“Hon, we may not have a choice. We need to be prepared.”

“Like the Boy Scouts.”

“Exactly.”

“Okay, I can try.”

“First we’re going to have to get your pants off.”

“Oh, hell no,” I said, suddenly self-conscious. “We have an audience.”

“And we,” she said, smiling at me, “have a sheet. Several, in fact.”

With Denise’s help, I got onto my knees and we managed to get my pants off me.

“Can’t the guys just lift me out of here with the sheets?”

“No, it’s too big of a risk. If you fall again—”

“You could have fallen on me. Why was that not a risk?”

“Charley, every risk has to be weighed. It was riskier for you and for the baby for me not to come down here and check you. But it’s riskier for you both if the sheets don’t hold and you fall again. What is that?”

She pointed to my left. I’d been sitting on a skull. “So that’s what that was. Killed my tailbone.”

“Is that—?”

“A skull. Yes, we have to tell people. There are two bodies down here.”

Even in the low light, Denise’s face paled visibly. It was awesome.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Yes, We need to get a sheet under you, then I’m going to check you.”

It took some creative thinking, but we managed to get the sheet mostly underneath me.

She’d brought gloves from Katherine the Midwife’s stash and put them on. “Can you straighten up just a bit?”

I grabbed a protruding root and straightened as much as I could. A blistering hot pain shot through me. Every part of my body hurt, but she was able to get a hand between my parted legs. “Okay, you are at about a seven with ninety percent effacement.”

“Should I push? I don’t want to push too early. I’ve heard stories.”

Reyes’s heat felt good. I could feel it from where I sat.

“How long was she out?” she asked Cookie.

“About an hour.”

“An hour?” I asked, surprised. “It felt like minutes.” I fell onto my palms again, my head resting in her lap as a spasm of pain clawed at me and squeezed my midsection like I was a bottle of ketchup. I gritted my teeth and sucked air in and out through them. My hands curled around handfuls of the sheet until the pain began to subside.

“Charley,” Cookie said from overhead. “I can’t believe this is happening.”

“Me neither.”

“Do you remember that time we went to the movie and that woman went into labor but she wouldn’t leave because she didn’t want to miss the ending and then, bam, it was too late?”

“Oh yeah. That was crazy. That ending sucked.”

“Right?”

“Do you want to tell me what you were doing out here?” Reyes asked.

“I was following you.”

“Why?”

“You snuck out of the house and—” Anther spasm ripped through me and all I could wonder was why in the world had women been doing this for thousands of years? This was barbaric. This was torture. Never again. Never again as long as I lived would I have another baby, so Beep had better be pretty awesome.

“And what?” he asked me. I realized, of course, they were trying to take my mind off the pain. Off the situation.

“And you met with Angel again.”

“Don’t bring me into this,” Angel said.

“Angel!” I said, happy to see him. Or hear him, since my face was planted in Denise’s crotch. “Why were you meeting with Reyes?”

“I can’t tell you. He’s meaner than you are.”

I lifted just to glare up at him. “Clearly you don’t know me very well.”

“I would go down there to be with you, but I draw the line at childbirth.”

“Chickenshit.”

“And proud of it.”

“I would have told you,” Reyes said. “You’re holding my underwear hostage. I would’ve had no choice.”

“Does that mean you aren’t wearing any?”

“Your blood pressure is too high,” Denise said. She’d checked me with one of those wrist models that fascinated me. She looked up. “We need that rope.”

“Got it!” Amber called out. “He didn’t want to lend it to us. He didn’t believe we had a pregnant woman stuck in a hole. So he came to help.”

“Hey, there,” a man called down to me. A Native American, judging by his accent. “I’m thinking we might need to get some professionals out here.”

“So, yeah, I’m not wearing pants,” I said to him. “Sorry.”

“I’m okay with it if your husband is.”

Another spasm, this one harder than any of its predecessors, tried to tear me in half. I cried out between locked teeth and tried to breathe in a pattern. It didn’t work.

“We need the rope,” Denise called.

“I’m getting it ready,” Reyes said.

“Got the board,” Osh said as he ran up.

He put a wide board across the opening. “What’s that for?” I asked. “It will just break like the ones before.”

“Not this one,” he said. “It’s from your kitchen table.”

“Oh, okay, that might work.” I doubled over and clenched my fists so hard, my fingernails pierced the flesh on my palms. “There’s so much pressure,” I told Denise. “I feel like I have to push.”

“Okay, sweetheart.” She eased me back and reached between my legs to check again. “You’re ready. If you have to push, push.”

“But they can pull us out now.”

She shook her head. “It’s too late. We are going to have to do this here.”

I glared at her. “I don’t want my baby born in a well,” I gritted out.

“I know,” she said as I pushed with all my might. I couldn’t not.

She instructed me on how to do it. Push to the count of ten, then rest. Push to the count of ten, then rest. It occurred to me that she hadn’t done this in a very long time. They might have changed things since her day. Maybe babies were born differently now. Maybe ten was no longer the magic number. But I couldn’t argue with her. I could barely speak through the labor.

She rubbed my back until it was over and I could take a breath; then she listened for Beep’s heartbeat again.

“I need the rope!” she screamed; then she shoved me back against the wall, wedged her palms against my lower abdomen, and pushed up.

I cried out in pain and tried to get her off me.

She said something I didn’t comprehend; then she did it. Again. For the third time in my life, she slapped me.

My temper flared and the ground shook beneath us, causing dirt to fall on our heads. It didn’t faze her.

“Look at me,” she said, her face inches from mine. “Beep is in trouble. If you push, she could suffocate.”

Alarm sobered me instantly.

“I lost her heartbeat for a few seconds. The cord could be wrapped around her throat. You may have to have a C-section.”

“We can’t leave the grounds,” I said, my agony ripping a sob from the deepest core of my being. “She’ll be in danger.”

“Charley, she already is. I don’t understand.”

“There are—” I stopped as another sob shook through me, my horror was so great. “There are beings who want her dead. Huge supernatural beings with large razor-sharp teeth and claws the size of Pittsburgh. They’ll kill her the minute we step off this ground.”

She gaped at me as though I were a child telling a tall tale. In her eyes, I could see the instinctive desire to chastise me for being ridiculous—then understanding dawned. “Charley, are you serious?”

“Trust me, I wish I weren’t.”

For a long while, she sat stunned, at an utter loss for what to do. My muscles seized again. She coached me through it again, pushed my abdomen to keep the umbilical cord from strangling my daughter. As painful as that felt, I could only be grateful. Then it hit her as I tried to catch my breath and get comfortable, both of which were impossible.

She nodded and straightened. “Lean back,” she said, all business.

I sat on my heels, my knees spread as far as they could be in the cramped quarters.

She squatted down and perched elbows between my knees. “I’m going to reach in and loop the cord over her head. I’ll have to push her back a little to do it. This is going to hurt, Charley.”