Chapter 2 - THE ECHO BENEATH THE LAWN
Richard Hawthorne stared blankly at the silver signet ring for a long minute before his grief hardened back into the steel-willed resolve that had built his empire. He looked up, his eyes bloodshot but razor-sharp.
“Thomas,” Richard said, his voice dropping into a dangerous register. “The police searched every inch of this property three years ago. They said Leo walked out the front gates with a backpack and caught a train to New York. If his ring is buried out there... it means someone lied.”
“Mr. Hawthorne,” Thomas said, taking a cautious step closer to the desk, lowering his voice to a whisper. “The ring isn't the only thing I found.”
Richard narrowed his eyes. “What are you talking about?”
“When I was digging out the trench near the eastern culvert, I noticed the masonry of the old storm drain was cracked. It’s an old brick tunnel built back in the 1920s that leads down toward the river. But someone had wedged a fresh slab of slate over the opening from the inside, camouflaged with moss.”
Richard stood up instantly, the chair scraping loudly against the hardwood floor. “A drain? Where does it lead?”
“Nowhere official,” Thomas swallowed hard. “It dead-ends beneath the western terrace, right under the master suite’s outdoor patio. But Mr. Hawthorne... when I cleared the slate, the air coming out of that pipe was warm. And I smelled something. Coffee. Freshly brewed coffee, mixed with mildew.”
The color drained from Richard’s face a second time today, but this time it was replaced by pure, unadulterated shock.
“That’s impossible,” Richard muttered, grabbing his suit jacket off the back of his chair. “Show me.”
Ten minutes later, the two men stood knee-deep in the wet underbrush of the eastern perimeter. The morning sun struggled to pierce the dense canopy of pine trees, casting long, eerie shadows across the damp earth.
Thomas pointed to a jagged opening in the stone embankment where a rusted iron drainage pipe protruded from the hillside. The heavy slate slab Thomas had moved earlier lay cracked on the moss beside it.
Richard stepped forward, ignoring the mud soaking into his expensive Italian leather shoes. He dropped to one knee, ignoring the thorns snagging his wool trousers, and peered into the dark, circular mouth of the brick tunnel.
“Hello?” Richard called out, his voice echoing hollowly down the damp corridor. “Is someone there?”
Silence answered him. Only the dripping of distant water and the rustle of wind through the pine needles above.
Then, a sound cut through the silence.
A sharp, metallic clink, followed by the distinct sound of a hurried, muffled footstep scrambling deeper into the dark recesses of the earth beneath the mansion.
Richard scrambled backward, grabbing Thomas’s arm with a grip like iron.
“They’re down there,” Richard whispered, his chest heaving. “Someone has been living underneath my house... right under our feet.”
“More than living there, Mr. Hawthorne,” Thomas said grimly, pointing down at a discarded paper cup lying half-buried in the mud near the pipe entrance.
Printed on the side of the cup was a logo from a local coffee shop in town—a shop that had only opened six months ago.
May you like
Leo had vanished three years ago.
If someone was down there drinking coffee from a shop opened six months ago, it meant Leo hadn't run away three years ago. Or worse... he hadn't left at all.
