When someone yanked on the door, it rattled in the frame, and Somers’s pulse jumped up a few hundred beats. He was sweating in spite of the cold. He wrapped and rewrapped his left hand around the butt of the Glock. The textured grip felt too slick under his touch. Someone yanked on the door again, and Somers felt a brief, hysterical giggle bubble up in his throat. He clamped down on it, but not before he had a crazy grin at the idea of the Keeper losing the keys to his own dungeon.

A rapid exchange of whispers came from the other side of the door, and Somers upped his count to at least two. Two people out in that hallway. He knew he shouldn’t have been surprised—Hazard had raised the possibility that the Keeper had an accomplice—but he still felt a sickening wave of disappointment. With one, Somers might have gotten lucky. With two—well, a lot could go wrong with two.

Then, over the hammering of his heart, Somers heard, “Then get a fucking drill, dude.”

The Glock’s barrel dipped for a moment as Somers’s muscles slackened.

“Gray?” he asked.

“Oh my God, bro.” A fist pounded on the door. “John-Henry, are you in there? Are you all right? Can you hear me?”

Somers had to bite the inside of his mouth to keep that hysterical laughter from escaping. His first thought was of Hazard answering the question, with its obvious answer, and then the surge of relief was so strong that his eyes stung and he slumped against the wall.

“Yeah. Yeah, I can hear you. We’re ok.”

“Who is it?” Nico whispered from the bottom of the stairs.

“Gray,” Somers said. “And—I don’t know. Gray, who else is with you?”

“Uh, Sheriff Engels and Foley. Oh, and I brought that twat Yarmark—Foley made me. Hazard told us to bring the cavalry, but people are moving slow. Hold on; Foley’s getting a drill.”

Heat bloomed in Somers’s chest, and he squeezed his eyes shut.

“What if he’s—” Nico began.

“He’s not.” Somers could have said he knew, in his gut, that Dulac wasn’t lying. But he figured Nico might appreciate a more logical answer. “If it were just Dulac, maybe just Dulac and one other person, I’d be worried. But that’s too many people; they can’t all be involved in helping the Keeper.”

“What if it is, though?” Nico said, running hands through his shaggy hair. “What if this is one of those crazy, fucked up towns where everybody’s in on it, and they’re—they’re going to go take us and burn us at the stake or something.”

Somers raised an eyebrow.

“Ok,” Nico said, dragging fingers through his hair again. “Ok, I’m going to admit that I can hear how nutso that sounded.”

“Besides,” Somers said, “the sheriff wouldn’t be involved in the death of his own son.”

“In this town, you never know.”

The whine of an electric drill stopped their conversation, and then spats of argument interrupted the sound of the motor.