He had reached the door to the sub-basement, secured by a heavy padlock. This was the part where things got tricky. If Somers had been Hazard, he would have had a plan—for that matter, if Somers were Hazard, he would have just used a bump key or picked the lock or known how to jimmy the door off its hinges. Somers wasn’t Hazard, though. He’d come this far, and now he just had to figure out how to get the rest of the way.

If worse came to worst, Somers thought, he could always try to break the lock with the butt of the Glock, although it would be hell on a fine piece of engineering. He reached out and tugged on the lock to see how solid it was. Pretty solid. A padlock, which secured the door from the outside, meant the Keeper probably wasn’t waiting in the basement. But it was a good possibility that the Keeper was keeping his victims down there—Mitchell and Nico, and maybe others. Somers considered the problem for a minute. Then he walked back to the cart he had spotted. He picked through the tools, came up with a nice claw hammer, and carried it back. He was pretty sure he could break the padlock off. He might even rip the hasp out of the frame.

Groaning, he stopped, went back, and got a screwdriver. Thank God Hazard wasn’t here, or he’d never hear the end of this. It took him two minutes to unscrew the hasp from the frame, and he wasn’t even in a rush. No need to break the padlock when he could just detach the whole locking mechanism from the frame.

Somers tried one last time to wrap his head around the Keeper’s decision to use this space again. It was brash and defiant; a slap in the face to Hazard and Somers, a bold statement that this was the Keeper’s place. It was, bottom line, a fuck you.

From down the hall came the sound of a door opening and then the rumble of casters. A custodial worker, Somers guessed. He didn’t give himself any more time to hesitate. Drawing the Glock, Somers slipped through the doorway, pulling the door shut behind him. A deadbolt was set on the inside of the door, and Somers threw it home, just in case the custodian decided to investigate the loose hasp. Then Somers went down the steep flight of stairs; a second door met him here, the boards old and warped, and it stuck slightly as Somers forced it open. He stepped into the cool, damp darkness beyond. The smell of limestone and mold met him.

The sub-basement was a low-ceilinged honeycomb of rooms—at one point, it had served a similar function as the storerooms on the level above. Here, though, the doors had been removed, leaving a maze of shadowy cells that disappeared into darkness. Somers cursed himself for not thinking of a flashlight. Laying one hand on the wall, he felt the chill, the porous wetness of the stone, and the toolmarks left from quarrying. Then, guiding himself along the wall, he moved into the darkness.