For a moment, she stood in the old, abandoned shack alone, beneath the dusty, weathered walls and roof, inhaling the scent of moldy straw and grime. She stared at the basement, heart hammering, closing her eyes for a second.

Her lips buzzed, memories flitting to the surface.

She hated basements. Her house by the lake certainly didn’t have one. That fact alone had ruled out any possibility of living in the Midwest. She stared at the concrete steps, at the streaked stain of grease… or blood.

Stared toward the darkness where Sawyer had vanished, the movement and flicker of his flashlight casting strange shadows behind him against the geometric slab steps.

Did she really want to venture into the basement? If she didn’t, could she forgive herself? What if Samantha was down there? What if she was hurt?

Ilse tried to step forward. She truly tried. But her feet felt rooted to the spot. Her hands were clammy, opening and closing on either side. She gripped the hem of her baggy sweater, panting softly, trying to force herself to move.

But she stood rooted, motionless.

“Come here, Hilda!”

“No….” she murmured. “No, I won’t…”

“I won’t hurt you…”

“Yes,” she said, shakily, staring at the gaping entrance to the dark basement. “Yes, you will.”

“Come here, Hilda!”

Her fingers probed up to her maimed ear, tracing the scar on the right side of her face. She couldn’t bring herself to move. She couldn’t—

“Doc, get down here!” Sawyer’s voice suddenly shouted, alarmed.

Ilse’s pulse raced. The single note of fear in Sawyer’s voice, a note she hadn’t heard from the lanky agent until that moment, jolted her into motion. It was as if her foot was released from some unseen grip. Despite herself, despite every synapse in her brain screaming against the movement, she stumbled forward, into the basement, down the slab steps, stepping over the slab with the grease stain.

The basement was small, cramped…

And it smelled like a meat locker.

The odor alone nearly sent Ilse stumbling back, gagging on the air. She pulled her sweater over her nose, breathing shallowly, but even then, her eyes watered and ached. With shallow, puffing breaths, she located the beam of flashlight from Sawyer’s phone. He was standing in the far corner of basement, directly beneath where the loft was situated in the room above.

His flashlight illuminated something in the dark, pressed against the wall. Was that a raccoon? No—bigger. Was that…

Ilse felt her heart pound as she stumbled forward, drawn like a moth to flame, moving toward Sawyer, his gun and his flashlight.

“What is it?” she called.

“Doc, you need to tell me if this one’s breathing.” He kept one hand on his flashlight, the other on his weapon, seemingly loath, in that moment, to lower either. His eyes whirled about, as if expecting some threat to burst from the ceiling at any second.

Ilse’s pulse quickened, and as she drew near, her gaze finally settled in the dark and dust. Not a raccoon at all, but a torso, attached to legs beneath a fallen log beam.