For a few seconds Sam didn’t answer. He was staring off to the east, toward the big clump of weeds that concealed Station 14’s access stairs—fifty yards away, maybe. Dani’s mind automatically put together the geometry of the scene: three points that roughly made a triangle. She and Sam and Lauren formed one of the points; Pierce was another; the access stairs in the weeds were the third. If they ran toward the stairs, they wouldn’t be moving away from Mr. Pierce, but they wouldn’t be moving toward him, either. They would be traveling sideways across his field of view, almost like—

Don’t think of it. Don’t—

—mechanical ducks in one of those target-shooting booths at a carnival.

Sam looked at her, and nodded toward the stairs. “It’s all we’ve got.”

“We’ll be trapped down there. That big room—there’s no way out except the way in.”

“Lots of places to hide in there,” Sam said. “It’s better than out here.”

Dani turned and watched Pierce. He’d advanced maybe ten feet, still probing the soil with his flashlight.

Then he stopped.

“He’s got us,” Sam said.

A second later the beam swung up, shining right into their eyes, blinding. Dani had time for one panicked thought—

Where the light points, the gun points—

—and then Sam was yanking her to her feet, and Lauren too, hauling them forward, all three of them running, the light beam jittering and flickering in the space around them.

She felt the first bullet pass by, an instant before she heard the gunshot. The space right in front of her nose suddenly popped with a little wave of heat, and a rush of air as if someone had swept a hand past her eyes. She didn’t stop. She dug her feet into the furrowed soil and kept running, as the crack-crack-crack of more shots filled the darkness.

“Picture the keypad!” Sam shouted.

“What?”

“It’s going to be pitch-black down by the door! You’ll need to punch in the code by feel! Picture it now, so you can do it fast!”

They were halfway to the clump of weeds, sprinting hard, the light still stabbing at them though the bullets had finally run dry. Dani pictured the keypad—tried to picture it. For a terrible second she couldn’t remember whether the numbers started from the bottom or the top. Were they like the keys on a computer keyboard, with the 1 at the bottom, or were they like a telephone touch pad, with the 1 at the top?

It’s like a phone. Start from the top and count across and down.

She saw it in her head as she ran. Seven would be—

Third row. First button on the left.

She hoped.

Somewhere far to the side, Pierce was screaming, and no doubt sprinting toward them. The flashlight beam swung wildly as he ran.