Teresa didn’t doubt it. She knew the nature of that bond—ineffable, arcane, primal—better than anyone else. It was an enigma as old as mankind, perhaps older still. And from the moment she’d arrived on the scene, the scar that marked her abdomen had begun to burn, the force of that connection suddenly resurfacing through her body.

Teresa nodded. “Give her a vest and helmet,” she ordered.

“But, Superintendent . . .”

Teresa silenced Parisi by placing a hand on his arm.

“I’m relying on you to keep everyone in check,” she told him, with an eye on the clearing outside the entrance to the mine. It was crowded with police, army, and search and rescue vehicles, all lit up by light towers. Two ambulances had also just pulled up.

“When we come out, nobody shoots. Understood?”

Teresa summoned De Carli to her side and squeezed his arm as well.

“Don’t forget he’s a victim, too,” she reminded them.

“I won’t forget,” De Carli replied, “but if he hurts you, I . . .”

“No one’s going to get hurt, so long as you lot don’t make a mess of things.”

Parisi laughed, but he was visibly nervous.

Teresa let them go.

“Are you ready?” she called out to Gloria, who was shivering. Gloria nodded.

“Stay a couple of steps behind me, and if I tell you to do something, do it immediately.”

“All right.”

Teresa looked into her eyes.

“Even if I tell you to run away,” she said. “Got it?”

“Yes.”

Hugo Knauss pulled her aside, and for a moment, Teresa couldn’t help but admire the courage it must have taken him to do that.

“She’s a civilian,” he objected. “Do you realize the risk you’re taking? She’s not trained for any of this.”

“Is anyone here, really?” Teresa retorted.

“Superintendent . . .”

“She won’t come to any harm.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because I’ll be in the way.”

Teresa returned to Gloria’s side. Together, they entered the tunnel.

-75-

-75-

The damp, persistent sound of dripping water echoed across the rarefied air inside the tunnel, an eerie accompaniment to their footsteps. The walls, shored up to prevent further cave-ins, were lined with rivulets of water that ended in puddles on the ground. Beneath the soles of their feet, the gallery stretched for more than half a mile onward and was connected to other galleries by passages and cavities called drifts. At one time, they had been employed to transport ore between tunnels, but now they were traps that could open up and swallow them whole at any given moment.

Teresa listened to the sound of her own breathing and of her forceful heartbeats beneath the safety vest. But all she really wanted to hear now was that wailing from before, which had since gone quiet.