[b][center][h2]Paige Kennedy[/h2][/center][/b]

Once the door was opened, Paige doubted she would have cared if Tao had blown his hand completely off. [i]This was it[/i]. Whatever [i]it[/i] was. She ignored his whimpers as the door eased open under its own weight when the bolt was released. The corridor on the other side was pitch black, only cut slightly by the dim light of the storage room. She stuffed the tablet she’d been carrying into his aching hands without saying a word and shined her phone light into the dark space. What appeared to be a narrow hallway was connected on the other side, but the drop down was easily two to three feet as if the stadium basement area had been built over it and nearly missed. The bricks that lined the path were aged like an old house and a watery, metallic smell permeated the air from lack of ventilation. She shined her light down to the floor below. Seeing nothing but a hard, stone surface she sat down at the edge of the doorway, letting her feet dangle for a moment and eased herself down.

The drop was further than it looked and for a split second she felt her heart jump before her toes met the floor. With a slight sigh of exasperation, she held her phone up again, shining through what looked to be a part of some sort of tunnel. In her mind, she could picture where she’d seen something similar before, like a training video she’d watched of the tunnels that smugglers used under the border from Mexico into the US, however it was older, [i]much older[/i] and bigger. There was plenty of room to stand as if it were designed for ease of use rather than total secrecy. She knew nothing about Sol City history or what could have existed prior to the stadium being built, though as she watched the bright light prickle shadows over the old bricks, the realization struck: “This is a prohibition tunnel.” She said before glancing back up at Tao. The ledge was nearly to her chest height. She motioned for him to grab one of the boxes and prop the door open wide to allow more light inside. 

It made perfect sense, at least in the brief time that it jogged through her mind, but her gut instinct was rarely wrong. Only an old timer, like the head of Giancana family would have even known it existed. She shook her head in disbelief. All of it sounded like urban legend and admittedly, if someone had told her about it back in Florida, she probably would have laughed in their face. It just didn’t happen any more, yet there they stood. She shined the light behind her finding the tunnel had been sealed by a wall of solid concrete only a few feet back. “C’mon,” She said moving forward and giving Tao a wave. She knew that even if he was scared shitless of dark, confined spaces, that his curiosity wouldn’t allow him to come so far and then chicken out. 

A few further steps in and a string dangling from the ceiling came into the cone of her light along with something else dull and metallic along the wall. She glanced up finding a simple light bulb rigged to a socket and pulled the switch to turn it on. The bulb flickered to life, humming slightly and illuminating the remainder of the passage in dull yellow. She could see the far end of the corridor as it came into view was sealed shut, same as behind them, but next to it was a small wooden door with a worn, old brass handle. Her stomach turned slightly in a knot and again her gut instinct knew there wouldn’t be any more doors after this one. [i]This is it.[/i]She wasn’t afraid, but the unknown was a thrill that couldn’t be matched. Her heart picked up a few beats as she stepped closer to the door. No transponders this time. There wasn’t even a keyhole. She put her hand over the doorknob, feeling the cool metal in her grip and glanced back for a moment at Tao without saying a word. The features of her face darkened under shadow.  It felt like something from a dream. She sighed and tightened her grip hearing the tarnished linkage inside the door turn with an uneasy grinding as the striker retracted. The door pushed away easily revealing nothing but blackness inside. Instinctively, she felt along the inside wall for a switch and to her surprise felt a panel nearly exactly where her hand touched the wall. 

During her time in law enforcement, Paige had seen things that ran the gamut of the emotional spectrum: the truly depaved to the most decadent. She’d seen people killed over less than twenty dollars and she’d seen cigarette boats loaded stem to stern with cocaine worth millions. It was the life she chose and she had total confidence that she had taken on the role for which she was destined. She was sure and would say so to anyone. It ran through her blood as much as the scenes of those memories flashed through her mind startling her awake in the dead hours of the night. When the small lights came on, a room about the size of a small apartment came into view. It was completely loaded, nearly to capacity, with white banker boxes, not dissimilar from the ones Tao had just destroyed, but all around, seemingly in any odd corner where they would fit, [i]were stacks of cash[/i], banded and counted. Her eyes widened only slightly and she lightly stepped forward through the small pathway just wide enough to walk through. There was more. [i]Much more[/i], all the way to the ceiling in some places without a single bill visible that was smaller than a fifty. Many of the boxes were marked with two numbers separated by a decimal, [i]1.2[/i] or [i]2.3[/i] all the way up to [i]3.5[/i] and every number in between. She continued forward finding a small digital scale on the floor surrounded by more boxes all marked the same way. She already knew what it was before she pulled the top from the first box. Her lips opened slightly in awe. They weren’t counting it, [i]they were weighing it[/i]. 

For the first time she could recall, she was speechless. 

[@Allycat]