Dark Abyss Kaitlyn O'Connor (best fiction books of all time .TXT) 📖

around Water City without wearing something. The uniforms may attract as much attention as the robes, but at least they’ll know we’re watchmen. I don’t think they’re as likely to fuck with us.”

They began to hear murmured comments from the crowd of gawkers about mutants as soon as they surfaced. Several people gasped when they shot out of the water and landed on the edge of the platform, but apparently Simon’s assumption was correct.

The entire crowd fell silent and seemed to take two steps back when they saw the uniforms they were wearing.

Ignoring them and the workers scowling at them for interrupting their work, Simon and Ian slowly walked the platform, scanning what little debris remained from the explosion. They’d combed the perimeter and began working their way in when Simon kicked aside a segment of wallboard and noticed a surprising regular crack beneath the flooring. Crouching, he pushed the rubble aside and studied the square.

Ian glanced around until he found a piece of wood that looked thin enough to wedge it into the crack. When it broke, Simon surged to his feet and approached the salvagers. “Any of you have a pry bar?”

After staring at him in antagonistic silence for several moments, one of the men reluctantly stepped forward. “I’ve got one. What do you need?”

Simon led him to the panel and pointed it out. Dropping to his knees, the man worked the pry bar in and worked it around until he finally managed to lift the panel. All three of them stared down into the dark hole beneath it.

“You ever seen a hatch like this in a house platform?” Simon asked the worker.

“Not like this,” the man said. “There’s usually a crawl space for getting to the pipes and duct work, but it ain’t usually more’n two to three feet.”

“I’ll check it out,” Ian volunteered.

Moving to the metal rungs set into one side of the tunnel, he tested the first few, discovered they were unstable and made his way down the hole carefully. He was back ten minutes later. “It goes all the way out the bottom.”

“So it’s access to the house—or was. I’m not sure what the point was,” Simon said slowly. “They could’ve planted the electronic surveillance before Anna moved in.”

Ian shrugged. “Cavendish had an escape tunnel in the fortress. Maybe he just likes to make sure there’s a backdoor nobody knows about?”

“Maybe.”

They closed it again, finished their survey and moved from the platform to the sidewalk of the house adjacent, watching the salvagers finish up and tug the platform away.

“You young fellas friends of Dr. Blake’s?”

Simon glanced down at the owner of the creaky voice and saw an elderly woman.

It flickered through his mind that he’d seen her when they arrived, standing among the other gawkers. “We are.”

“She ok?”

Some of the tension eased from him. “She’s in protective custody.”

The woman sniffed a little contemptuously. “In jail, you mean?”

Annoyance flickered through Simon. “No. I mean we have her in a safe house where we can be sure she won’t be kidnapped again.”

The old woman looked him up and down suspiciously. He more than half expected a snide comment about them being mutants. She surprised him. “I guess I may as well give you fellas her stuff, then. You can take it to her?”

Simon exchanged a look with Ian. “We can.”

She turned and hobbled away and he saw she was heading toward the house that had been directly behind Anna’s. Exchanging a curious look with Ian, they followed her.

“Wipe your feet before you come in.”

Amusement flickered through Simon. “Yes, ma’am. We’re still a little damp.”

“Well, don’t be sittin’ on my furniture then! You may as well come on back here. This stuff’s too heavy for me to be pickin’ up anyway.”

Shrugging, intrigued despite themselves, they followed her all the way through the house and out onto a screened in porch. The odor of burned materials wafted to them as soon as they stepped out.

“Don’t know if any of it’s any good. Couldn’t get the smell of smoke out of it, but I figured she’d want to look at it herself.”

Simon and Ian approached the pile and stared down at it. He didn’t recognize any of it as Anna’s, but it had clearly been taken from the fire. “You collected this from Anna’s place?” he asked dubiously, struggling with the fact that the old woman had removed it from a crime scene.

“Some of it. The damned cops was haulin’ everything off as fast as they could and I figured there weren’t no tellin’ if she’d ever get any of it back or not. So I waited until they wasn’t lookin’ and picked up what I seen that looked like it might still be good.

Most of it landed in my yard, though, when the house blew up, some of it on my roof or the roofs of some of the other houses. I paid a boy that does some work for me from time to time to get the stuff off my roof and he brought me a few things he found.”

Simon couldn’t decide if he was more horrified that the old woman had removed things from the crime scene or more amused—or excited. “The cops didn’t check out your roof for debris?”

“Well, I’d done got it all before they thought about it. They was too busy trolling up and down the water lookin’ for stuff to think about the roofs till the next day.”

“Ma’am,” Ian said hesitantly. “You know this is part of an ongoing investigation, don’t you?”

She looked at him indignantly. “It’s hers.