In the hallway, he saw light reflected in standing water. The crushed stone floor of the corridor had been dry the night before. He’d dealt with flooding in the past, but not on this scale, and not since he’d completed Paige’s case. He walked the tray back to the shelf, flipped the second light switch. The fluorescents painted the stone-walled hallway a sickly, pale blue. The puddle extended ten feet either direction from Paige’s door. The area further down the hall near the playroom looked dry.

“Son of a bitch.”

He took off his shoes, rolled the ends of his jeans.

Outside the door, the water pooled well past his ankles. He looked through the three-inch vertical window. Pitch black.

He flipped the wall switch.

Nothing happened.

“No.”

He’d tested the room’s waterproofing before collecting Paige by dousing the walls and ceiling with a hose, but never with the amount of water that had poured through the soil above after days of nonstop rain. He could only learn so much from the people at the hardware store. They’d believed him when he said he was building a recording studio in his basement, but he’d left out the part about the tunnels he’d dug through the soil, the beams he’d installed, the ten feet of earth between the surface and the display case. He’d sealed the wiring conduit with polyurethane. Apparently, not well enough.

He flipped the top deadbolt, reached for the bottom, stopped. Paige could be standing next to the door. He didn’t remember leaving anything heavy enough to be hit with, but hands and feet had worked in the past.

“Do this right.”

He walked back down the hallway, clicked the remote in his pocket. The panel in the public-facing basement wall slid open. He worked his way around the water heater and washing machine, closed the door behind him, and climbed the stairs back up to his house.

His laptop waited on the kitchen table. He checked the cameras. Still raining outside, nothing going on in the playroom. Everything else was normal. But Paige’s room looked pitch black. He changed the camera to low-light mode, saw Paige in the fetal position on her bed against the back wall.

That much water outside the case meant just as much inside. Paige could already have a cold or infection, maybe even pneumonia, and he was supposed to be keeping her safe. He ran for the bathroom medicine cabinet, found the antibiotics he’d gotten last winter.

He grabbed a flashlight, went back to the basement, hit the remote, and ran down the hallway to Paige’s door.

He hadn’t wanted the window in the door in the first place, but it came standard in the only door the soundproofing company sold that could fit down the dumbwaiter shaft. Now he was glad he had the option. He shone the flashlight through.

Definitely water on the floor.