Sam turned away from the table. He went to the laundry room below the stairs, its interior just visible in the indirect streetlight glow.

He and Dani had checked the washer and dryer as part of their thorough search.

A little more thorough and they would have found the note anyway.

Sam stepped into the room and knelt in front of the dryer. He took hold of the small plastic hatch just below the big door on the front.

The hatch for the lint filter.

He pulled it open and saw the note flutter down onto the floor. He picked it up and brushed it off, stepped back out of the room, crossed to the shaft of streetlamp glow. The light was more than enough to read by:

3 MEN KIDNAPPING US

MY DAD CALLED ONE OF THEM

ELLIS PIERCE

PART SEVEN

THE TUNNEL

JULY 1989 / SEPTEMBER 2018

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

SEPTEMBER 2018

“What is it?” Danica asked. “What’s happening?”

Dryden couldn’t answer. He had no idea.

From far away to the north, somewhere lost to sight in the forest, came another burst of autofire. Then more screaming, from the same man they had heard just seconds earlier. The cries had an animalistic quality to them—it sounded like the guy was tearing the lining of his throat with the force of those screams.

Dryden glanced at Danica, then down at the unconscious body of Jack Grace sitting between them, his back propped against the rotted picket fence. Dryden held Grace’s shoulder microphone in his hand, the cord stretching down to the receiver unit that was still clipped to Grace’s belt. In a single quick movement, Dryden stooped and detached the radio from the belt, and fixed it to his own. He looped the shoulder mike’s cord around his own neck and let it hang there, ignoring it for the moment. He took the Glock that was holstered at Grace’s hip, aimed it at the ground, and pulled the slide partway back. He saw a round already in the chamber, and let the slide rack itself shut again. He stood and held the weapon out to Danica.

“That’s ready to fire.”

She nodded, tense but unflinching. She took hold of the gun and held it low at her side.

Dryden crouched once more and picked up Grace’s M4 carbine. He checked for a chambered round, then flicked the safety off and set the fire-select switch to single-shot. He stood again, keeping the rifle pointed low but ready, and returned his focus to the trees off to the north.

He could see nothing there yet, though at that moment he heard another burst of autofire, this one from much closer than the earlier shots had been. There were at least two shooters—and judging by the cyclic rate, they were both firing M4s.