Jesus, what if Dani knew a different route to get there? Some other road or two-track that led north, maybe on the other side of that cornfield where the crash site had been. If there were another route like that, Dani would know about it; she and Lauren had been snooping around Ashland for months, learning its secrets.

Shit.

In that case, there would be no certain way to head them off before they reached Station 14.

What could he do, then?

He thought about it as he ran. He could see the park far ahead, where the curve of the subdivision ended at the road—and where the road itself led north into darkness.

Everything hurt. Everything burned. He kept running.

The cornfield near Station 14 lay black and cool in the night. Ellis Pierce could hear the everywhere-at-once hum of insects coming from all over it.

He stood leaning against the Jeep, his eyes closed and his head lowered.

Just get it done. One-two-three, literally.

He breathed out sharply. He guessed it might have sounded like a laugh, if anyone had been there to hear it. It was very far from a laugh.

This business was always going to get people killed. Even little kids. Would it have been any better if it were kids in some war-fucked backwater in sub-Saharan Africa?

Well, all those kids were safe now, whoever and wherever they were—safe from Rigel, anyway.

What were three little deaths, compared to all those?

He opened his eyes and pressed the night-light button on his watch. He’d been here twenty minutes—long enough to have already gone down the stairwell, and through the left-hand door at the bottom.

The door that opened to the tunnel.

Several hundred feet long, the tunnel led away from Station 14. The place at the far end, Station 17, was one of the active ones, but it was vacant at this hour of the night. Pierce had gone there, made all the preparations for what he needed to do now, and come sprinting back.

He pushed off from the Jeep and stood upright. He paced in the dirt behind it, watching the dark field and listening for voices.

One-two-three. Get it over with and get out of here.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

SEPTEMBER 2018

Dryden stared at the blond woman—Lauren Coleman.

The name from the blue binder.

The woman Danica’s father had apparently lost track of, after the incident here in 1989—whatever connection he’d had to her before that. He had written, What happened to her?

Except she hadn’t been a woman back then. Couldn’t have been.

Dryden glanced at the birthdate on the driver’s license: 01-26-1977.

Lauren Coleman would have been twelve during the summer of ’89, just like himself and Danica.

He looked at Lauren again. She was still sitting there in the corner, staring up at the two of them with wide eyes.