’s something down there we need to know. Agnes’s map might make this look attractive enough for her to do some searching here. If it’s worth her while then we ought to know.”
“How are you going to get out?”
“Well, hopefully, you’ll give me a hand.”
“If I wasn’t here, you’d still go in.”
“Yeah, but I’d have a surer way of getting out first.”
Another visual check and I dropped into the hole. Rusty probably would have gone first if I’d given him the chance but the hole wasn’t big enough and I was the curious one. I dropped into a squishy quagmire of stinky mud.
“Ugh! If there’s something down here it better be good and it better be up off the ground!”
I followed the floor of the cellar to the back wall, my feet making a sucking sound whenever I pulled them out of the mud. The cellar wasn’t large. I could barely stand up in it. Rusty would have to crouch over if he went in.
Rusty began walking around on the roof, seeing if it really did feel like an old roof. Sand filtered down on top of me.
“It’s awful enough down here without you adding to it!” I called up.
In the back wall little mailbox-sized holes had been dug and I found rusty farming tools stashed in them. The farm was long gone. Desert had reclaimed it but still the tools remained. A wall of rocks hid something. I took the rocks down one by one.
“Cassidy? You okay?” Rusty called down.
“Yeah, just looking around. No jewelry yet.”
I decided the one rock at a time method was too slow so I tried pulling the wall over. The rocks tumbled down into a heap and I shined the flashlight over them. I stepped over the pile and entered a small cave dug out of the back of the cellar. It was a small space, about the size of a card table. The rock wall had kept out the water so the floor was dry. I sat cross-legged inside. Dirt. And rock. Just a small cave dug out of the cellar.
Suddenly outside there was a splintering, crashing roar, and dust filled the little cave. I crawled to the opening and where the cellar had once been there was an immense pile of wood and sand.
“Cassidy!” Rusty called. He scrambled around on the pile pulling shingles and boards away. Looking for any way down through the mess. I couldn’t see him, only hear him, and he was frantic.
All I could do was cough and wait for the dust to settle.
“Cassidy! Say something, please!”
“I’m okay!” I yelled between coughs. “I’m stuck, but I’m okay.”
He heaved a sigh of relief. “I thought I’d killed you. Where are you?”
“I’m behind the back wall of a cellar. I’m sealed in but I don’t think I’m in any danger.”
“You were right, it’s an old roof.”
“You could have just trusted me, you know.”
I shined the flashlight around the little cave. It was definitely man made. The walls were straight and the corners were neat. But that was it. At first. Since I had plenty of time to kill down there I started examining closer.
“I need tools to get you out. Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah. Go for it. I’m not hurt. Nobody’s going to sneak up on me while you are gone. There’s no booby trap. I’m fine.”
Silence settled in when he left. I focused on the cave. If that proved to be a waste of time I’d see about getting out of there. I didn’t know where I would put the dirt and lumber but I’d try. I shined the light along the wall. Still dirt and rocks. I thought the placement of the larger rocks was odd. I tried to think about other places I’d seen with exposed dirt. Arroyos. Arroyos sometimes had imbedded rocks in the sides, but not like this. I pried at a rock with my fingers. It didn’t budge. I picked out a smaller rock and used it to scrape away the dirt around the edges of the bigger rock, then I tried prying the rock loose again. It fell to the ground in front of me with a heavy thud. Behind it, a hole had been dug in the wall, similar to the ones that the farm tools were in. I reached in automatically fearing scorpions or rattlesnakes but knowing sand sharks would be more likely. This hole had been blocked off for a long time.
What I felt puzzled me. I pulled out an odd object. Oh shit! Damn it, Cassidy! I couldn’t drop it, it could go off. Since it was not triggering at the moment, I froze and examined the object. Okay, Cassidy, you can breathe again. Think, think. You’re in a little cave with a live trap. You can’t get away from it. Disarm it. I was afraid to move my hand. The trap was rusted so it was possible it was safe but I couldn’t be sure. The device was a shotgun shell attached to a rattrap. Only the rust had kept me from losing my face. It was still dangerous. I realized I couldn’t let the spring go without the arm hitting the head of the shell. Damn. I pointed the shell away from me and felt with my other hand in the hole. I pulled out…a small bar of gold. Not exactly what Agnes was hoping for but I bet she would be intrigued enough to look further. I put it back and put the trap in the hole so that if it went off it would fire into the back of the hole. Oh man, now that I looked at the walls there were several similar odd rocks. How many of them held traps? Did I dare open another one?
Rusty, why did you have to go away right when I need to be talked out of something? I counted the odd rocks. There were a lot of them. I looked at the placement of them. I picked one that I could easily stay out of the way of, if it went off. Then I braced myself to the side of it, scraped away the dirt around the edges and pried. The angle was awkward but I wasn’t going to put myself in the line of fire. A couple more scrapings and more prying and the rock fell out. Instead of a thud, an explosion filled the small cave, making me jump! The shot blasted the far wall of the cave and dust and rocks flew everywhere. So that’s what the first one was supposed to do. I was glad I was prepared when one really went off! I coughed and fanned at the cloud of gunpowder that filled the little cave. I certainly didn’t want my air contaminated any more than it already was.
Okay, Cass, the trap is sprung, it can’t hurt you now. I reached into the hole, still staying well out of the way. I pulled out a small leather box. The leather was worn and the top layer was curled with age. I shook the box gently. It sounded promising. I opened the box, pointing it away from myself as I did. I was getting paranoid. I didn’t even trust a little box. When nothing happened I looked inside.
Well, Agnes, here you go. Inside were two finely crafted rings and brooches. All the pieces were obviously handmade and each ring and brooch set was made to be worn together. How many other holes contained jewelry? There were several of them I didn’t dare open because I couldn’t get out of the way of them. Then I thought that there had to be a way to remove the contents without triggering a trap, otherwise, how would the real owners get them out? Since the trap was tripped and there was nothing in there to hurt me I reached into the back of the hole. I carefully felt around and realized the back of one hole had an opening to the next. I sat back. It was possible, if one started in the right spot, to deactivate the traps. Would it work backwards? What would happen if the shot went off and the rock was still over the opening? Would the rock take the hit or would I get beaned by a softball sized rock? Would it set off a chain reaction inside the little labyrinth behind the wall? I sat back and calmed my frazzled nerves. I didn’t want to mess with a wall of booby traps but I wanted to satisfy my curiosity. So far I had found jewelry but not enough to really tempt Agnes. I wanted to know if there was more. And I was curious if I could outsmart this wall. It was a puzzle. As I sat there thinking about how I would go about solving the puzzle I heard a scraping sound outside.
“Cassidy? Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I yelled back. “I’m fine. I found something.”
“What?”
“I found a little bar of gold and a little box with some jewelry in it.”
“Help will be coming soon.”
“No problem. I’ve got a puzzle to work on. If you hear weird sounds don’t panic.”
I didn’t want to use the word explosion because he’d worry. An explosion is a weird sound, right? I was glad he wasn’t here for the first weird sound. I hoped there wouldn’t be more.
Okay, Cass, how can you see what’s in the next hole without setting off a trap? I stuck my hand into the safe hole. Remembering that a shotgun blast could knock a good sized hole in a door, I decided getting beaned by a rock was a very real possibility. I felt the back of the next hole over. An object was lying in the back. I scooted the object in the back until it bumped gently against the object in the front. Okay, that hole wasn’t safe. I removed the object that was in the back. It was another little box, which contained a pocket watch. I thought about the positioning of the trap. It would be pointed towards the opening of the hole. Nervously, and very gingerly, I turned the trap to face the back of the cave. Now if it went off it wouldn’t shoot forwards, only to holes I’d already emptied. So far so good.
“Cassidy?”
Who was that?
“Yeah?”
“Just keeping tabs. You okay?” It was Antonio Rodriguez. Rusty had enlisted the help of the closest Fire Department.
“Yeah, so far so good.”
“She’s up to something,” said Rusty to Antonio. “She’s being too quiet.”
More voices outside.
“So what are we doing?”
“Cassidy? What part of the cellar are you in?”
“If you were to enter at the door, just go straight back and then to the right.”
“How far is it from the door to the back?”
“About five paces.”
I heard digging overhead. I was almost disappointed that my time was limited.
Okay, the trap is turned to the back of the cave. All it can do is blast a hole in the side of the little niche and back the way I’d already come. I thought it was safe to try the rock. I scraped the sand away around the front of the rock and when it was loose I held it in place. I removed it slowly feeling for a trip line. Carefully, I scooted the trap to the back of the hole and into the hole behind, always keeping the shot pointed away from me and away from more traps. I stuck my hand into the hole and felt for the next.
It was a tense time knowing any moment a shotgun blast could rip through rock. I found several pieces of jewelry, enough to tempt Agnes. When the guys pulled away the last of the roof and peeked in at me they found me shoulder deep, feeling my way through the wall. I pulled my arm out.
“What are you doing in there?” Antonio asked.
“Only one of you at a time will fit in here. Let Rusty in first. He’ll want to call in a team to deactivate all these things.”
The guys exchanged glances.
“Don’t touch that one,” I said. “It’s rusty but it’s still very much alive. Here’s the one I accidentally tripped.”
I handed the trap to Rusty and he blanched.
“Where did you find this?” he asked.
“See these rocks? The bigger ones that don’t seem to fit in? Behind each one is a hole with something stashed in it. In the front of the hole is one of these. Behind the trap is other stuff. Look, I found three boxes of jewelry, and one pocket watch. It’s a death trap for Agnes. We have to disarm it all before she gets here.”
“How did you get all this out if there’s a trap in each hole?”
“See the last hole? That’s the one that went off. After it was tripped I could reach from one hole to another. Each of these other holes has the trap scooted to face the back where it couldn’t do any damage while I went on to the next one. Once I saw the system it wasn’t hard to carefully work my way down the row.”
He took a deep breath.
“You were trapped in a small cave with all these traps and you spent the time trying to figure out how to outsmart them? Cass, you could have killed yourself.”
“Only by the first one and that one didn’t fire.”
He ran his fingers through his hair.
“And I was worried about the roof coming down on you! Out!”
“I will as soon as you move.”
We crawled out of the little cave. I made sure to take the safe trap along to show the team what they were in for.
“I’m never letting you out of my sight again. I turn my back on you for a second and the next thing I know everything falls apart; you play deadly games in close quarters with explosives. Why? Cassidy, it was something that could wait. We could have called in a team and had it all disarmed. We have experts for this. What made you think you could just disarm a wall of traps and take the things out with you?”
“I had it figured out before I tried anything. I thought it through. You gave me plenty of time to do that. Look, I got through one whole row without getting hurt. I found out what we came here to find out. There’s definitely enough jewelry in there to send Agnes on a treasure hunt. Look at these.” He opened the little boxes. “And that’s just one row’s worth.”
“Next time I’m going in first,” he stated flatly.
“If you had gone in first you would have said there was nothing in there but a bunch of farming tools. You take in what you see and you don’t get curious about oddities. We would have gone on to the next spot on the map without knowing anything about that little cave.”
“Okay, next time I’ll go in first and then you can look for oddities.”
The firemen were putting their tools away.
“Antonio, Roger, thanks for coming out. I hope Rusty didn’t make it sound like too much of an emergency.”
“He was pretty calm this time. But we never know when it comes to you,” Antonio said.
“Yeah,” said Roger, “your circumstances have a way of turning in an instant, just like they could have today.”
“Aw, guys I knew what I was doing or I wouldn’t have chanced it. You think I want to set off booby traps in confined places?”
Antonio raised an eyebrow. He wasn’t sure.
Rusty’s team arrived and I showed them what they were up against and then turned them over to Rusty.
“Remember how we didn’t want the contents of the homestead publicized? Well, having a bomb squad empty this cave isn’t going to help that cause. You can count on word of this getting out. When you throw a rock at a pack of dogs the one that gets hit yelps. Let’s hope no one yelps when this gets around. Be prepared for a call to Schroeder’s office. He’s going to need an explanation and he’s not going to take my explanation alone. He’ll stand up for you but you’ve got to show him we had reason to be out here.”