I stare down at her for a moment, watching the life drain from her eyes. I remind myself that just minutes ago, she tried to kill me; I shouldn’t feel anything except gratitude that I’m alive and she’s lying there dead instead of me. But the fact of the matter is, it’s not easy to watch someone die. In this case, Irene and Perry Mast left too many questions unanswered.

“Kate.”

It takes me a moment to realize Tomasetti is speaking to me. I have no idea what he’s saying. I turn to him, pretending I wasn’t somewhere else.

“The tunnel, Kate. Where is it?”

The sheriff’s deputy stands next to him, barking something into his lapel mike, but his attention is on me.

“Basement,” I say. “This way.”

Then I’m striding down the hallway, vaguely aware that my legs are shaking. The basement door stands open, the wood around the lock shattered. Evidently, Perry Mast used the rifle to blast his way out. I stop at the door, look down the steps into the basement. It seems like hours since I was down there, though in reality it’s only a matter of minutes.

I start down the steps. The temperature drops as I descend. The odor of rotting wood and wet earth close around me like a dirty, wet blanket. Gray light oozes in from a single window at ground level, but it’s not enough to cut the shadows.

My boots are silent on the dirt floor as I cross to the hatch. Tomasetti walks beside me, shining his Maglite from side to side. I hear the deputy behind me. He’s breathing heavily, which tells me his adrenaline is flowing. The fact of the matter is, we don’t know what we’ll find down here. We don’t know if there are other people, if they’re armed, or if they mean us harm. We don’t know if the girls are alive or if Mast killed them before coming out and turning the gun on himself.

“They ran electricity to the tunnel,” I say as I take them to the hatch.

“So much for all those Amish rules,” Tomasetti mutters.

“I cut the extension cord.”

We reach the hatch. The sickle I used to lock Mast in lies on the floor, a few feet away. One of the double doors lies next to it; the other hangs at a precarious angle by a single hinge.

“He shot off the hinges,” says Marcus stating the obvious.

Tomasetti shines his light down the steps leading into the tunnel. “What the fuck is this?”

Marcus trains the beam of his flashlight on the steps. “House used to be part of the Underground Railroad.”

“No shit?” Tomasetti says.

“Newspaper did a story a few years ago.”

“Did you know about the tunnels?” Tomasetti asks.

“No one mentioned tunnels.”

“Now you know why,” I mutter.