Okay. There was something seriously wrong with me. First, I was staring at him like some sort of love-struck idiot. Second, I was doing it while sitting in the middle of the street with the motor running. If another vehicle came barreling down the road, I’d get to experience the fun and excitement of a head-on collision. I pulled the car to the curb. It was a consequence of the blood loss. Sure. That was it.

Derek did a one-eighty and ran past me down the road. Curran leaped off the boulder and caught up with him. Here we go again. I eased off the brake. Meadow Lane Road . . . A ruined parking garage loomed on our left, half-hidden behind pines. Curran and Derek ducked into it. I parked the Jeep and went down the slope after them.

The parking garage stretched before me. I stood for a moment, letting my eyes adjust to the gloom. Bare vines, still reeling from winter, blanketed the right and left sides of the garage, growing denser toward the back, where the ceiling of the structure had caved in. Three cars, pinned in place by the crushing weight of concrete, rusted quietly in the far left corner. Next to them Curran waited. Derek crouched by him. In front of them a fissure split the concrete wall. From here it looked solid black, at least eight feet tall and three feet wide.

Of course. Why wouldn’t it be a terrible dark pit? Just once I would like it to be a breezy path through some garden with roses and sunshine.

I jogged to them. Derek pivoted on his feet toward me. “The trail leads in there.”

No, it doesn’t. “Okay.”

Derek ducked into the gap. I looked after him. The concrete ended after about five feet, merging into a tunnel dug in soil, angling down. A cold, dank odor washed over me.

No.

I felt Curran behind me and straightened. My back brushed against his chest. I didn’t want to go down into that hole. I would do almost anything else. I just didn’t want to go down there.

“Baby?” Curran asked.

“Yes?”

Right now Eduardo could be down there, waiting for help. I stepped into the gap and started moving. I just had to put one foot in front of the other and not think about thousands of pounds of soil and rock that would bury me alive if it collapsed.

“You okay?” he asked quietly.

“I’m great.” I could barely see Derek in the darkness moving ahead of me. My imagination painted an avalanche of loose dirt dropping into the tunnel in front of me, burying me, getting sucked into my lungs . . . I tasted adrenaline on my tongue. Tunnels were never on my favorite list of things, but today my body was going into overdrive.

“Your pulse is speeding up.”