Read Identity (Eyes Wide Open) for Free Online Page B

it off every time he left. Someone was here, or had been.
    “Christy?”
    His voice echoed.
    A swirl of dust motes orbited the light bulb overhead. No sign that anything had been disturbed, except for…
    The stack of caskets beside the far wall drew his attention. The one Christy sat on last night had been moved. However stoic he might be, logic didn’t preclude the sudden rise in his concern.
    Austin slowly approached and leaned over the coffin, half expecting to see the worst. Nothing but a wooden floor. And a piece of jewelry he could hardly mistake.
    He reached down and plucked the object from the floor. Christy’s locket.
    Austin held it in front of him. The small heart dangled from the thin silver chain and swung under his hand. She must’ve dropped it last night and come back for it. So then, where was she?
    He looked again and only then noticed the hairline seam in the floor.
    Setting the locket down, he knelt behind the casket and traced the splintered boards with his finger. A trapdoor?
    His mind cycled through the scenarios. It was possible that she had fallen through, but into what? What was below? He’d never moved the caskets before.
    He braced one hand at the edge of the trapdoor and, with the other, gave the floor a sturdy shove. It opened downward. Spring-loaded.
    He leaned close, careful not to fall forward.
    “Christy?”
    His voice disappeared into the smudge of shadows below.
    Again he called her name, this time louder.
    Silence.
    She could’ve been trapped or might be lying injured in the darkness. Unconscious.
    He pulled his hand away and the door snapped back into place. He had to assume that she’d gone down. He also had to assume she was hurt. Or worse.
    Moving with urgency now, Austin hurried to the corner of the room where an old wooden extension ladder leaned against the wall behind the cluster of IV stands. He could use it to prop open one side of the trapdoor and climb down, assuming the old ladder wasn’t rotted through.
    It took him less than a minute to haul it over to the trapdoor, shove it down and through to prop the door open, and descend carefully, testing each rung as he lowered himself to the floor below.
    Light filtered in from above and illuminated the small concrete room around him. It was some sort of abandoned storage room. No sign of Christy.
    He dug his apartment key from his pocket and thumbed the attached penlight with RadioShack logo. He’d purchased this two years ago and never used it. Still worked.
    “Christy?” He walked to his right, sweeping the bluish-white circle of light from one side to the other. Crates of dust-covered bottles. Scattered newspapers. To his left, a large timber with an eyehook on it—a sliding door to a storage compartment maybe. Christy wasn’t here but someone had been recently: prints covered the dusty concrete.
    He peeled one of the old newspapers off the ground.
    December 18, 1923. A paper from the Prohibition era . The old hospital had been a hotel then. Someone had built this room to store and move illegal moonshine.
    His light zeroed in on the thick sliding timber in the wall. A way to pass illegal alcohol in and out of the building.
    He tilted his light down at the base of the wall. One of the bottle trays lay beside the tracks on the floor.
    The thought that he might miss his appointment hardly mattered to him in light of the unfolding evidence. If she’d fallen in, she’d also managed to get out, and the only way he could see was past that board.
    Austin held the light between his teeth, squatted, and gripped the bottom of the plank. It slid open with some effort, but it wasn’t terribly heavy. Christy could’ve managed.
    He nudged the crate into the gap with his foot and lowered the beam, wedging the crate between it and the floor.
    He shone his light inside what appeared to be a crawlspace that connected this room to another. The far end of it was covered by plywood. A sliver of light edged its perimeter. A way out.