She sat still on her cot for the longest time. Then she heard the familiar faint sounds from above—deadened, but the metallic sounds of a lock and chain, the heavy thunder roll atop the entrance to the shaft, the door latch, squeaking hinges, the door above opening to a flood of dim light.

Sam blinked rapidly.

A canvas bag hit the floor.

The door above slammed with a thud.

Sam retrieved the bag, and ate the peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwich. Crunching on the apple, she stopped.

Again, quiet clicks from the rock pile.

Using her weak light stick, she moved to the bike, unclipped the fully charged flashlight, switched it on, and turned it to the rock pile. Instantly, the light caught the tiny yawning jaws and fangs of a bat.

Gooseflesh rose on Sam’s skin.

Bats carried rabies.

Bats hated bright light.

Trapping the bat in an intense halo of white light while grasping a rock, Sam inched closer.

Don’t fly off. Don’t fly off you little friggin’ demon!

As she raised the rock to kill the bat, it scurried into the gaps between the rocks, vanishing into the pile.

Sam exhaled slowly.

Gone. For now.

Listening, she raked the light over the pile, scrutinizing it, relieved all was silent, praying there was only one bat and that she’d scared it off.

Staring at the rock pile, it dawned on her.

If—and it’s a big if—that bat got in here through the pile, then there could be—there must be—oh God, let there be—a way out.

CHAPTER 21

Waterbury, Vermont

Deep in the Vermont Forensic Laboratory, a multistory, red brick-and-glass building on State Drive, Wendy Spruce bent over her worktable.

The air was clinical, akin to the smell of a doctor’s office. Spruce wore a white lab coat and blue latex gloves. Her red-framed glasses accentuated her blond hair. Her face was a portrait of concentration as she focused on trays of test tubes, and a syringe with a solution for chemical analysis.

Spruce’s workload was heavy with homicides, sexual assaults, and robberies, but she was getting a handle on it, and getting excited. Recently, she’d gone to a conference in Boston, where she’d attended presentations on advances in forensic technology, specifically DNA work. As a DNA analyst, Spruce was applying what she’d learned to one of her cases—the missing 20-year-old woman from New York, Samantha Victoria Moore.

It had been several months since Spruce, working with other experts at the lab, had completed analysis of swabs collected from the patch on the pavement of the motel parking lot where Moore had vanished. Analysis of recovered blood and hair showed them to be consistent with Moore’s.

Now, after alerting her supervisor, Spruce had gone back to all the swabs VSP’s Crime Scene Search Team had collected from the patch intending to reanalyze the material.