“Jesus Christ,” I can’t help but mutter as, once again, Briggs disappears into grief. He’s immovable from his position at the wall, as if the Reverend put him under a freezing spell. I can’t watch anymore because Briggs’s torment is unfathomable—his pain is too naked; it cuts him to the bone. He was so desperate to keep Drew, but Drew was only wallpaper over some invisible wound that’s now exposed and infected. All that’s left for Briggs is a dead boy and a son who hates him, and he knows it. Cold judgment passes over me. How could Briggs work here, hurt people, and not expect Hell to come knocking on his door?

It’s the Reverend. It all comes back to the Reverend. We’re in his web.

I can’t stomach any more, not Briggs’s anguish or Marcos trying his millionth key with no success. I march my shattered spear farther down the empty prison cells. This corridor ends at another left turn. Two lefts? The bunker is nothing but a circle of hallways, one unsettling turn after another. “What’s down here?” I ask.

“Bill’s room,” Darcy replies, failing to muzzle her growing agitation. “Don’t go far. I’ll be out of here any second, hopefully…”

The vice in my stomach unscrews a quarter-turn. Bill’s room. This afternoon—a lifetime ago—searching Bill’s room for Ricky’s Expulsion tapes was our number one priority. Now, the only mission is to survive the night.

Forget the evidence. Just get Darcy and go.

Yet my feet move out of my control, faster and faster, until I’m sprinting around the next turn. This area is separated from the rest of the bunker by a black drape hooked to a tension rod. Beneath the drape, a stripe of cozy, warm light spills out onto my shoes. I reaffirm my grip on the spear and slowly peel back the veil…

A prison cell of a different color. Bill’s cell has no iron bars, yet all the other makings of a penitentiary: a green army cot—pristinely tucked—occupies half of the thin square footage, the rest of which is commandeered by a small bookcase of deteriorating hardcover spines. An empty mouthwash bottle lies at the foot of a second, final door—a closet? Bill’s room is so blandly immaculate, my heart floats downward like a fallen leaf.

There’s no hiding anything in here. There’s no more Ricky tapes.

Open the door…the voice in my head whispers.

Absolutely not. My poor stomach lining can’t take the fear, and I’ve already strayed too far from my friends. Before I can retreat, though, two brass-framed photographs pull me deeper inside Bill’s room. The frames rest on top of the bookcase and are maddeningly small, forcing me to come face-to-face with them before their details register.