“She is my colleague.”

“Her training is in anthropology, correct?”

“Yes. As is mine.”

I shot to a sit.

“A short course! You took a bloody short course!”

“Isn’t Dr. Brennan usually responsible for coroner-ordered exhumations?”

“Yes.” Just the slightest hesitation. The winging down of brows. For effect? “Dr. Brennan led the initial recovery at Oka. The phalanges were missed.”

Though I was chilled and shaking, my face burned.

Had I? Had I really missed them? I must have. But how?

My queasy brain scraped together an image of the tent. The pit. The earth-stained bones.

“-specialty training in forensic archaeology. What is needed in such situations is a team approach, the utilization of experts in excavation methodology, taphonomy and decomposition, and human soft and hard tissue anatomy and pathology.”

“Do such teams exist in Quebec?”

“One. A private company called Body Find. Corps découvert. I am-”

My poisoned gut arced full cycle.

I stumbled to the bathroom on shaky legs.

When the retching stopped, I staggered back to bed.

Shivering uncontrollably, I killed the TV and light and pulled the covers to my chin.

THOUGH COLD-NUMBED AND ALMOST USELESS, MY HANDS EXPLORED the skull. From habit, my brain catalogued detail.

Large mastoids and brow ridges. Male. Edentulous.

“Who the bloody hell cares?” I screamed in frustration.

My cry sounded flat, deadened by brick and trapped silence.

I looked at my watch. The glowing hands now formed an acute angle pointing left. Two twenty? Four ten? Afternoon? Night?

I thought of my daughter. Wondered what Katy was doing at that moment. Harry. Ryan. Tried to imagine what was happening at the lab.

Surely I’d been missed by now. Surely a team was coming. Right, coming where?

“Help! Please!”

My throat felt raw. I coughed.

“Hello! Anyone!”

A bout of trembling gripped me. I hugged my body, felt my arm bones knock my ribs. My skin was cold and clammy to the touch.

Like a corpse at the morgue.

Panic flared anew.

I’m going to die. Alone in a dark tomb. No one will know where I went. Where the flesh is rotting from my bones.

I thought of the tweaker who’d frozen to death on his porch. How long could I survive before hypothermia killed me?

I hated my captor. Hated him for me. For Katy. For Harry. Hated himwith a fury born of years spent with the battered dead. Hated him for the throat-slashed wives. The cigarette-burned babies. The bedsored grannies.

“Who are you?” I shrieked.

Forget him. Activity brings warmth. Warmth brings life. Use the anger. Move. Get out.

I took a deep breath.

Took another, shifting to my nose.

The musty smell was stronger here. Mold. Mildew. Creatures long dead.

Setting the skull on the floor, I rolled to my belly and began dragging myself forward, using the odor as a guide.

My raw elbows screamed. My injured leg spasmed.

Ignore the pain.

Arm-thrust. Pull.

Arm-thrust. Pull.

Soft echoes suggested a more enclosed space. A wall ahead?

Six thrusts, then my chest landed on bulk. Propping on my right elbow, I explored the object with my left hand. Gingerly. Careful not to move it.

Lumpy L, scaly with mold. Underside flat with a heel-shaped protuberance at one end.

A boot.

I reached left.

A second boot lay beside the first.

Heart hammering, I danced my fingers upward over mold-crusted fabric that crumbled at my touch. Running beneath the fabric were long tubular objects. I recognized their shape. Their meaning.

Leg bones.

Dear God, I was feeling up a corpse.

I pictured the body.

Swinging my legs right, I inched upward along the side of the torso, blindly probing in the darkness. My fingers picked out heavy round buttons.

I counted. Visualized. A jacket?

I applied pressure with my palm.

The jacket overlaid a series of rigid arcs. Lumps and knobs. A collapsed rib cage. Vertebrae.

I tried lifting the jacket’s lower edge. My effort kicked up a tsunami of scent, rank and earthy and reeking of death.

I changed to breathing through my mouth.

Elbowing and kneeing in reverse, I cleared the boots and shifted left.

Beside the first, my trembling fingers encountered a second set of footwear. Trousers. Another jacket. A fleshless skull, spiderweb hair clinging to the crown.

Again, I hitched backward and dragged myself left.

A third corpse lay head to foot with the others. Or had, until the skull detached and sought new ground.

My hands recoiled in horror.

Mother of God! My prison was a crypt, more frigid and black than I could have imagined possible. Filled with complete and utter silence.

And decaying bodies.

Questions kaleidoscoped in my brain. Hysterical. Pointless.

How long? How many? Who?

Using my bound legs, I hitched myself aft of the third corpse and dragged myself left, hands fumbling in the dark.

Irrational, but I had to know.

Beyond the first three dead I found four more.

Brailleing for clues, I determined that everyone had been entombed wearing boots, belted pants, and jackets with heavy round buttons, probably metal. Four jackets were adorned with medals and insignia.

Dead soldiers?

It didn’t matter. What did matter was the possibility that I’d soon join their ranks.

My breath began to catch, my chest to heave.

Reason weighed in.

No tears! Think!

A single word exploded in my brain.

Edges!

A desperate ghoul, I raided the dead and placed my booty in a pile. Medals. Buckles. Insignias. Three lower jaws with the front teeth in place.

Shifting to a hunch-sit, I spread my knees, leaned forward, and began sawing at my ankle bindings. One cord was all I needed.

One.

One.

How long did I gnaw away at those ropes? Long.

As with my wrists, it finally happened. A gentle yielding of pressure. A pop. My legs flew apart.

Electricity exploded from neuron to neuron.

I wanted to scream.

To shout for joy.

To kill the bastard who’d done this to me.

I wanted to escape.

Rounding my back, I massaged and flexed both ankles.

When blood flow returned, I eased onto all fours.

Not bad.

I flexed a knee, testing the injured leg.

Tender. Tolerable.

During my corpse crawl, I’d noted that the dead had been placed with their heads or feet to a wall. Apparently, I was at one end of the tomb.

Might a door be at the other?

Arms and legs rubber, I crawled toward the spot where I’d first regained consciousness, left hand periodically skimming the brick. One step. Five. Twelve.

Twenty steps. My outstretched palm smacked brick. Another wall was meeting the long wall at ninety degrees. I’d reached the other end of the tomb.

I began sidestepping right, hand groping for a door.

Sudden horrifying thought. If the bodies had been simply bricked in, there’d have been no need of a door. No one was ever entering again. Or leaving.

My tortured brain rode another illogical wave. Poe. “The Cask of Amontillado.”