“Not happening.”

  “You need to motivate me, Jack.” Harry had raised his voice. “It’s the only way.”

  I sighed. “Fine. Do it, Big Daddy! Do it like only you can!”

  “Once more. With feeling.”

  “DO IT, BIG DADDY! DO IT LIKE ONLY YOU CAN!”

  And then my bag unzipped, and Harry gently helped me to the floor.

  I was so relieved I almost wept. He was bloody and bruised, but I’d never been so happy to see anyone in my whole life.

  “How long have you been free?” I asked, grinning like a fiend.

  He grinned back. “I got out right before you mentioned the corkscrew.”

  I threw one arm around him and hugged.

  My other arm, the broken one, just kind of flopped around.

  “Jesus, Jackie! Your arm.”

  I stared at it, counting three more elbows than there should have been.

  “Help me up.”

  McGlade got his hands under my armpits. “I can’t look at it. It’s like it’s made of rubber. Jesus hesus, let’s get some ice on that. I could use some, too.”

  He limped to the fridge.

  “What’s up with your leg?” I asked.

  “Pretty sure my knee is broken.”

  “You didn’t mention that.”

  “Because I’m not a whiner. Like some people who shall remain nameless. Named Jack.”

  “It doesn’t hurt as much as it should.” I gave my arm a wiggle.

  “We’re both still feeling the ketamine he gave us. Dissociative anesthetic with hallucinogenic properties. Good shit.” He opened up the freezer. “Snap. I’m brilliantpants.”

  Harry didn’t take out a tray of ice. He took out his Magnum, and my revolver, handing my gun over.

  “We going to the police?” I asked.

  “Hell no.” McGlade spun his cylinder and checked his rounds. “I’m going to kill your asshole neighbor. Then I’m going to give him CPR, bring him back to life, and kill that asshole again.”

  That’s when we both heard the screaming.

  A man. The cries coming up through the floorboards.

  “Phin,” I said.

  I headed for the basement door, but Harry held me back. “Sam and Harry Junior.”

  My husband wailed again. He seemed to be in agony.

  I had no idea what I should do.

  McGlade patted my shoulder. “I’ll check the kids. You save Phin.”

  “You sure?”

  He winked. “Big Daddy always saves the day.”

  He turned to leave, and I said something I would regret for the rest of my life.

  “McGlade!”

  Harry paused to meet my eyes.

  “You’re my best friend,” I told him.

  And the son of a bitch got all teary-eyed. “Are you serious? It’s not just the pain from that hideous compound fracture talking?”

  “Best. Friend.” And then I sealed my fate by adding, “Forever.”

  Harry hobbled over, wrapping me up in a bear hug.

  “I knew it, Jack! All these years, I knew we were BFFs!”

  “Protect our kids, McGlade.”

  “Right, got it. I’ll get them safe and be right back.” He smiled and limped away, shouting behind him, “Mejor amiga por siempre!”

  I didn’t have time to cringe at that, I was too focused on finding my man. My right arm dangling useless, the freezing gun clutched in my left hand, I adjusted my grip so I could use my fingers to twist the deadbolt and pull the basement door open.

  The odor curled the hair in my nostrils. I checked the wall for a switch, flipped it on, and carefully descended the wooden staircase. The smell got worse every step I took, and by the time I reached the cement floor I had my nose buried in my shoulder so I didn’t puke.

  The basement wasn’t well lit, but it didn’t need to be to reveal its obvious feature; a giant sinkhole in the middle of the floor. I crept cautiously to the edge, peering into the endless black, and yelled, “Phin!”

  I wanted it to be him, and at the same time a small part of me hoped it wasn’t. Those screams had been terrible, and I shuddered to think what was happening to that poor soul.

  A moment later I had my answer. “Jack!”

  Relief almost knocked me over. I walked around the perimeter of the hole, to a metal engine hoist supporting an ancient block and tackle, a thick chain wound around two pulleys, the end curled up on the cement. Resting on the hoist arm was an old flashlight.

  I stuck my gun into my paddle holster and picked up the light, hoping it still had some juice left in it.

  My luck held. I turned the beam into the darkness of the hole, and saw the bottom at about eight meters below.

  In a perfect world, someone could hold one end of the chain and slowly lower me down as I gripped the other end. But the world was far from perfect.

  A few days ago—hell, just yesterday—I’d been complaining about all of the work and worry that came with moving to Colorado, and that I hadn’t had sex in a while, and that I had to deal with the pandemic, and sinkholes, and a promiscuous mother, and that I wasn’t a very good friend to anyone, and that it didn’t look like I’d ever finish painting all of the honey oak in the house.

  Life was tough. But staring down into the sinkhole, alone with my thoughts and my wits, I realized that dwelling on the negative wasn’t a good way to live.

  Crazy that I needed to be zipped up in a bag and whacked with a bat to understand how good I actually had it.

  Stupid that I could only realize how lucky I was when I stared into an abyss to confront a cannibal.

  Ironic that the only time I recognized my life was a gift was when someone threatened to take it away from me.

  Or maybe that was just the ketamine talking.

  Catharsis over. Time to get shit done.

  I kicked the chain into the sinkhole, let out enough to reach the bottom, flipped the lock lever, and gave it a tentative yank.

  Seemed secure enough.

  I stuck the thick end of the flashlight into my mouth, something McGlade surely would have commented on if he’d been there, and then grabbed the chain with one hand and Tarzan-swung out over the opening, tightly wrapping my legs around it.

  Not bad for a beaten-up old gal with a broken arm.

  Then I began to slide down into the dark, link by link, to go rescue the man I loved.

  That’s when, from far below, I heard the unmistakable boom of a shotgun.

  SAM

  Drowning in dirt.

  Aspirating earth.

  Suffocation.

  All of those things were scary.

  But almost worse was being completely immobilized, completely trapped. Intense claustrophobia, combined with the helpless terror of being buried alive.

  Scarier than any movie I’d ever seen or story I’d ever heard or nightmare I’d ever had.

  Then the earth that swallowed me up spat me back out.

  I fell, then I slid, and then I rolled. No longer in the soil, but on top of the soil. I came to a stop, lying on my side, my eyes stinging, dusted in dirt but able to breathe again.

  Where was I?

  I dug into my jeans pocket and took out my cell, flicking on the flashlight.

  Mounds of clay, small rocks, loam, all around me. To my right, what seemed to be a tunnel. To my left, just a few meters away…

  An open rectangle, framed by concrete.

  Three of them, actually.

  And I instantly knew where I was.

  I had somehow fallen into our basement crawlspace.

  While it was good that I hadn’t been killed by the sinkhole, it was bad that I wound up back where I’d started; in the house with Mr. Wintergarten.

  I shook some dirt out of my hair, then crawled toward the rectangle, keeping my cell phone in one hand, and pushing the gun safe forward with the other, considering my next move. I would have to sneak up the basement stairs, then back outside, this time staying far away from the sinkhole. That meant avoiding the ladder, but maybe I could pull myself over the fence and—

  I froze when something touched my face.

  Something soft and tickly.

  I shined the flashlight on it.

  Spiderweb. Huge one, an irregular pattern, like a cobweb. With a big, fat, white egg sack in the center, the size of a cotton ball. And to the right of the egg sack…

  Latrodectus hesperus. The western widow spider. Black and shiny, at least five inches long, with a red hourglass on her abdomen. An abdomen as big as a grape.

  I let go of the gun safe and stayed absolutely still. A female black widow, protecting her eggs, could be extra super aggressive. And it was watching me with all eight of its beady eyes.

  Breathing through my nose so I didn’t blow on the web, I slowly backed away, and then flailed out my arm, accidentally throwing my phone as it buzzed in my hand.

  The cell phone hit the spider’s web, and the spider didn’t like it. She went straight for the phone, leaping on top as the screen flashed the name of the caller.

  DAD.

  I needed to answer the phone.

  But I wasn’t going anywhere near that ginormous western widow.

  Options. What were my options?

  Throw a rock at it?

  I might hit the phone and break it.

  It buzzed again, and the spider reared back in an attack position, baring two really long fangs.

  Dirt, maybe?

  I scooped up a handful, ready to hurl it at the spider, but then it darted off the phone.

  The soil was dark, and so was the black widow, so I had no idea where it had crawled to—

  —right up until it crawled up my arm.

  I froze, becoming a statue, barely able to see the widow in the light of my screen.

  But I could feel it.

  It was the worst thing I ever felt. Even worse than being sucked into the sinkhole. The legs tickled, and I swore I could feel all eight of them, inching up to my elbow, heading toward my face.

  Her venom contained latrotoxin, and seven people a year in the United States died of black widow bites, and I didn’t want to die, even though I promised Harry Junior I’d come back as a ghost and haunt him.

  My phone buzzed for a third time. After the fourth time, it would go to voice mail, and I would miss Dad’s call.

  I thought about slapping the spider, smashing it with my palm, but it was… just… so… big. Almost as big as my hand. If I didn’t kill it instantly, it could bite my arm. Or my palm.

  What should I do?

  It was just an animal. Acting on instinct. Obeying its genetic blueprint, following orders encoded by millions of years of evolution.

  How could I use that to my advantage?

  Black widows built webs. Caught bugs and sucked out their juices. Mated. Laid eggs.

  That was my answer. The mothers were very protective of their eggs.

  Instead of crushing the arachnid, I used my free hand to flick a pebble at her web. It vibrated, and the widow scurried off me, leaping to save her egg sack, and I snatched up my cell phone and answered while crawling away as fast as I could.

  “Dad?”

  “Samantha, where did you get off to?”

  It wasn’t Dad.

  It was Mr. Wintergarten.

  I immediately ended the call, unsure of what to do next. Why did he have Dad’s phone?

  Then my cell rang. Not the silent mode vibration. But a loud, repeating, dinging sound, while the screen flashed:

  Find My iPhone Alert.

  Mr. Wintergarten knew where I was.

  I turned off the alert and scrambled out of the crawlspace, desperate to figure out what to do next. The only plan I could come up with, and I knew it sucked, was to hide my phone someplace, let Mr. Wintergarten track it down, and try to get past him and run upstairs.

  I ran to Dad’s barbells and put my phone into a basket of exercise bands just as it began to ding again.

  He was always trying to get me to workout with him. Maybe now was a good time.

  Then I crouched under the stairs and waited.

  It only took a few seconds before the basement door opened above me.

  “Samantha? I know you’re down there. Come up now, or I’ll get angry.”

  I stayed quiet, stayed hidden. The wooden stairs creaked with every step, and when Mr. Wintergarten reached the basement, I saw he had his shotgun.

  He began to walk toward my dinging phone, and I thought maybe I would have a chance to get around him. Then something bumped my leg, and I shrieked in surprise, and Mr. Wintergarten turned and stuck the gun in my face.

  It was so huge it was all I could see. Two giant black holes, filling my whole field of vision.

  I felt like I was going to have an accident in my pants.

  “You didn’t eat the cookie, did you, Samantha?”

  I shook my head, terrified.

  “You gave it to your dog?”

  I managed a nod.

  “Exodus 22:31,” Mr. Wintergarten said. “You shall be holy men to Me, therefore you shall not eat any flesh torn to pieces in the field; you shall throw it to the dogs.” He smiled. “Do you know your Bible, Samantha?”

  “I… I’ve read parts of the Bible.”

  “That’s surprising. I didn’t think your family had religion. I’ll tell you my favorite verse. It’s engraved here, on my shotgun. Jeremiah 19:9.” He tapped the side, at some writing on the silver part, thankfully lowering the barrel away from my face. “And I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and their daughters, and everyone shall eat the flesh of his neighbor in the siege and in the distress. They will be driven to utter despair..”

  The Find My iPhone Alert ended.

  The basement became deathly quiet.

  I was really scared. But I knew that if I wanted to get away, I had to do something.

  What did Dad say? Sometimes you have to be sneaky and underhanded to win.

  I summoned up the guts to speak. “Do you know Peter 5:8?”

  Mr. Wintergarten seemed to think it over. Then he nodded.

  “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.” Mr. Wintergarten grinned. “Is that what you think I am, Samantha? The devil?”

  “No,” I told him. “That verse wasn’t about you.”

  “Then who is it about?”

  “It’s about him.”

  I pointed, and Mr. Wintergarten turned, swinging around his gun.

  Mr. Friskers, who had bumped into me under the staircase, did not like people pointing guns at him. He didn’t like it at all.

  The cat leapt into the air, claws out, hissing like a snake, and latched onto Mr. Wintergarten as his shotgun boomed.

  The sound was super loud, impossibly loud, so loud it hurt my ears more than someone punching them, and Mr. Wintergarten fell backwards, sitting on the stairs, as Mr. Friskers ran across the basement floor and jumped up into the crawlspace.

  The stairway blocked, I followed the cat, but Mr. Wintergarten reached out, grabbing my hair, holding me back and I remembered the other part of what Dad said during our game of Clue.

  And if that doesn’t work, you can use brute force.

  The barbell I’d been hiding behind my back weighed only five pounds, but I smashed Mr. Wintergarten in the foot with it, the same foot where he had his limp, and he howled and let me go and I ran to the crawlspace and climbed in and saw Mr. Friskers running into the tunnel in the dirt and even though I didn’t want to get buried alive again I was more afraid of getting shot so I grabbed the gun safe and followed the cat into the hole.

  The tunnel was bigger than I thought. I didn’t have my phone, so I didn’t have any light, but I saw a really dim light in the distance and I crawled toward that and after about five meters Mr. Friskers and I came to a big, open cave.

  And then, from the darkness, “Jack! I’m over here!”

  “Dad!”

  He sounded like he was in another room. I lifted the gun safe and walked toward his voice, Mr. Friskers bounding into the cave ahead of me.

  “Sam? Sam! Get out of here!”

  The distant light I’d seen was a candle flame.

  It moved closer.

  “Dad? Do you have a candle?”

  “That’s not me, Sam! Run!”

  I backed away from the light, going sideways, running into some sort of bumpy wall. I reached out, touching something roundish.

  A skull.

  And next to it, another skull.

  And another.

  It was a wall of skulls.

  The candle, and whoever held it, got closer, and in the flickering orange lights I saw dozens of skulls. Maybe hundreds.

  I was in an ossuary. A vault for the dead.

  “Little girl,” said the woman holding the candle. “Come here.”

  There was no way I was going toward that creepy voice. I looked around for a place to hide. Saw a big pile of bones, and headed for it, a really bad smell clogging my nostrils. I hunkered down behind the pile, clutching the gun safe, as the candle got closer, and closer. And holding the candle…

  A monster.

  “Tasty,” it said.

  And I began to scream.

  LARRY

  Sam!”

  The voice came from upstairs, and it sounded a lot like that rude fellow. Jacqueline’s friend, Harry McGlade.

  Larry rubbed his nose, saw blood on his fingers from the cat’s scratch.

  This had all gone wrong. Terribly wrong. How had McGlade gotten free? Had Jacqueline escaped? Was she in the house as well?

  Or could she be going after Rita?

  From deep within the crawlspace, a scream.

  Larry thumbed open the lock on his Browning and replaced the spent shell with a fresh one from his apron pocket. He decided his best move was to protect his sister. That was what older brothers are supposed to do. It was what he’d been doing since Rita was born.

  So Larry fished out his penlight and climbed into the crawlspace. He smashed a nasty spider with the butt of his shotgun, and quickly located the tunnel in the dirt. As he scrabbled through the dirt, he found himself getting more and more excited.

  After all of these years, all of these decades, he was finally going to see Rita again.