in the kitchen.
Ava clicked off the flashlight.
Darkness swallowed them whole.
Footsteps crossed overhead, slow and familiar. Then Harold Pike’s voice drifted down through the hidden doorway.
“Ava? Ben? I know you found it.”
Neither child moved.
“I wish you had waited until morning,” Pike said. “This could have been handled quietly.”
Ava backed toward the steel door, pulling Ben with her.
Her hand brushed something cold in the dark.
Fingers.
She almost screamed, but she stopped herself in time. When she flashed the light for one second, she saw a woman curled against the wall behind the open steel door.
A uniform clung to her bones.
A badge hung on her chest.
Deputy Lena Harlan.
Ava knew the name. Everyone in Blackthorn knew it. Deputy Harlan was the officer who had supposedly mishandled Mason Carter’s case before transferring away in disgrace.
But Deputy Harlan had not transferred.
She had found the hidden room.
And someone had made sure she never left it.
Under the deputy’s stiff hand was a plastic evidence bag containing an envelope.
Ava grabbed it.
The steel door slammed shut behind them.
Ben cried out.
A lock snapped into place.
Pike stood on the other side.
“Your father was stubborn too,” he said. “It did not save him.”
Ava shoved the envelope into her jacket and searched the room with the flashlight. There had to be another way out. There had to be a reason Deputy Harlan had hidden the envelope where Mason’s children might find it.
Ben pointed beneath the cot.
“Ava, look.”
Under the bed was a warped sheet of plywood. Ava dragged it aside and found a square opening with an iron grate covering it. A small padlock held the grate shut.
Taped to the back of the envelope was a key.
Ava nearly sobbed.
Deputy Harlan had left them a way out.
The key turned.
The grate opened.
Cold air rushed up from below.
Ava pushed Ben through first, then dropped into the crawlspace after him. The passage was so narrow they had to crawl on their elbows. Mud soaked their clothes. Rocks tore their palms. Behind them, Pike began hammering against the steel door, his calm voice gone.
The tunnel sloped downward and split in two.
Ben was crying now.
“Which way?”
Ava tore open the envelope.
Inside was one page, written in a rushed hand.
Mason says the left tunnel leads to Briar Creek. The right tunnel leads to the men who buried him. If his children ever come back, tell them he never stopped trying to reach them.
Ava folded the note with shaking hands.
“Left,” she said.
They crawled until their arms burned. Behind them came distant scraping, then a shout. Pike had found the grate.
The flashlight flickered once.
Twice.
Then it died.
Ben whimpered in the blackness.
Ava reached back and grabbed his hand.
“Keep moving,” she said. “Dad found this way. We can too.”
For a long time, there was only mud, breath, and darkness.
Then Ava heard water.
A thin gray square appeared ahead.
Moonlight.
They crawled out beneath the old bridge at Briar Creek, soaked and filthy and alive. Rain fell through the beams above them. Ava pulled Ben against her and held him so tightly he gasped.
Then she remembered Elena’s
