My face.
My arm.
Checking me like she has the right.
She does.
God help me, she does.
Above us, the boiler room erupts with footsteps.
Russ points down the tunnel. “Move!”
We run into the dark.
No light except Gabriel’s small red flashlight cutting across slick concrete walls.
The air is colder down here.
Older.
Like this tunnel has been waiting years for secrets to crawl through it.
Hannah stays beside me, one hand gripping the back of my vest so tight her knuckles brush my spine.
I should tell her to loosen her grip.
I don’t.
I need to feel her there.
Need to know every second that she’s still with me.
Behind us, metal crashes.
Sentinel found the grate.
“Faster,” Lucas snaps.
The tunnel curves sharply left.
Then drops.
Water rises to our ankles.
The little girl whimpers in Miles’s arms.
Hannah reaches out and touches her cheek as we move.
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” she whispers. “We’re getting out.”
The girl nods against Miles’s shoulder, trusting Hannah’s words completely.
Of course she does.
Everyone does.
Because Hannah Bowers is the kind of woman who makes people believe survival is possible even when death is breathing down their necks.
