Midnight Hour by Abby L. Vandiver

Author:Abby L. Vandiver
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: CROOKED LANE BOOKS

Amanda rearranged the cubes as though playing a shell game with the dice. “What could it mean?”

“Definitely a code of some sort,” I said. “Dots … could it be Morse?”

“No. That would be dots and dashes.”

“Anything else interesting about the dice?”

She held a die in her hand, rubbing the surface with her fingers. “Strange. The dots feel raised, almost like they’re filled in with puff paint.”

“Kind of like Braille,” I said.

“You’re right. But how will we figure out the message, then?”

“Let me try. I took a specialized class in college.”

“Really?” Amanda stared at me.

“Yeah. Remember I wanted to go into optometry?”

Her eyebrows rose. “Thought you changed your mind senior year when we did that cow eye dissection.”

“I gave it a second chance in college. Now, let me see those cubes.”

After taking extra time to feel their contours and with some mumbling under my breath, I said, “I think they stand for the letters A, S, and U. What could that mean?”

We both looked around the garage until Amanda drew my attention to the large U.S. flag. “That’s got to be it. We just needed to rearrange the letters to get the clue.”

Lifting the flag up revealed a hidden door behind it. But we couldn’t find any sort of opening mechanism. No handles or locks or anything.

After pounding on it for several fruitless moments, I said, “Did we miss something? Maybe there’s something in the other jeans pocket.”

“I’ll look,” Amanda said, as she beelined for the red Marlboro box she’d left on the desk. She made sure to tuck the box in her bag and winked at me. “No one will even notice it’s gone.”

She took the jeans and examined each pocket. Then she started flipping the jeans inside out. As I watched her work, the lantern slipped from my hand and dropped onto the floor. The hidden door sprang open.

Excited, I rushed through the new doorway and kicked over the lantern. I saw it tilt sideways, spilling out oil before the door closed on me. “What just happened?”

Amanda’s voice rose in volume and sounded panicked. “Mandy, where’d you go?”

“I fell through the door. Must have triggered a hidden weight sensor somehow.”

“Do you see the bank treasure? That’ll be the last clue to get the door code.”

“Can’t see a thing. I dropped my lant—”

A high-pitched scream came through the divider. “The straw’s on fire. Come out and help me.”

I made a few ineffectual knockings against the sliding wall between us. Nothing doing. The temperature in the inner area seemed to be growing hotter from the flames beyond the door. But the concrete material of this room should withstand the fire. Peering around, I hurried to the back window and slipped out into the cool night.

Amanda’s screaming kept going—until I shut the window behind me. From the outside, no one on the block could hear a thing.

My watch dinged. Time’s up.

How would Amanda fare? She didn’t have the combo for the side door and couldn’t pull open the main entryway. I doubted she could brave the flames and reach the hidden door in the back.

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