Page 78 of Stolen Faith
Rowan eased down into a crouch, hanging his head for a moment. Loss of hope was…crushing. But it was okay. They were in a better position now than before.
Every classroom Rowan had ever been in had a landline phone. Keeping one eye on the windows, he searched the walls, making a complete circuit of the room twice, hope falling with each step.
Maybe it wasn’t wall-mounted. There was a teacher desk in the corner. Maybe the phone was there.
He checked the surface of the desk, the drawers, the floor. He checked in cubbies and on top of high shelves, stopping each time the guard passed the window.
No phone.
Goddammit.
Rowan forced down his disappointment and checked for the next thing on his mental list. Weapons.
He found dozens of safety scissors, but no regular adult-size ones. There was ribbon, but it was pre-cut into pieces, none of it long enough to serve as a garotte.
He turned in a circle, disappointment chewing at him. Nothing else could be used as a weapon unless he broke apart a few of the chairs and made bats for all of them. Breaking furniture was a noisy endeavor and until he found out if the rest of the rooms were empty, that plan wasn’t feasible.
Turning to leave, he pulled up short, focusing on the oversized laminated map hanging on the wall. He’d ignored it while looking for the phone, but now he studied it.
Whatever this place was, they followed fire safety guidelines.
Ripping it down, he made his way down the rest of the hallway, searching five rooms in total, all of them empty. Except, he hit paydirt in the last room, the kindergarten one, that included a small basket of “welcome guides.” Flipping it open, there was just enough light shining in from the hallway that he could see it included a “facilities map.”
Rowan grabbed a welcome guide and returned to the stairwell. Reentering, he held up his booty.
“Found a couple maps,” he whispered. A red band across the top of the poster he’d pulled down said “Evacuation Plan” and next to it…
“Crossroads Salvation Church,” Izabel read aloud, also in a whisper.
It was a church.
Brennon’s eyes widened. “A church?” He eyed the emergency evacuation map. “This building is massive.” Brennon paused. “Maybe the whole thing isn’t a church. Maybe the church is renting rooms here.” Brennon looked around.
“No. It’s a megachurch,” Izabel muttered, studying the welcome packet. She carefully unfolded the facilities guide. “I’ve seen news reports that some megachurches are so big the buildings are the size of small stadiums.”
According to the guide, the church had four floors, not including the dungeons below, which had been conspicuously left out.
This floor contained the Sunday school classrooms. The next floor up was the main level, consisting of an enormous sanctuary with various rooms branching off it labeled choir, tech, dressing room, and so on. It was a multilevel building, so both this floor and the one above had exits. Rowan considered that the first bit of good luck they’d had. Hopefully, anyway.
The third and fourth floors contained offices used by the church staff, a religious library, adult study rooms, two conference rooms, as well as storage areas.
“It’s night,” Rowan reported. “Probably not many people here.”
“Plus, if this is the Sunday school floor, I doubt these rooms see much action during the week,” Brennon added.
Devon agreed. “Given the time and the fact that it’s Wednesday, I wouldn’t expect there to be many people here at all.”
“What kind of church has dungeons in the basement?” Brennon asked, staring down the stairs.
“Not the kind I want to go to,” Izabel replied. “Of course, if TiffaniGrace and Barry are indicative of the people who worship here, maybe it does make sense. They don’t strike me as the ‘turn the other cheek’ type of Christians.”
“Definitely fall into the ‘eye for an eye’ category,” Brennon said. “Guess they prefer the Old Testament God with all his judgments and wrath versus the forgiving one in the New Testament.”
Izabel gave Brennon a curious look.
He tapped his chest and grinned. “Raised a good old-fashioned Methodist boy. My dad always said if I could go out with my friends on Saturday night, I could get my ass out of bed on Sunday morning. Of course, I’ve since moved to California and adopted a heathen lifestyle, much to his dismay.”
“We need to figure out our next move.” Devon was still studying the map intently. “You said there were guards in the garage.” On the map, it showed where the garage connected to this floor of the building. Luckily there were several hallways between that and their current position.