“If she knows where you are, and we’re deep under the earth beneath some warehouse, how in the world will she ever get us out?”

“I’m gambling that she—or probably my aunt, she’s a reporter—can get word to a friend. It’s a long shot, but he’s well connected. If he can get out of his own mess, he might be able to buy his way down here.”

“Even if he gets in, how do we get out?”

He’d just hung his head.

She’d then remarked on how tired he looked, and suggested he try to sleep. He’d replied that sleep is when the dreams came.

Then just stay with me. If it can’t reach you in these … communications of ours … then just sleep. We won’t have to talk.

He’d laid down on the bed, watching as she closed her own eyes. He was asleep almost instantly.

The unbolting of the door forced him awake and out of his bond to her. His grogginess suggested he had slept for a good amount of time.

The door opened, and Lily’s small face peered around.

His eyes widened as she rushed to him, throwing her arms around his neck.

“He came back,” Lily said softly.

William reached out and firmly shook Quincy’s hand. “I can’t believe it.…”

“We gotta get out of here.”

“There are others, we need to get Jane—”

“I’m here.”

She stood out in the hallway, next to an older man in a suit, with an American flag pin on his lapel. “Imagine my surprise when Miss Lily was standing in my door, along with the rest of these gentlemen,” she said.

“Jesus Christ,” the man in the suit said, looking at William. “It is you.”

“Will, this is Congressman Flip Smith. I’m a longtime supporter of his. I told him I needed a tour of this agency that happened to be in a warehouse. Listen, we don’t have much time–”

“Congressman, thank you. There’s another boy down here,” William said, walking into the hall. “We have to get him out. And Steven must be here somewhere. We have to get them both.”

“There’s only two doors left at the end of the hall. Look. One reads ‘staircase’ above it,” Quincy said, pointing. “We didn’t get to that one.”

“I actually need someone to explain to me right now why you people are all down here,” Flip said. “None of us are moving one more inch until I am told the whole damn story—”

The ding of an elevator that shot down the hallway was obviously set at an incredibly high decibel to alert anyone standing in the nearby corridors.

“Oh crap,” Quincy muttered.

“I don’t know where Steven is. But Ryan is just down the hall,” William said, turning around to run when the sound of rushing booted feet pounded towards them.