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A tingling sensation zings along my spine, as I watch him stare off toward the opposite side of the room.

“You ask a very confidential question.”

“Well, seeing as we’ve sent a rather large group down into those tunnels, including the father of my child, perhaps you can enlighten me.”

Another drag of his cigar, and he blows the plumes into the air while staring up at the ceiling, anywhere but back at me, it seems. “Are you familiar with Dugway Proving Grounds?”

I shake my head and shrug. “Vaguely. Maybe in my reading, but assume I haven’t.”

“Prior to the Dredge, it was a highly classified military facility, located just outside of Salt Lake City. The site of biological and chemical warfare testing.”

“You mean weapons? As in using diseases as weapons?”

“Yes, exactly. Due to a number of attempts to break into the facility, the research lab was relocated to the Mojave Desert. Any guesses as to why?”

“This is where you said you first stumbled upon the Dredge, right?”

“Correct. While excavating the site, we stumbled upon something that, in hindsight, we should’ve left alone.”

“What?”

“A network of tunnels that extend hundreds of feet below the surface. Intricate little caverns that seem to have existed over a span of centuries. A team was sent down to investigate them, which comprised of archeologists, paleontologists, biologists … some of the most brilliant minds of our time. When we didn’t hear from them, we sent another team in after them, and when they didn’t surface, we sent some of our best military down for search and rescue. None of them were seen, or heard from, again.”

“The caverns are at the other end of the tunnel.”

“The entrance, yes.”

“And did you ever figure out where they went? What happened to them?”

“No. After the third expedition, the entrance was sealed. The evidence erased, as if it never existed.” His brows knit together, and he sits looking thoughtful for a moment. “What’s interesting, is that every person sent down since has reported through the walkie-talkie of having seen women, or children, running through the tunnels. Of course, they, too, disappear, leaving behind some eerie audio recordings. In fact, I don’t know of anyone who’s actually returned from those tunnels. Cameras worked down there at one time, but they’ve since become non-functioning.”

At his words, I swing my attention back to the screen, where Jed and Six have exited the research lab and are passing through the busted door where they first entered. The moment they breach the threshold, they divest themselves of the hazmat suits, tossing them onto a pile at the entrance. Six clips the camera he wore atop his head to a harness across his chest.

“You wouldn’t have sent Jed down there, if you thought that was true,” I say.

“You’re forgetting. I had no choice in the matter. My farewell this morning came with the understanding that I might not see him again.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before? Why now?”

“As I said, you never asked. And would it have mattered?” He shifts his attention toward the screen. “When someone wants something bad enough, everything else becomes irrelevant.”

“Well, my farewell didn’t share that same understanding. So I guess that makes your creepy little warning irrelevant to me, too.”

Chapter 27

Cali

Valdys stares down at our clasped hands as he leads me down the hallway, following after the dogs ahead of us. He lifts our hands to his lips, as he’s done a few times on the way, as if he’s periodically checking to make sure I don’t disappear into whatever hallucination he thought I was before. “It boils my blood that he brought you to this place. But I can’t deny, I feel alive again just seeing you.”

“Cadmus insisted that I stay back.” I glance over my shoulder to where the Alpha brings up the rear of the group, his eyes on Valdys and I as we lead them down the corridor. “I refused.”

“Still stubborn.” His cheek twitches as if he means to smile, but he doesn’t. “Stay by my side in this place,” he says, and a thrill winds in my stomach, as the protective Valdys I remember bleeds through his exceptionally rougher exterior. “I don’t want you out of my sight.”

“I don’t endeavor to be out of your sight again.” Smiling, I nod toward the dogs. “How did you tame them?”

A crack echoes down the hall from behind us, and I twist to see debris flying into the corridor. Glass shatters, and the door flies off the hinges. The wall surrounding its frame crumbles with the impact. A second explosion immediately follows the first, creating a plume of dust at the other end of the hallway.

“The tanks!” Pulling my shirt over my face in a futile attempt to block the expelled gases and fragments, I allow Valdys to tug me down the hallway, where he slams into one of the nearby rooms.