Bouma stepped forward with the girl sleeping peacefully in his arms. “How did you go undetected?”

Luke shrugged. “My bunker leads into granite caves deep beneath this house.”

Sophie eyed the man suspiciously. Her gut was sending the same warning feelings she’d had before, indicating something was amiss—that the man was leaving out some important details. She studied him intently. His face and his monotone voice were both oddly familiar, but she couldn’t place him.

“Perhaps they aren’t able to penetrate granite with their scanners?” the man offered.

“Oh, I’m sure they’ll find a way. Once they pillage the rest of the surface and track down every living thing with an ounce of H2O inside of it,” Sophie replied.

“But that still doesn’t explain how you’ve managed to avoid them,” said Finley, his eyebrows raised. “We ran into two drones in the few hours we were outside. Not to mention that we haven’t seen a single living person besides this girl.”

Luke caught Finley’s gaze and shied away from it, pacing across the length of the room. “You really want to know?” he asked, craning his neck and scanning the faces of Sophie and her team one by one. “Then follow me,” he said, motioning them with his machine gun toward a narrow metal door just beyond the hallway.

Overton jammed an unlit cigarette into his mouth and winked at Sophie. “Ladies first,” he said, with a grin just wide enough to keep the cigarette from falling out.

She wrinkled her nose and followed their host through the door and down a long, steep flight of stairs. After what felt like hundreds of steps, they emerged into a dim cave. Candles dripped wax down the black walls, and shadows danced across the passage.

Sophie froze, listening intently to the sounds of the cavern. She waited for a few agonizing moments but heard nothing except the distant trickle of water and the shuffling of footsteps. A strong pat on the shoulder startled her.

“Something spook you?” Overton asked.

She ignored the question and strained her ears for another few seconds before following him into the shadows. They had to have been over fifty feet beneath the surface, and she was getting more nervous with every step. Things simply didn’t add up. Something about Luke made her feel uneasy—something about his robotic voice and small, hazel eyes.

She didn’t trust him, but she didn’t know why.