Chapter 139 Secret Passageway
Xavier's P.O.V.
I get my gun and flashlight as I open the bedroom door. I want to tell Sarah to stay here, but I won't. For one, I don't know what's going on, and I feel better about her safety if she’s with me.
"Whoever is fucking with us is going to get their head beaten in," Sarah whispers angrily as we step out into the dark hallway. Yeah, I'd better keep her with me. Shoot, I may need her for backup. When we get down the hall, Tyler peeks his head out of the door.
"Stay with Shea. We'll let you know what's going on," I tell him. I don't want Shea to be left alone after what happened to her. Tyler nods and shuts the door. When we reach the stairs, Galdino is waiting for us.
"One of my men said there was an explosion at the back of the property. He said it looked like someone threw something over the wall, but someone else must have cut the electricity," he says softly. He glances at Sarah but doesn't say anything. I look at her, too, and she's holding a long knife. Where the hell did she get that? I have no doubt she knows how to use it.
"We're going to search downstairs. Will you search up here?" He nods and pulls out a gun as he walks down the hallway. Sarah and I slowly descend the stairs. I don't believe Galdino's men would have let anyone in, so how did someone turn off the electricity? When we reach the bottom, I look both ways but still don't see anyone. We walk toward the kitchen and run into two of Galdino's men.
"Have you seen anyone?" I ask.
"Not yet. Most of the men are outside searching the grounds," one of the men replies.
"We'll go this way. You guys go search down there," I tell them, pointing behind Sarah and me. They nod and walk away. We continue to the kitchen, and it's empty. We search every room on this side of the house and don't find anyone. Galdino and the two men we saw earlier are at the front door when we reach it.
"Did you find anyone?" I ask them.
"No. One of my men is working on getting the electricity back on. Did you guys see Noah? He wasn't in his room," Galdino says. I look at Sarah when she begins running up the stairs.
"We didn't see him," I reply as I follow Sarah. The lights come on when we reach Noah's room, and dread washes over me. Noah's computer is smashed, and there are things all over the floor as though there was a struggle.
"Not Noah. Xavier, we have to find him. He has autism and is okay when he's with people he knows, but he won't do well with strangers in a stressful situation," Sarah says. I wrap my arms around her.
"I promise we'll find him. We have to call Dakota and go to the security room to see if the cameras picked up anything." We run back downstairs and go to the security room. Galdino and some of his men are already there.
"Noah is gone. He wouldn't have left with them willingly, and his computer is smashed," Sarah tells them. They rewind the camera footage to right before the lights went out. The security system and cameras are hard-wired, so they should have continued recording as long as they weren't tampered with.
We see the men walking the grounds and nothing in the house for several minutes until a man wearing a black mask appears almost out of nowhere. He's walking through the house as if he knows exactly where he's going.
"Where did he come from?" Sarah asks. The footage is rewound and played slower.
"Stop it there. He was hiding in the pantry." I point to the shadow in the kitchen. When the video begins again, we see him shut the pantry door.
"He was probably already here when we came home," Sarah says. Dakota trusted me with the security here, and I have already let her down. If I had searched the house when we came home, I would have found this man, and Noah wouldn't be missing.
The video continues, and we watch the man go up the stairs to Noah's room. A few minutes later, two men appear, and they're carrying Noah. The electricity goes out when they reach the bottom of the stairs, but the cameras continue recording. They disappear when they go through the kitchen. None of the cameras shows them leaving outside.
"Search the grounds again now," I have to call Dakota. Galdino leaves with the men, and I hold Sarah while she cries.
"Hello?" Dakota answers.
"It's Xavier. Men broke into the compound. They turned off the electricity, caused an explosion at the back of the property, and kidnapped Noah. It looked like they were hiding here before we left the hospital. We're searching the grounds now because we didn't see how they left. It looked like they disappeared." I wait for her to respond. I expect her to cry or yell or something, but she doesn't.
"I don't blame you, Xavier; I know that's what you're thinking. There's a hidden passageway that only a few people know about under the house. Go to the back of the pantry and push the wall to open it. They probably took him out that way. I'm going to call my parents to come and stay with Ari and Luka so I can go home." She disconnects the call.
"Dakota said there's a hidden passageway in the pantry." Sarah and I run downstairs to the pantry. I go to the back, push the wall, and it opens. We go down the stairs where there's another door. I open it and listen to see if I hear anything.
"I never knew this was here," Sarah says as I take her hand. Dim lights are lining the walls. We run through the passage as it twists and turns until we reach a door at the end. I open it, and a flight of stairs leads to another door. When we open it, we're on the other side of the wall at the back of the property, and there's a road. This is how they got Noah, but who knows about it?
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Noah's P.O.V.
My head hurts. What happened? I try to open my eyes, but they feel like they have sand in them. I try to move, but my hands and feet feel stuck.
"It looks like our guest is waking up," an unfamiliar voice says. I open my eyes and see two men sitting across from me. After blinking a couple of times, I can see their faces. One I don't know, but the other one I know well. It takes me a minute to realize he's not tied up like I am. He stands and pats my head.
"I knew you'd be the best one to take. You've always been Dakota's pet. You've grown up to be a big man, but to me, you'll always be a little dummy."