He took the wooden ladder from the hayloft and lowered it into the pit, then scrambled down and knelt beside Alena. He felt her face; it was hot and she was drenched in sweat, but her body was rigid from head to toe as if she were locked in a grand mal seizure—or as if she had died and rigor had set in. Nick placed two fingers under her jaw and checked her carotid just to make sure—he found a pulse. He took her by the shoulders and gently shook her, but she still didn’t respond. He gently peeled the tape from her mouth, then rolled her onto her side and freed her wrists and ankles. He laid her on her back again and took her hands, rubbing them and shaking them vigorously.

“Come on, Alena. Come back to me.”

She slowly opened her eyes and looked up at him without recognition.

“Hi,” he said. “Remember me?”

She reached up and touched his face. “Nick.”

“You know, you’re a hard woman to locate. I think you take this privacy thing a bit too far.”

“How did you ever find me?”

“Trygg found you. Sorry it took so long. It was the bandannas—I couldn’t remember which one told her to do what.”

“The blue one. It’s for ‘putrefied remains.’ The orange one—that’s ‘distressed victim.’”

“That explains why we missed you on the first pass—I was telling her to look for the wrong thing. She went right to you this time; lucky thing you were ‘in distress.’”

“Yeah. Lucky me.” She looked over Nick’s shoulder and saw Trygg staring down at her from the edge of the pit. “Nick—that man—he killed Acheron. He hit me—he brought me here—”

“We’ll talk about it later,” Nick said. “Right now we need to get you out of here. Can you walk?” He helped her to a sitting position.

“My head,” she groaned.

Nick gently felt the top of her head. “You’ve got a real goose egg there, but I don’t feel any blood. Look, I’m sorry—I know you don’t feel up to this, but we’ve got to get you out of this barn before Riddick decides to come back again.” He helped her to stand and walked her to the ladder, then stayed close behind while she slowly climbed one rung at a time. When they reached the barn floor Alena crawled onto the dirt and sat with her arm around Trygg while Nick replaced the threshing floor and swept dirt over its surface again.

“That should do it,” he said, dusting off his hands. “It’ll look like no one was here—at least until he opens it up again, and we’d better be long gone by then. Come on, let’s get out of here.”