Her adrenaline drove her forward. It took all her willpower to keep her pace steady, her breathing even, her eyes focused. Every post was a man pressed against the wall, every hump of stone a girl curled up on the ground.

Any moment, she sensed, she would round a corner and Felix would be there, smiling into her flashlight, his knife clicking back and forth in his hand. It occurred to her that if she died down here, shed never have the chance to make things right with her father. She would also lose any chance of ever learning what had really happened to Kelly, a mystery that never stopped bothering her no matter how much time passed.

She was still thinking about this when she followed a turn and found herself looking at a wall of rock. A rusted pickaxe lay against the wall beside an overturned helmet dotted with rat excrement.

It was a dead end.

A muffled sound reached her. She pressed her ear to the wall, trying not to breathe as she listened. It was a voicemale, she guessed. Callaway?

Or Felix?

The former, she thought, but she could not be sure. Either way, the voice was shouting.

Moving as fast as she dared, Harley hurried back through the tunnel. She kept pausing to look back, afraid she might miss the place where it branched off, but then she spotted it.

Im coming, Callaway! she called, hoping she was not too late.

She had not gone far, however, when the tunnel branched again. Harley cursed under her breath. Which way would Callaway have gone?

Deciding she would not have been able to hear him if he had been far away, she took the left branch, supposing it must run close to the tunnel she had taken earlier. She squeezed through a trio of four-by-four posts propping up the ceiling. As she did so, a faint dusting of earth sprinkled into her hair.

She noticed this tunnel was braced all around with wooden planks and posts, as if the miners had decided it was impossible to be too careful. This might have worked for a time, but how many decades had passed since it was active? How much had all that lumber been weakened by rot, mold, insects?

Harley, is that you? It was Callaways voice.

The beam of Harleys flashlight revealed a tunnel that had already collapsed in on itself partway, leaving a loose pile of stone and earth that covered the torso and legs of a young woman. Her dust-covered head lay cocked to one side, as if asleep.

Callaway held two fingers to her nostrils. Shes still breathing! he announced, his voice desperate with hope. Help me get her out! He straightened and began to paw at the pile of earth covering her body.