Free The Girl in the Box 01 - Alone by Robert J. Crane

man with a sense of humor. The screens and windows of the porch were all boarded up and covered – so that when Mom left in the morning, I couldn’t see outside.
    It was dark as we stepped into the entry. The lights were on, but they didn’t cast much light compared to even the cloudy sky outside. I looked around the living room. Everything was where we left it, upturned furniture and all. There were a few darts sticking out of the walls, and a couple of the agents were chuckling over them.
    I smiled as I passed them and brushed into my room. A few articles of clothing were on the bed, not where I left them, since the last thing I did before I left was sleep and then whoop the hell out of Zack and Kurt.
    I felt Zack edge up behind me. “If your men didn’t move these clothes around, someone else has been here,” I told him.
    He had the radio plugged back in and I saw his fingers move to touch his ear. “Did anyone move any clothes in this room?” He paused for a moment, waiting for responses, then looked back at me and shook his head. “Guess he’s been here.”
    “Or someone has,” I replied.
    He handed me a black duffel bag that he’d had slung over his shoulder. “Get what you came for and let’s go.”
    I threw some clothes in the bag at random, then tossed in my eskrima sticks after retrieving them from where I left them behind the couch in the living room. As I picked them up I half-smiled, half-frowned as I remembered leaving them behind while I crawled away from Kurt as he fired his dart gun at me.
    “Is that it?” Zack’s voice almost cracked with the sound of his nerves. “Can we go yet?”
    “Just a few more things,” I said as I headed toward the door to the basement. My hand froze for a moment at the handle, then I slowly turned it. “Anyone down there?” I asked as I hovered in the doorjamb, waiting for Zack’s answer.
    He shot a look at the other agents in the room. “Not right now.”
    The white plaster of the living room walls gave way to concrete block at the entry to the basement. The staircase made an abrupt turn to the left ahead, following the foundation of the house. The steps were an old, unvarnished wood, and the only illumination was the single light overhead. I used to walk down these steps several times per day, but it was the last time I came up them that was giving me pause.
    I reached the landing and turned, most of my thoughts about Wolfe forgotten. I knew he wasn’t down here. The smell of old sweat, blood and other foulness filled the air.
    I looked back at Zack and saw him scrunch his nose in displeasure at the aroma. “Did your mother kill someone down here?”
    I didn’t blink. “No. But not for lack of trying.”
    He laughed, and I continued down the last few steps and felt the concrete underfoot. Even though there was a thick sole on the boots I was wearing, my mind filled in the sensation from the thousands of times I had trod these floors barefoot while Mom was away, giving my feet a ghostly feel of the familiar chill. It crept up my legs, infusing my body, and I felt an involuntary tremor run through me.
    The smell was worse down here, and my eyes wandered over our assorted weapons, hanging from hooks on the far wall. Katanas, nunchuks, scythe, rapiers and so many more. Mats covered the floors in the middle of the room and pipes crisscrossed the ceiling overhead from the exposed beams of the floor above. A slight clinking could be heard from overhead, as well as soft footsteps of the agents treading upstairs.
    A couple of buried windows provided a little bit of light in the back, but they were covered by a film of white, providing enough opacity that it was impossible to distinguish anything through them. For illumination there were three naked bulbs swinging from the ceiling. In the far corner I could see the faint outline of a blocky shape in the shadows and the tremor got a little worse; I shook for a second.
    I had halted in place and I felt Zack’s