Griffin never broke stares with Grundy, even though he felt Peevy’s quizzical gaze on him. Shit. Ray knew him too well. He was giving away too much about how he felt about Sherri. But it wasn’t like he had any choice. She was missing. And there just weren’t that many places between checkpoint six and checkpoint seven where she could’ve gotten lost.

Grundy mumbled, “Last I saw her, she fell in that pit.”

Peevy got to the question first. “What pit?”

There was no pit anywhere along the course of the run the trainees made.

“The one in the canyon.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Griffin burst out.

“The pit. You know. With the pole. Had to cross it on that pole…” Grundy looked back and forth between him and Peevy in confusion.

A string of curses erupted inside Griffin’s head. He squelched it forcibly. He had to keep his head in the game, panic or no panic eating a hole in his gut. “Where exactly was this pit you’re talking about?”

“After checkpoint six. Two clicks west to the orange pylon and then turn southwest for three clicks. The pit was right after the turn at the pylon.”

“Describe the pit,” Griffin ordered.

“It went from one side of the canyon to the other. Fifteen or twenty feet wide, maybe twelve feet deep. It wasn’t marked for squat. Had Tate not been kneeling beside it, I’d have never seen it coming. It was a fricking safety hazard, man.”

Griffin frowned. “If she was kneeling beside it, how did she fall into it?”

Grundy’s eyes popped open wide. “Uhh, hell if I know. I climbed across it, and when I looked back, she was nowhere to be seen.”

Liar.

Peevy said sharply, “And it didn’t occur to you to go back and check on your classmate?”

Grundy squirmed a little. Shuffled his feet. “It’s a timed evolution. Every man for himself, right?”

“You’re a sorry son of a bitch—” Griffin started.

Peevy cut him off. “Later, Grif. Clock’s ticking. We have no time for this now.”

Griffin pivoted away from the trainee a millisecond before he ripped the guy’s face off. Good thing Peevy had distracted him, or there’d have been blood in the dirt. And body parts.

“Get out of here, Grundy,” Peevy growled.

It was back to the Jeep for Peevy and Griffin, back to checkpoint six. They traced the route of the course carefully, heading west. The trail the trainees were supposed to follow was clear in the faint moonlight, a white ribbon of dirt among the rocks and brush.

A little shy of two kilometers out, Peevy stopped the Jeep abruptly, practically throwing Griffin against the dashboard. “What the hell, Ray?”

The older man was already out of the Jeep, kneeling a few yards in front of the vehicle and off to the left. “Look at this.”