He descended the final steps and approached the phone and swiped off the alarm. Warily, he picked it up. Just a phone. Nothing more. He pointed the screen away, using its glow to see. Punctured through the box’s lid were rows of perfectly round drill marks.

Air holes.

Jack couldn’t breathe.

“Matty,” he whispered.

He pushed up on the lid, but it was locked.

“Jesus,” he said. “Oh, Jesus.”

He raised the hammer and struck one of the metal latches. The steel pinging. Gasp of his breath. The latch broke and skittered into the dark. He was going to throw up.

“God, please.”

The paltry light. He’d dropped the phone. No time to look. He brought the hammer down on the second latch and wedged the claw under it until the latch snapped. He shoved open the lid.

Matty looked up, his wet and grimy face.

Jack shoved the hammer in his belt and bent to pick him up.

“Jack,” Ava whispered.

He turned and looked at her crouching up there in the square of light, watching him from the room above. The briefcase near. Behind her were cowboy boots. Ironed jeans. A man. Ava didn’t know he was there, and he raised the rifle and cracked the butt of it down on the side of her head. She fell to the wood floor and lay without moving.

Bardem bent and gazed at Jack. Then he lifted the hatch door and swung it over and slammed it shut.

XII

The colors went out of everything

and the world swam away.

Black.

Pitch-black.

He fumbled for the box and gathered up Matty into his arms. Faint warmth, the thin beat of his heart. Matty sagged without moving at all. Jack unzipped his coat and held Matty against him. An impenetrable dark. Cold as a tomb. He squatted, holding Matty in his lap, and ran his hand across the uneven floor, searching for the phone. Nowhere. The dull gleam of ice. “It’s okay,” he said. “It’s okay.”

He looked toward the hatch into a blackness without dimension. There’s no way. You’ll fall. You’ll drop him. He tried to breathe but his chest was a vise. Ava, oh, Ava!

Her voice in the car: He doesn’t have weaknesses. Except one.

His fingers touched the phone, and he pushed a button.

Spectral light. The foot of the steps. Matty drooped against him with no expression on his face at all. Above them, something heavy scraped across the floor. Then silence.

Jack stood with his pulse thudding and pulled Matty close and tried to listen. Bootsteps. They stopped. Then moved away. Bardem spoke not a word, the more disquieting for it. No bars on the phone. Useless. Useless. Matty’s head lay buried in Jack’s chest.

Matty stirred.

“You’re okay,” Jack said.