“Mandibole wouldn’t like it.”

“We crossed that line in the sand a few dunes ago.”

The goal wasn’t to uncover an overlooked clue, although with the crackling aura of kismet, it wouldn’t have shocked me to discover a new puzzle piece. This expedition spoke to my identity as a hunter and a man. Once I got going, there was no return until I’d exhausted every lead, turned over every rock, and followed every trail to a dead end. In the Outfit days, I hadn’t possessed the luxury of returning to my bosses empty-handed. The mob levies an exponential penalty for repeated failure, so I did my damnedest to succeed and success generally aligned with perseverance. The habit was ingrained to the bone. Sean Pruitt’s wedding band represented the Rubicon. Odds were, I’d find nothing down there except an abandoned tunnel. I had to go see for myself.

I unrolled a bandanna and fashioned it into a mask to cover my nose and mouth like a stagecoach robber. No sense eating any more flakes of rust or grit than necessary.

“Allow me to log my objection, for the record,” he said.

If I’d spoken on the record, I would’ve copped to being terrified at the prospect of leaving the sunlit world behind on what amounted to a double-dog dare issued by the angel on my left shoulder. He’d been damned pushy of late.

“Duly noted. Any patrols or the cops happen along, tell them we’re conducting a safety inspection. Should charm fail, casually toss a rock down and I’ll double-time it back to the top. Cool?”

“Uncool,” he said. “Way, way uncool, man.”

■■■

Lionel was on the money: The situation was maximally uncool. I arrived at this conclusion sixty or seventy feet into the descent. Darkness, heights, and underground spaces weren’t generally a problem for me. Combine the three, add a sense of urgency into the mix, and that caused me to reassess. The ladder was relatively sturdy, albeit creaky as hell under my not inconsiderable weight. It wrapped around me in a tubular cage. There was a platform at what I estimated to be the halfway point. I rested. The open hatch and sky had shrunk. Lionel clicked twice on the two-way; I responded with two clicks and resumed the descent. The ladder style changed to skinny rungs. An unsettling shimmy accompanied the ominous creaks of protesting metal.

This was the farthest I recalled ever being underground. Caving isn’t high on my list of recreational activities, nor was it something often required to fulfill mob contracts. Water streamed from cracks in the retaining wall and sluiced into the abyss. I’d read that the shelved Texas supercollider project of the 1990s had flooded the tunnels to stave off inevitable collapse. Optimists crossed their fingers in hopes of resuming work one day.

I tread carefully, in no hurry. Imagine my chagrin when the mooring bolts snapped loose as I grasped a rung. My weight precipitously transferred to my feet, and that rung snapped. I had a moment to regret a whole bunch of rash life decisions, including the recent one to climb into Shaft 40. I could hear the exasperation in Lionel’s voice as he relayed the bad news to Meg: Welp, what’s another hospital bill on the ol’ pile, right? Of course, it was more likely he’d have to cover his heart with his hat and explain to her the circumstances of my untimely demise and its macabre similarity to Sean Pruitt’s.