Dryden centered his head again, pointed his eyes straight up at the ceiling. He took in the room one last time, making a fast mental map of each person’s position in it—a skill he’d used over and over in his former career.

Behind the cart, the pusher stood idle, staring off at nothing while he waited. Flanking the man, the watchers kept watching—their eyes continued moving, taking in everything for no good reason.

No one person was focusing solely on the prisoners now.

Danger in numbers.

Then the people lifting the door set it down again, and in the same moment the zip-tie snapped with an audible twang.

Dryden didn’t wait to see anyone’s reaction. He pitched his body sideways into a roll, off the cart and onto the concrete floor. He landed on all fours and lunged for the empty shelf unit in the corner.

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

JULY 1989

“It’s music,” Dani said. She had her ear almost touching the metal door now.

Sam did the same. He could hear a guitar, sharp and resonant, like it was playing in an echo chamber. Then a man’s voice, singing; he recognized it at once.

“U2,” Sam said.

Dani nodded. “Heartland.”

For a second, Sam saw the two of them on the swing set again, the morning he’d met her. Those amped-up few minutes, when they were first talking. The way he couldn’t stop looking at her eyes, and hoped she wouldn’t notice. The way they kept finding new things they had in common, each one like another room to explore in some giant house.

They hadn’t gotten around to talking about music, but if they had, he would have told her U2 was his favorite band. He had bought Rattle and Hum the day it came out last fall, and listened to it three times straight through when he got home.

To have recognized Heartland, Dani must have the album, too. That song had not been released as a single.

For just that moment, Sam felt like talking about it. Talking about albums they owned and songs they liked, the way kids talked everywhere. That was what they should be doing right now. They should be lying on that picnic table out on the grassy slope, under the stars, with a bag of chips and a six-pack of soda. They should be watching for satellites and talking about U2 music.

Sam let the thought go. They were not lying under the stars. They were leaning against a locked door, 120 feet underground, and there might still be someone coming to kill them.

He turned again and stared down the tunnel, its row of white lights leading away into the darkness.

Pierce could be in that tunnel right now, heading toward them. He could have killed every animal in that room, shut off the lights, and opened and closed the door without letting it slam.