I parked almost on the far east end of Pearl Street and got out of the truck, grabbed the first aide kit stuffing it in a backpack, and left the truck unlocked—no Soul would ever steal it and if a human needed it that badly, then I was happy to be of service. Strolling along as if I did not have a care in the world, I walked west on Pearl, taking time to window shop and smile at other weekend shoppers. I spotted a hat stand, one that sold everything from cowboy hats to baseball hats to bunny ears and shawls. Trying on a few different styles, I selected a nice shawl and a horrendously ugly cowboy hat that had a tie-dye drape on the back to cover a man's neck from being burnt in the sun.
The vendor walked up to me and asked, "What's the occasion?"
"Oh," I said, "just meeting a few friends from out of town, I wanted to give them something to remember Pearl Street by."
The vendor nodded approvingly, giving me both items. I placed the shawl in the bag and the cowboy hat on my head so I could continue on up the street. I stopped by the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory to get some caramel apples, giving the employee there the same excuse before stuffing the wrapped treats in the backpack and walking on.
About two blocks into my stroll, I spotted the bookstore that Rob had described to me. I walked down the steps that led into the basement-level shop and spent a few minutes browsing around, smiling at the other customers and pretending to be interested in a few of the displayed books. After a few minutes, I walked up to the counter.
"Do you have a restroom I could use?" I asked politely, looking apologetic.
"Sure, no problem, it's in the back," the female clerk replied, getting up from her post behind the counter and leading me to the back of the store. She showed me the door that opened up into a hallway that had several doors leading from it. The first on my right had the restroom sign on it, and I smiled at the clerk gratefully.
"Thank you so much."
"You're welcome." She said, and turned to walk back out to the front of the store.
I entered the bathroom and counted to twenty before re-entering the hallway. It was dimly lit and there were three other doors besides the bathroom. The first, I knew, was for the water heater and air conditioner, but I opened it anyway, just to check. The second was to the storage room, which I also double-checked. That meant the last one on the left must be the staircase. I opened the door silently. Jackpot.
I stepped onto the narrow staircase, closing the door behind me, and began to climb to the next level. The door at the top of the stairs opened with a creak, and I found myself in another hallway, very similar to the first but with wood paneling on the walls. Silently repeating Rob's directions in my head, I began to look around for a knot in one of the panels on the west wall. Finding it, I put my finger in and pulled. Sure enough, the panel gave way, opening like a door, and another hallway appeared, this one with stairs leading both up toward the roof and down toward the basement. I carefully closed the wood panel using a handle that was on the inside, and then made my way down the dark stairs toward the basement. At the bottom, a faint light flickered underneath a door, and I knew that I had found them. Unsure as to the best way to go about it, I decided that maybe I should just let the video do the talking. I pulled out my phone, pulled up the video, and slid it through the slit beneath the door. I waited a moment and then knocked quietly.
"Rachel, Maria. My name is Burns. Watch the video that I just gave you. Rob sent me here to take you to safety."
Complete silence greeted my introduction. I waited, unsure of what my next move should be. A full minute passed. Then two. I began to wonder if I had just pushed my phone under some random door. I tried the handle; it did not budge. I took a seat on the steps and waited some more. My ears were listening for the slightest of sounds and my eyes were focused on the flickering light underneath the door. Just after I sat down, I thought I saw a shadow pass behind the door, but no sound came, so I dismissed the notion.
I spoke again, "The people in the store think I'm in the bathroom, I can't stay up here forever. Either come with me now or I'll have to bring Rob back tomorrow. He's willing to risk his life to save yours, but are you willing to put him in that position? Watch the video, I can get you out of here."
Still no sound came from the other side of the door. I stood up, knowing that if I was going to maintain my cover story, I could not stay here too long.
I sighed loudly and stood. I began to climb up the stairs, wondering what else I could do or say to get Rachel and Maria, who were surely on the other side of that door, to believe me. I was halfway up when I heard the door crack open. I turned to see a beautiful Latina woman stick her head out. Her huge brown eyes were filled with fear, but her lovely features held a determined expression, and she spoke to me quickly, her voice quiet and clear.
"You are a friend of Rob's?"
"Yes. Are you Rachel?"
She nodded. "And you are…" she hesitated, swallowing, "One of them? With silver eyes?"
"Yes." I stood frozen on the stairs, looking down at her in the dark, only barely able to make out her features in the candlelight that was coming through the crack in the door.
"You will take us to him?" She licked her lips nervously, glancing back into the room.
"Yes." I said, taking one step down the stairs, toward her. She reacted like a scared animal, disappearing before I knew what happened. I froze again, but when she did not reappear, I covered the remaining six steps slowly and pushed the still-cracked door open.
The room was tiny, maybe six feet by six feet and with low ceilings. I had to bend over to fit inside. It was furnished with a cot, a crate for a table that held a candle, and two more crates to hold food and dishes. The crate to hold food had only one half-eaten package of crackers and a can of tuna left. An army style duffle bag sat under the cot, apparently filled with clothes. There was a water basin filled with filthy water in one corner of the room and in another corner was a bucket whose duty I could easily guess. The whole room reeked of filth and sickness. Rachel was crouching on the floor in front of the cot, holding a frying pan in both hands like a weapon. She was trembling from head to toe, and I could see Maria lying on the cot behind her, breathing shakily. The room was cold, and though heavy blankets were on top of Maria, she was shivering beneath them. My phone was on the floor with a pair of earphones plugged into it.
The situation was far more destitute than I had anticipated. There was no way I was leaving without these women. I looked directly into Rachel's eyes, the silver from my own eyes dancing in the reflections from the candlelight, and approached her slowly. She remained motionless, her eyes widening with fear. The frying pan shook in her hands, but I gently put one hand on her wrists, my large hand easily covering both of hers, and placed my other hand on her shoulder. I eased the frying pan out of her grasp,
"Everything is going to be alright. I'm going to get you out of here." I told her quietly.
Rachel collapsed into sobs, and without knowing what else to do, I gathered her into my arms. She came willingly, crying into my shoulder with her arms on my chest. I patted her back soothingly, whispering "It's gonna be alright; it's gonna be alright." Over and over again. After a minute or two, she seemed to realize that she was sobbing in a complete stranger's embrace, and she pulled away, wiping her tears away with her sleeve.
"Sorry. I just…" She stopped trying to explain and simply shrugged, "Sorry."
She took a deep breath, and turned toward the little room, "Mama is not going to like this."
"Being rescued?" I asked incredulously.
"No, being rescued by you." She sighed. "She's so sick though, I don't think she would have lasted much longer down here."
"Neither of you would have." I said, exceedingly grateful that Rachel had decided to trust me today, rather than waiting until I had been forced to bring Rob tomorrow. It might have been too late.
"I have some medication that is going to help Maria. Rob warned us that she was ill, so I knew to come prepared?" I said, my tone making the statement a request for permission. Rachel just nodded.
I pulled off my backpack and set it on the ground, kneeling beside Maria. She was asleep on the cot, shivering with every breath. I quickly opened the first aide kit, and surveyed my choices. I had only ever treated injuries before, never illnesses, so I was unsure how quickly or well this was going to work. I gave a silent plea to the heavens that we would be able to help Maria enough to get out of here without attracting any attention and pumped a spray of mist from the Inside Clean in front of Maria's face, allowing her to inhale it. Next, I pulled out the No Pain, just in case, and slipped the thin piece of tissue onto her tongue, allowing it to dissolve. She was awakening now, so I stepped back, and let Rachel, who had been watching all of this in silence, take over.
The speed at which Maria sat up was alarming. She shoved Rachel behind her, grabbed the forgotten frying pan, and whisper-shouted, her accent thick and her gray hair wild about her sholders, "Who are you?" Her eyes were fierce and given how little space there was already in the tiny room, I jumped out the door.
Rachel was absolutely no help at all. She lay in the awkward position that Maria had shoved her into, completely mute, trying to give me some sort of silent message with her eyes. I went onto the defensive.
"Maria, Rob sent me here to help you. He knew that you were stuck here and sick so he sent me to come get you out of here. The phone," I pointed to my cell that was still on the floor with earphones attached to it, "has a video that explains everything. I'm not trying to hurt you, I'm trying to help you. But I don't have time to sit here and negotiate with you because the folks downstairs think I'm in the bathroom and pretty soon they are going to get concerned, or someone else is going to need to go and they'll find out that I'm not there anymore. I checked my watch. It had been eleven minutes since I had entered the bathroom. We really had to get going.
"We're not going anywhere with you." Maria declared furiously.
"Mama!" Rachel exclaimed, and then drew her breath in, clearly wishing she had not spoken at all. She lowered her eyes as Maria turned upon her.
"I've kept us alive this long and I'll continue to do so!" She hissed, and then she turned back to me, "You can leave."
"What am I going to tell Rob?" I asked, trying one more time to convince her to go with me.
"He's probably one of you by now, so tell him anything you want!" Maria shot back at me, and with that, she got up to shut the door in my face. Just before it shut, I caught a glimpse of Rachel's miserable expression, a tear creeping down one cheek.
I stood in shock for a second before I turned and started back up the stairs. I exited the secret hallway and then went back down the other narrow stairs to get back to the bookstore's back hallway. I slipped quietly into the store, grateful that my time away seemed to have gone by unnoticed, and grabbed a random book off a shelf, settling into one of the many available chairs. I opened to somewhere in the middle and began to read, or rather, pretend to read, all the while pondering the two ladies who were, at this moment, somewhere behind the wall I was sitting next to.