Finally, I found the trigger—several buttons recessed into the rear of the lower clothing rod. Those buttons would need to be pressed in sequence. An access code. Perfectly logical—why have a panic room if anyone can get in—but how would I get in? My father was inside, too injured to call for help, and I was stuck out here, pressing the damned buttons—

Call the Cabal.

I was lifting my phone when the rack moved with a hydraulic whoosh. Paige stumbled back out of the way. Before I could get around the door to see within, I heard my father’s voice, starting a spell.

“Papá!”

I swung around the door and pulled up short. He stood there, his shirt front covered with blood. His lips moved, but I could hear nothing, could only see the blood.

Damn it, move! Help him! He needs first aid, an ambulance…

I couldn’t budge, brain insisting this was impossible. Paige rushed past me and past my father. I opened my mouth to call her back, then saw a body lying in a pool of blood. Troy.

As she dropped beside him, I strode to my father, finding my voice at last.

“Are you okay? There’s blood—”

“It’s Troy’s. I’m fine.”

I saw my cell phone still in my hand and lifted it. “Have you called—?”

He took it from me, fingers flying over the keypad. I knelt beside Paige. Troy had been shot in the chest and was unconscious. Blood soaked his shirt. There were more bloodied clothes on the floor, where my father must have tried to stanch the flow.

Paige was ripping off Troy’s shirt. I leaned in to help.

I could see the shot now, an exit wound just below his heart. There was so much blood…

My father bent beside Paige. “What can I do?”

She asked him to bring cold cloths.

A minute later, he returned with wet towels. “The ambulance should be here in five minutes. This damned room…”

“Built before the cellular age,” I murmured as I cleaned the blood from Troy’s chest, looking for other injuries. “And never tested for reception later, because it had a land line. But a land line can be cut.”

He nodded. “When the guards didn’t call the office for their hourly check-in, the security office would have been alerted. It always seemed that would be fast enough…”

Unless you had a man dying on the floor, and the gunman possibly right outside the door.

My father mopped Troy’s brow, then looked at Paige. “Is he as bad as—?”

He stopped and shook his head, realizing he didn’t want an answer. Troy was too pale. His breathing was too shallow. As skilled as Paige and I were at first aid, this was beyond us.