Tom moved deeper inside. Whatever Mr. Baptista does as a hobby, he thought, he keeps it locked away down here in the dark.He crossed carefully to the opposite side of the room and patted his hands along the cool surface of the wall until he finally located the light switch. He flipped it on and the room flooded with a fluorescent glow. He gawked in disbelief at what he saw. The room was filled with stacks of money. There was tons of it. There were several wooden pallets stacked five feet tall with hundreds of neat bricks of cash on each, all of it tightly wrapped in Cellophane. It looked like a bank vault. A long metal table stood against one wall. There was a laptop computer connected to a router and a LaserJet printer. In one corner stood an imposing machine that resembled some kind of printing press. There were also several tall fiberglass barrels labeled with MSDS government health regulations and documentation. The phone line from the roof trailed from the ceiling, down the wall, to a no-frills touch-tone telephone on the table.He took a single step forward and placed a hand flat on top of one of the bales of crisp, uncirculated bills. He stared down at the money through the layers of Cellophane. They were all one hundred dollar bills. He did the math. There had to be millions of dollars stacked on the pallets, millions of dollars hidden away in a farmer’s barn.He almost laughed, but then he heard someone coming down the ladder.• • •“No one has ever been down here,”
