“Ree.”

  “You know what the worst part is?”

  “Ree, I love you. I don’t want you to—”

  “The worst part is you just keep pulling because you’re so damn angry.” The Interceptor rocked forward, around a hill, and the ground sloped down. “There’s the cave. We’ll have to go the rest of the way on foot.”

  Somers stopped the car, and before he could do anything, say anything, make anything right, Hazard popped open the door and dropped out, so quietly and quickly and completely gone that it left a hole in Somers’s heart.

  HAZARD WALKED TOWARDS THE CAVE. He might have been walking a little fast. Scree slipped underfoot, and he caught himself on a blackberry bush, thorns biting into his hand. Then he yanked his hand free, and blood rushed up to fill a crescent of puncture wounds, and he kept walking. Just a walk. That’s all. A normal walk. Maybe a little faster than normal. Only a little.

  If only he hadn’t started talking. If only he had kept his mouth shut and sat there and listened. If only he hadn’t needed to touch Somers. If only. Jesus Christ. Need Somers? Like water. Like air. Like sunlight. He might as well wish he didn’t need a heartbeat.

  Then soil crumbled underfoot, and Hazard found himself falling. He kept himself upright, but only barely, and he rode a landslide of stones and loose earth to the bottom of the hill. His wingtips were buried under an inch of debris, and when he picked himself loose they were scratched to hell. Blood dripped steadily from his hand, pattering the dry soil, leaving dark splatters like some sort of abstract painting. Blood and soil. Hazard thought there might be a whole museum exhibit in something like that.

  “Ree?” Somers called. He picked his way more carefully down the slope, sliding once, righting himself, and then hopping gracefully to the bottom. “That was fun.”

  Hazard grunted and moved towards the cave. Somers, jogging to his side, caught up his hand and turned it palm up. The puncture wounds were darker spots of red in the bloody mess of his hand, and Somers cursed.

  “It’s nothing,” Hazard said, trying to pull his hand free.

  But Somers was strong. Stronger than Hazard remembered, sometimes, and he held on. “Damn it. Come on. Let’s get the first aid kit.”

  “I got stuck by a few thorns.”

  “Yeah, and some of them were an inch long. You’re likely to bleed to death.”

  “Let go.”

  “Ree—”

  “Let go.” He was proud of how he said that: even, quiet, calm. Yeah, calm. Calm like the motherfucking ocean.

  “You’re being ridiculous.”

  “I’m trying to do my job. And you’re getting in the way.”

  That hit home. Red lined Somers’s cheekbones, and he huffed a little, but he didn’t release Hazard’s hand. “Can I at least tie it up in my handkerchief so you don’t go bleeding all over a potentially important location? If there’s anything worth looking at in there,” he thrust his jaw at the cave, “we don’t need your blood on it.”

  Hazard hadn’t thought about that.

  “Doing your job,” Somers muttered, shaking his head furiously. He drew a handkerchief from his jacket. “Like a goddamn toddler.”

  “I heard that.”

  “Good,” Somers snapped. He wound the handkerchief around Hazard’s hand, and blood stained the cotton in crimson florettes. Jerking tight the knot, Somers let Hazard’s hand swing free. “Just like a goddamn toddler.”

  He strode towards the cave, and Hazard stumbled after him, not quite certain—

  —why he felt like such an ass—

  —what had just happened.

  The cave in Hazard’s mind had been a series of cramped passageways, the old workings of water on limestone, damp, the stone glistening under electric light. In his mind, the cave was a funhouse mirror of two memories, both from the last year of Hazard’s life. In one memory, he navigated a basement filled with gas, his mind shutting down as he slowly asphyxiated. That had been the basement at Windsor, and Hazard had thought he would die down there, fighting against a killer in the dark, his only weapon a sliver of broken glass.

  The funhouse mirror showed another basement: Bing Morris’s basement. And in that basement, too, Hazard had almost died. He remembered pulling back the plaster wall. He remembered the cramped space hidden behind it. He didn’t remember the bat cracking across his head, but he remembered after, the fractal shattering of his head, the thudding pain, gasoline fumes burning his lungs, and Somers’s voice.

  At the mouth of the cave, Hazard paused. A cave wasn’t a basement. They were different. He heard a dry, mocking version of his thoughts from days before: a baby wasn’t a loaded gun. And a cave wasn’t a basement. But his shirt bunched damply under his arms, and his throat was dry and crackled when he moved his jaw. He had to force himself to step forward.

  He had imagined the cave wrong. Ahead of them, the cave opened onto a large, flat, dry space: a shelf of stone protected from the wind and weather. Compared to the warming April weather, the cave was slightly cool, and it had a dry, dusty smell Hazard associated with gravel.

  In several places, charred spots marked where fires had been built. A stiletto heel leaned precariously against one wall, its mate vanished, and a toothbrush balanced on a shallow ledge, and someone had scrawled BC on an oblong projection of dark stone. Hazard leaned closer, and his breath stirred the limestone dust that still clung to the letters—someone had used the stone like a piece of chalk. BC.

  “Britney Cowper?” Somers said, and it was clearly a question.

  “I know who the fuck it is,” Hazard said.

  Somers’s eyes were dark blue, the color of stormfall, of the sky before thunder, of deep water. Deep, deep water. Maybe too deep. Hazard didn’t want to look that deep, so he pushed himself up and moved towards the back of the cave.

  A passage branched off from the main chamber, and this was more like what Hazard had expected: a fissure in living rock, seeming to pulse and breathe and sweat. He’d never felt claustrophobic before, never, and he didn’t feel it now. Not really. But it was—it was a small space. And he was a big man. He took a breath. A cave wasn’t a basement. A baby wasn’t a loaded gun. A wild bark was building in his chest, and he had to swallow it.

  He could turn back. He could let Somers go ahead. Hell, he could just say nothing, and maybe Somers wouldn’t notice and they wouldn’t have to talk about this passage. But he couldn’t do that because—

  —Clyde—

  —there might be something important down there, something they needed to know about, something that had bearing on the case. Sweat pricked his forehead like hot pins.

  Twisting, Hazard shuffled sideways into the crack. Stone brushed his belly. Rocks jabbed his back. He fumbled the phone from his pocket, thumbed the screen, and brought up the flashlight. Light glared back at him, a hundred different trickles of water flashing like mirrors on the stone. That same water worked its way through his jacket, dampening the wool, licking his hair, teasing its way down his neck like a snake’s tongue. Hazard lost the rhythm of his breath. It came in stutters as he squeezed along the fissure. Farther down, he could see where the space opened. He could see—no. Something white, bleached, slender—

  —bone—

  —no, it wasn’t a bone. That was crazy. It was just this place. It was just that this place was so damn small. And the air was different. That’s why his breathing hitched in short, shallow bursts. He’d read about that. Or had he seen a film? A documentary? Something about caves. About gases accumulating in subterranean spaces. Not enough oxygen. He knew there was more, but he couldn’t think of it. Those short, painful hitches of breath made his brain fire and pop like roadside bottle rockets. Poisonous gas building underground, just like in the basement at Windsor, just like the fumes at Bing’s. A cave wasn’t a basement. A baby wasn’t a loaded gun. But for some people, Hazard knew, a baby was a loaded gun. For some people, a baby blew a life apart as surely as a twelve-gauge. And a cave was a basement. They were the same thing, the same fucking thing, and he was here now, in a—

  —basement—

  —cave, and there wasn’t a damn thing to do but worm his way deeper. Deeper. Nevermind the stone jabbing into his stomach. Nevermind the fact that if he got stuck, he would be here forever, buried alive. A bulge in the stone behind him caused Hazard to contort, rolling one shoulder down, blowing out the air in his lungs to compress his chest, sucking in his stomach—

  And then he couldn’t move. Hazard gave a frantic shudder, but nothing. His heart hammered, the pulse ballooning inside his head. Using up all his oxygen. That was the only thought, and it came through snipped at both heads, really just the painful awareness that he was depleting precious air, that he was going to suffocate, die alone, helpless.

  “Ree?”

  Hazard tried to work out an answer, but he didn’t dare waste his breath. All he could do was suck at the air like he was drawing it through a reed.

  “Are you ok?” Somers laughed. “Are you stuck?” And then, all the amusement leached from his voice, “Ree, talk to me.”

  Bone. That was all Hazard could see, unable to turn and look back. It was all he could think about. He had seen bone. He knew he had seen bone. Bleached. Picked clean. And that’s all he would be, a pile of gleaming white bone, gnawed at by rats, God, and he’d be lucky if he were already dead, if he were already dead when they started gnawing on him, that would be the best luck. Bones. Jesus Christ, he had seen bone, he had, he had seen it, and in his mind it was so bright it was like staring at a fluorescent tube, so bright it left a purple afterimage.

  “Hey,” Somers said, his voice behind Hazard, his hand warm and tight on Hazard’s arm. “So you’re stuck.”

  Hazard struggled against the stone again, his whole body tensing with the effort. How many pounds were pressing down on him? The whole hillside? A mountain—it might as well have been, for all that it mattered. And Hazard strained against it, trying to lift it all.

  “You’re hyperventilating, Ree. Slow down. Take a deep breath.”

  Hazard tried. He really tried.

  “You’ve got to take a deep breath. Hold on. Good Lord, how did you ever get into that position? It looks impossible.” Sounds of movement came, growing more distant, and Hazard knew then. Somers was leaving him. Abandoning him. And burning fumes of oxygen, his brain scrabbled at one fact, a hard fact, an enormous fact, as big and hard as this fucking mountain on Hazard’s shoulders: Somers wouldn’t leave him. He had promised. He had fucking promised.

  But Hazard couldn’t stop himself from crying out, “John?”

  Warm fingers laced through his. “Right here.”

  Hazard didn’t know if he made a sound, but he knew his whole body convulsed with a sob.

  “Ree, I need you to push out all the air in your lungs. A big exhale. Right now.”

  Hazard tried, but the air was so thin, so scarce, and so sweet. Hazard heard a dog nearby, panting, and the dog knew that the air was sweet, that’s why it was panting so hard, and those pop-rockets in his head made it hard for him to remember that there wasn’t a dog in the cave, that he was hearing himself.

  “Ree, you’re fine. You’re about as stupid as they come, but you’re fine. We’ll get you out of here. Just push everything out of your lungs.” Somers’s hand found Hazard’s hair, caught a fistful. “I’m going to ease you out of there as soon as you push out a breath.”

  But Hazard couldn’t.

  “Ree, just do it. You’re all right. You’re going to be fine.”

  “Can’t,” he managed to say.

  “All right. Then let’s try this.”

  The next thing, Hazard knew, a thunderclap rocked his head forward, and he sputtered, and he heard Somers shouting to him to exhale, and somehow he did. Then the pain exploded in his head again, and he was hauled backward, rock gritty against his face and hands like he was being dragged ass-first up a mountain.

  Hazard stumbled; he cracked against one wall of the fissure, then against the other, pinballing his way free of the channel as Somers dragged him backward. Then, with a rush of air stinging the scrapes on his face and hands, he was free, and he doubled at the knees, sucking in air. The darkness behind his eyes spun, wobbled, and steadied. He might be sick, but he couldn’t spare a thought for that because he needed to breathe, just breathe.

  He realized the words weren’t coming from inside him; Somers was speaking them, stroking his back, holding him so he didn’t fall. With a shaky inhale, Hazard straightened. He couldn’t meet Somers’s eyes. Somers brushed a knuckle across his cheek, at the periphery of torn flesh.

  “All right?”

  “My head hurts.”

  “You should have let out your breath when I told you to.” Somers was smiling, though. “God, you’re scratched to hell. Serves you right for trying to squeeze your fat ass through there.”

  Hazard was about to let it pass when he saw the spark in Somers’s eyes. Then, forcing his voice lower, he said, “My ass wasn’t the problem.”

  Folding his arms around Hazard’s neck, Somers leaned his forehead against Hazard’s and kissed him. In a whisper, he said, “Babe, your ass is never a problem. It’s monolithic. Magnificent.”

  “All right.”

  “Just those huge slabs, that’s the kind of ass you’ve got.”

  Trying to squirm free, Hazard said, “I said all right.”

  “You could build the pyramids with an ass like that.”

  “You’re ridiculous,” Hazard said, finally breaking free of Somers’s embrace. But Hazard was smiling too, now, and although some of the panic still jittered through his mind, it was farther away, easier to cage, and again he was struck by how Somers always knew exactly what to do.

  “Are you all right for a minute?” Somers said.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to check out that passage. No, don’t shake your head. I’ll be right back.”

  “You shouldn’t—”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, I’m goddamn perfect.”

  “You’re not going to try to follow me and get your chunky ass hung up?”

  Hazard narrowed his eyes.

  “I just want to hear you say it. I just want to hear you say you won’t get your ass strung up on a rock like a cartoon coyote hanging on a clothesline.”

  “At this point, the only ass you need to worry about is your own and whether or not I’m going to paddle it.”

  Somers’s eyebrows shot up, and the sudden flush of arousal that painted his face and blew open his eyes made Hazard’s heart stutter, but all Somers did was smirk and trot towards the passage. He paused at the mouth of the fissure, wiggled his ass and smirked again over his shoulder, and then slid into the opening.

  He was a tease. A goddamn insufferable tease. And it didn’t hurt that he was hot as hellfire.

  Hazard moved to the edge of the slit in the rock. Somers shimmied along the passageway with ease, and Hazard enjoyed the view. The blond man still had the slender musculature of a swimmer, and right then it seemed like he was swimming along the narrow channel instead of walking. He squeezed between the knobs and spears of stone without any apparent difficulty, his ass brushing the rough wall from time to time, dusting his trousers the color of old chalk. Somers always said the stupidest things like that stuff about Hazard’s ass. Hazard carried some junk there; he knew that. Not Somers. Somers was tapered, slim, compact with muscle. Even his ass. Especially his ass.

  Good God, Hazard thought. Maybe the oxygen loss had affected his brain permanently.

  At the end of the fissure, Somers popped free into the next cave, and he bent over the white, shining—

  —bone—

  —thing that Hazard had spotted.

  “Well?” Hazard called.

  “Chicken thigh. Picked clean. But that doesn’t explain why—” Somers stood, turned, and froze. He shook his head slowly. “Go back and call this in. Get the local police out here, or the sheriff, or whatever the hell they’ve got.”

  “What the hell’s back there?”

  “A dead girl.”

  THEY WAITED UNTIL THE Taney County Sheriff’s Department arrived in full force: a cruiser and an ambulance, their lights off, their wheels crunching over dried mud tracks as they pulled towards the cave. They had followed another road, Somers realized, because instead of parking at the top of the hill, near the Interceptor, they had found their way to the mouth of the cave. That made sense; it would have been a lot harder for Walden and his cult to live here if they had to drive past Ted Herney’s house every time they came and went. So there was another road, a road that led straight to the cave. Maybe it wasn’t a road at all. Maybe it was just a trail. But Somers’s mind latched onto this fact and began tracking it.

  When the cruiser ground to a halt, the doors swung open, and a large, sweating man with a bolo tie and a brass badge levered himself out of the driver’s seat. From the passenger side came a trim, dark-haired woman with a face like a deck of cards: spare on the details but with a hell of a lot of play. Brass Badge moved towards them, blowing out on his blond mustache, hands pumping the air.

  “Edwards,” he said, glancing at Hazard before gripping Somers’s hand. He jerked a thumb at the woman. “Markle. Let’s see some ID, fellows.”