Chapter 52 - The Dial Tone of the Damned
The ladder plummeted twenty feet into cold, dry subterranean silence. My boots struck a floor of smooth, poured terrazzo. Julian dropped down beside me, slamming the heavy iron hatch shut with both hands. He grabbed a massive steel locking wheel set into the rim and spun it until the three-inch deadbolts drove home with a concussive thud that vibrated through the stone.
Above us, the muffled sound of boots stomping on the iron hatch was faint, like thunder trapped behind a distant mountain.
"We have roughly ten minutes before they bring thermal cutting torches," Julian said, breathing hard in the dark. He flicked on his tactical penlight.
The beam cut through a wide, vaulted chamber lined with green bank-teller lamps and floor-to-ceiling rows of industrial steel shelving. But it wasn't an abandoned bunker. The air was warm, circulating from hidden filtered vents. In the center of the room sat an enormous mahogany pedestal desk.
Sitting behind it was a rotary telephone, its brass bell still vibrating.
Beside the phone lay a leather-bound ledger, bound with green ribbon, and a pair of gold-rimmed reading glasses resting atop a fresh cup of black coffee from which a thin wisp of steam curled into the sterile air.
The chair, upholstered in red oxblood leather, was empty.
"He was just here," Julian said, raising his weapon, sweeping the beam across the perimeter of the room. "There’s an egress."
I walked toward the desk. The coffee smelled of roasted chicory—the way the old man had always taken it. I picked up the heavy black receiver of the rotary phone and pressed it to my ear.
May you like
The line hissed with static, and then a rasping breath filled my ear.
"You took your sweet time leaving them, Clara," my grandfather’s voice purred directly into my skull. "Twenty-five years of feeding swine on silver platters. Tell me... did your mother cry when she realized the checks wouldn't clear?"
