“I could be worried about nothing,” Dani said. “Maybe all that’s going on here is stuff like this—old weapons, or whatever. And if that’s it, then someday I can burn all the notes I’ve made from those tapes, and forget the whole thing, and never tell another soul. But if it’s secret because of something else … something wrong … then I want to know. I want to know so I can tell somebody and put a stop to it.”

She faced him again. Her eyes still had the film of moisture in them. For a second she seemed embarrassed by it; she reached to wipe at her eyes, but stopped and lowered her hand instead. She stood there in front of him, looking as vulnerable as anyone he’d ever seen, all defenses down.

“If you’re wondering,” she said, “yes, this scares the shit out of me. It was scary enough when I had a friend in on it with me, and for the past week, on my own, I’ve been more afraid than ever. I’ll understand if you don’t want anything to do with this, and I’m sorry for dragging you in, but I couldn’t help it. I didn’t want to be alone with it anymore.”

She sniffled, blinked, looked down at her watch.

“We should get back,” she said. “Don’t decide yet. I want you to think about it.”

She turned and moved off, back toward the stairwell door.

They didn’t say much on the walk home. The stars wheeled overhead in the pitch-black sky, Vega and Deneb and however many billion others. Sam thought of what he’d seen in the underground chamber. He thought of his dad, waking up in a few hours to go to work, and do … what, exactly? What was his job now? What was he now?

Something he can’t tell me, anyway.

He thought of Mr. Pierce’s disappearance; everything he’d heard about it stood in new light now, throwing new shadows, and still making no sense at all.

He thought of Echo House, and the empty sandwich shop downtown—the downtown of a place that wasn’t a town.

They passed the little park on the north edge of the subdivision. The empty swings moved in the night wind, creaking softly.

Three minutes later they were at the south end of the sideways rainbow of streets. There were no police cars waiting in Sam’s driveway. No lights on in the house. Good signs. He and Dani moved past the street, out onto the slope, and came up to Sam’s house from the back side. His screen still stood where he’d left it, leaning below the window. The two of them stopped a few feet away from it.

Dani turned to face him.

“There’s something you should know,” she said, “before you decide if you want to get caught up in all this.”