“It might not be so easy for him,” Lucas pointed out.

“I don’t know if it was easy for him or hard, but I don’t want him in my head again, ever,” Robbie snapped—if quietly.

“Calm down,” Sam said quietly. “There’s no way in hell you’d ever deliberately shoot your partner. If this unsub made a try for that, I’m guessing he ended up just as you expected, with a pounding headache and probably a nosebleed. At least. If he’s relatively new to his abilities, he could have ended up with a lot worse. But whatever he was trying, all he could really do was what he did before. Plant a few memories in your head. Probably quick and brief ones.”

—

HE COULDN’T GET the bleeding stopped for the longest time, and that frightened him, even though he didn’t want to admit it.

Only cowards were afraid, and he was no coward.

He finally tore strips from his shirt and stuffed them up inside his nose. The plugs kept the blood from streaming down over his now-torn shirt, but he had to breathe through his mouth, and every time he swallowed he tasted blood.

That was . . . unpleasant.

And he suspected there was something badly wrong with his head. It hurt, of course, maybe worse than it had ever hurt before, but . . . the lumps. They had been there before, of course, but when he put his hands up to feel, he realized there were new bulges. He wondered if that was what happened when a brain grew beyond the capacity of a skull to hold it.

Would the skull crack, eventually? Or would it continue to bulge, as his bulged?

That could be a problem.

Still, he was utterly committed to his plan, and just as utterly convinced it would work. First he would finish punishing Jonah, that was paramount. Because it was all Jonah’s fault, and he had to pay.

Choices. It was all about choices.

Every choice had a price.

And Jonah would pay. Because when the girl had escaped, all according to plan, she had unknowingly stepped on a pressure plate, and that would set it all in motion.

Jonah would be first through the doorway, if he knew Jonah. And he did. He’d be first through, and he’d see what was waiting for him. The punishment that was worse than being shot or killed; those were too quick.

This . . . this would haunt Jonah Riggs forever.

—

ROBBIE THOUGHT ABOUT it, then sat down heavily in one of the chairs at the conference table across from Dante, obviously still more shaken than she wanted to admit. “It seemed so real. So unbelievably fucking real.” Then she looked around, suddenly realizing. “Where’s Jonah? Wasn’t he supposed to be working with you guys?”

Sam filled her in on what had been happening, finishing, “He left about an hour ago, so—”

Before she could finish, Jonah came into the command center. He looked windblown, but the relief on his face told them all they really needed to know.

“How is Nessa?” Sam asked anyway.

“In pretty good shape. Cuts and scrapes on her bare feet, and I doubt she’ll ever sleep in a dark room again, but Doc says she’ll be fine with enough rest and good food.”

“He didn’t hurt her?”

“No. She doesn’t remember him even touching her. Though she was out at first, so . . . still possible, I guess. She wanted a shower, and Doc had a quiet word with her; he doesn’t believe she was molested or suffered any kind of sexual attack.”

“She didn’t see him,” Lucas said, and it wasn’t a question.

Jonah shook his head. “If I understood her, he was seldom there, and when he was, because she was trying to hide her awareness from him, she visualized a black snake. Although even if she’d opened her eyes, she wouldn’t have been able to see him; from what she said, it was darker than dark in that place.”

“Was he starving her—the rest of them?”

Jonah shook his head. “Nutrients through an IV as far as Doc could tell from Nessa, and what she could tell him about where and how they were held.”

“So the others are alive?”

“They were when Nessa got away. At least, she thinks they were. She could hear them breathing, and in feeling her way out, touched at least a couple of them.” He paused, shook his head. “Freaked her out, but she didn’t scream. She’s a strong little girl. She was certain they were breathing.”

“Kept where?”

“I left two of my men with orders not to budge from where we found Nessa, and I didn’t backtrack because I wanted to get Nessa to the doc ASAP. But from what she said and where we found her, he’s been keeping them in what used to be an old clay mine. Deep underground.”

“I didn’t know clay was mined,” Luke said.

“All kinds of things have been mined in Tennessee,” Jonah said. “A couple hundred years back, this state was considered one of the richest in the South for minerals. Anyway, clay was mined for reasons you’d expect: pottery, additives for masonry, that sort of thing. Usually in big open pits, which ended up as lakes once they played out, most of them. But there were a few test shafts bored into the ground here and there; some were successful, and some just . . . ended. It sounds like that’s where Nessa and the others have been held. There’s a forest there now, but when the shaft was originally dug more than a hundred years ago, the trees were a lot more sparse.

“The shaft, large enough for a man of medium height to stand up straight, was bored down at a slight angle, and at the bottom they found a big cavern. Interesting, but it was unsuitable for removing clay. And there was nothing else interesting there, no other minerals or gems. It was marked on the old map—I have one of my people digging that up now—and notes made that if anyone ever decided to build there, the cavern would have to be blasted first, and fill brought in.”

“It’s that close to the surface?” Lucas asked intently.

“Safe to walk across, even ride a horse or drive across probably, but not safe to sink any kind of building foundations there. That area was even farther from town than it is now, so they just took simple precautions. The entrance boarded up with timbers, DANGER, DO NOT ENTER painted across them. And people forgot. The paint faded, the timbers rotted, and the forest grew all around it.”

“Until the unsub came along.”

Jonah nodded. “If he grew up around here, he could have heard about it. There are a few mine shafts scattered closer to the mountains, but the ranger service makes sure the barriers at the mouth of those shafts cannot be opened. Dangerous.

“I don’t remember any of my friends as kids wanting to explore any caves or shafts, and I haven’t had to chase any away in the years I’ve been chief, but everybody knew it was somewhere in the woods. If he’d been hiking in the woods, he could have found it. Vines had grown up all around there, but they wouldn’t have been too difficult to pull away. And it’s far enough out that he probably didn’t worry much about keeping it hidden while he came and went.”

Sam frowned. “Did Nessa say anything about pulling vines away when she was getting out?”

“No. But she was so intent on getting out, I doubt she would have even noticed them.”

“We’ll need to talk to her,” Sam said.

“I know. But right now, the doctors and her family are around her. And we know where to find the others without having to talk to her first. That’s our priority, finding the others.”

“Agreed,” Luke and Sam said in one voice.

Jonah frowned at Robbie. “Aren’t you supposed to be asleep?”

“We had a little disturbance.”

“Little?” Dante murmured.

Robbie shook her head. “Never mind that for now. I think it’s safe to say that both Dante and I are wide awake, believe me.”

“Okay.” Jonah straightened. “I’ve put Doc on alert at the clinic, and I have my people standing by. Sarah will meet us at the station.” When Lucas raised his brows, Jonah added, “My first priority is getting those people out of there. I mean to go in there in force, armed, and wearing vests.”