It was a grown man. He was tall and skinny, with blond hair receding from his forehead. Sam guessed he was around forty years old. The binds holding the man’s wrists and ankles were heavy wraps of duct tape.

“That’s Mr. Pierce,” Dani whispered. “There’s a picture of him in the hallway at school, from when he helped with the science fair a couple years ago.”

Sam stared at the man’s face through the binocs. The face nobody had seen in almost a year.

One of the men who’d carried him walked away, back toward the barn. The other man stayed where he was, standing over Pierce’s helpless form.

In the magnified view Pierce’s mouth moved, and across the darkness Sam could hear his voice. His words were lost to the distance, but their tone and meaning weren’t. He was begging for his life.

“Oh my God,” Dani said again. “They’re going to bury him alive. They’re—oh!”

The man standing over Pierce had just kicked him in the ribs. They heard Pierce cry out and cough in pain. Then the man braced a foot on Pierce’s shoulder, and shoved him roughly sideways—right to the edge of the grave. The man stepped forward and braced the foot for another shove.

Then he stopped.

He drew his foot away and turned to face the barn. Someone was calling out to him from just inside the door.

Sam swung his binoculars to the opening; a hand appeared there, holding some small dark object.

“Is that a walkie-talkie?” Sam asked.

“I think so.”

The man at the door waved the handheld unit as if saying, You have a call.

The man outside looked annoyed. He left Pierce lying there and stalked back to the barn. He went right in through the door, grabbing the walkie-talkie as he did, and suddenly there was no one outside at all. Pierce lay unattended at the graveside, wrists and ankles still bound. Clearly no one was worried he’d make a run for it.

Sam looked at Dani. She looked back at him. Her eyes were wide and scared.

“You’re wondering the same thing as me,” Sam said. “Aren’t you?”

She nodded quickly. “What happens to Lauren if we save him?”

Uncertainty twisted her expression. She turned her eyes back to Mr. Pierce.

“Shit…” she whispered. “I don’t know. I don’t know…”

“If we’re going to help him, we have to go right now. Seconds are going to count.”

“I know, I know … but … what about Lauren? If they lose track of Pierce, and they panic … oh God…”

“She might die,” Sam said. “But if we sit here, Pierce definitely dies. Right in front of us.”

Dani’s breathing accelerated again. “I just don’t know…”

Seconds draining away. Fast, fast, fast.