“Something we’re working on,” he says, and switches on lights. There’s nothing in the very large room, just a clean desk and two chairs and someone’s can of soda. The Vic walks to it and tips it into a very cheap office trash bin where it gongs loudly. It hardly looks like a business, whatever it is. It looks like a front. In the corner, when her eyes adjust, is a tarp, bright blue and too new. The mogul tugs it into his arms and Padgett can see there’s a large hole in the floor, dark inside and rough around the edges like they made it themselves. He beckons again.

“Seriously?”

“This is serious,” he tells her. There’s a narrow ladder, the rungs too close together so it’s more like train tracks, leading straight down.

“You are freaking me out.”

“Bwa ha ha,” the Vic deadpans. “I’m trying to show you something. Nobody has seen this.”

“Maureen?”

“Definitely, especially not her ever. Come on. It’s light down there.”

She peers down and sees that the ladder ends in a room, maybe fifteen feet down, where there is the glare and hum of fluorescent lighting. “You got me drunk to go down a ladder?”

“You got yourself drunk.”

“Look at me.”

He does, he looks at her. He looks fine, just a guy, casually dressed next to a big hole. She puts her hand on his. “I don’t know what this is.”

“Nobody does,” he says, and starts down. On the ladder he looks vulnerable, which he said was the point. She basically has to go down after him. The metal of the ladder is warmer than it looks, almost hot in her hot hands. There’s a smell, and halfway down the ladder she traces it to another garbage can, this one large and outdoorsy. The smell is cheap food, garlic and grease, Chinese takeout maybe. And when the Vic helps her down the last rungs, the garbage can is the only thing in the room. No. There is a large metal cage in the corner, the size of a small car, rectangular and empty, something that makes Padgett think of one long-ago scary day at the circus.

“This could be big,” the Vic says. He is smiling like a boy with a joystick, and then Padgett sees that the cage is not empty at all. The occupant moves out of the shadows of the room and she feels her skin crawl away from it.