The man reached down, attached his line to the body board, swung the rope over his shoulder and started to pull.

Seventeen minutes later, he had arrived at the opening of a small hole in the ground. Not many people would notice it, just another sinkhole in a state whose limestone foundation was more hole-riddled than Swiss cheese. This opening was special, though. The man had known it since his youth, and understood even back then its full potential.

First he had to fasten his rope around the thick trunk of a nearby tree, forming a rough belay. He stationed his feet for balance, then used the rope to carefully lower the body board down through the hole deep into the bowels of the earth. Ten minutes later, he heard the small splash of the board landing. He tied off one end of the rope around the tree, and rappelled down the other, also disappearing into the foul-smelling earth. He landed standing upright in knee-deep water. Fading light forty feet above. Endless darkness all around.

Most people never looked past the sawmill above. They didn’t understand that in Virginia, there was often a whole other ecosystem far below.

He turned on his headlight, identified the cavern’s narrow passageway to his right, and got on his hands and knees to crawl. The girl floated after him, the board’s rope tied once more to the belt at his waist.

Within minutes the passageway shrank. He extended his narrow frame, body flattening carefully into the oily stream of rancid water. He was protected in synthetic shrink-wrap; he still swore he could feel the water lapping away at his skin, sluicing off his cells, eroding him down to his very bones. Soon the water would get into his brain, and then he would have no hope left. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.

The smells were richer now. The stifling decay of layers and layers of bat guano, now melted into an oozing morass that squished around his hands and knees. The sharp, pungent odor of sewage and waste. The deeper, more menacing smell of death.

He moved slowly, feeling his way even with the light. Bats startled easily and you didn’t need a panicked, rabid creature flying at your face. Ditto the raccoons, though he’d be surprised if any of them could survive this passageway anymore. Most of what had once lived here had probably died years ago.

Now there was just this rancid water, corroding away the last of the limestone walls and spreading its slow, insidious death.

The body board bobbed along behind him, bumping him from time to time in the rear. And then, just when the ceiling was shrinking dangerously low, forcing his face closer and closer to that putrid water, the tunnel ended. The room opened up, and he and the girl spilled out into a vast, expansive cavern.

The man shot immediately to his feet, embarrassed by his own need to stand, but doing it nonetheless. He compulsively took giant gulps of air, his need for oxygen outweighing his apprehension of the smell. He looked down, and was genuinely surprised by how badly his hands were shaking.

He should be stronger than this. He should be tougher. Forty-eight hours without sleep, even he was starting to go.

He wasted another thirty seconds regaining his composure, then belatedly went to work on the rope at his waist. He was here, the worst of it was over, and he was aware once again of just how fast the clock was ticking.

He fetched the girl from the mini-stretcher. He laid her out on a ledge away from the dark running stream, and quickly stripped the coveralls from her body. Purse went beside her. Bottle of water as well.

Forty feet above, an eight-inch-diameter pipe formed a makeshift skylight in the ceiling. When daylight came, she would be greeted by a narrow shaft of light. He thought that gave her a sporting chance.

He retied the board to his waist, and ready now for his exit, gave the brunette one last glance.

She was propped up near a small pool of water. This water wasn’t polluted like the stream. Not yet. It was replenished from the rain and put up a better fight.

This water rippled and surged with the promise of life. Things moved beneath the pitch-black surface. Things that lived and breathed and fought. Things that bit. Some things that slithered. And many things that wouldn’t care for intruders in their home.

The girl was moaning again.

The man bent over. “Shhhh,” he whispered in her ear. “You don’t want to wake up just yet.”

The water surged again. The man turned his back on the girl and left.

Quantico, Virginia

9:46 P . M .

Temperature: 91 degrees

KIMBERLY SAT ALONE IN HER DORM ROOM. Lucy had returned briefly, dumping one pile of books on the cluttered desk before scooping up the next.

“Wow, you look worse than you did this morning,” she said by way of greeting.

“Been working on it all day,” Kimberly assured her.

“Finding a corpse must be hard on a girl.”

“So you heard.”

“Everyone’s heard, my dear. It’s the hottest topic around. This your first corpse?”

“You mean other than my mother and sister?”

Lucy stilled in front of the desk. The silence grew long. “Well, I’m off to study group,” she said finally. She turned, her expression gentle. “Want to come along, Kimberly? You know we don’t mind.”

“No,” Kimberly said flatly.

And then Lucy was gone.

She should sleep. Supervisor Watson was right. Her nerves were frayed, the adrenaline rush gone and leaving her feeling empty. She wanted to tip over on the narrow bed. Slip into the blessed numbness of sleep.

She’d dream about Mandy. She’d dream about her mother. She wasn’t sure which dream would hurt her worse.

She could find her father over at the Jefferson Dormitory. He would talk to her, he always did. But she knew already the look she’d see on his face. Slightly distracted, slightly puzzled. A man who had just started a terribly important assignment, and even as he listened to his daughter lament, the other half of his brain would be reshuffling crime-scene photos, murder books, investigator logs. Her father loved her. But she and Mandy had come to understand early on that he mostly belonged to the dead.

She couldn’t stand the empty room. She couldn’t stand the sound of footsteps in the hall. People meeting friends, sharing laughs, swapping stories, having a good time. Only Kimberly sat alone, the island she’d worked so hard to become.

She left the room, too. She took her knife and disappeared down the hall.

Outside it was hot. The dark, oppressive heat greeted her like a wall. Ten P.M. and still this unbearably sticky. Tomorrow would be punishing for sure.

She slogged forward, feeling blotches of dark gray sweat bloom across the front of her T-shirt, while more moisture began trailing down the small of her back. Her breath came out in shallow pants, her lungs laboring to find oxygen in air that was 90 percent water.

She could still hear fading laughter. She turned away from it and headed toward the welcoming dark of the firing range. No one came out here this time of night. Well, almost no one.

The thought came only briefly, and then she knew just how much trouble she was in.

“Been waitin’ for you,” Special Agent Mac McCormack drawled softly, pushing away from the entrance to the range.

“You shouldn’t have.”

“I don’t like to disappoint a pretty girl.”

“Did you bring a shotgun? Well then, too bad.”

He merely grinned at her, his teeth a flash of white in the dark. “I thought you’d spend more time with your father.”

“Can’t. He’s working the case and I’m not allowed.”

“Being family doesn’t entitle you to some perks?”

“You mean like a sneak peek of homicide photos? I think not. My father is a professional. He takes his job seriously.”