The hidden wall slammed shut just as I stepped into the hallway.

The crowbar whistled through the damp air, missing my ear by an inch as I ducked beneath the swing, driving my shoulder hard into Thomas’s sternum.

The impact knocked the wind from his lungs with a wet, ragged gasp. We slammed together against the wet stone wall of the tunnel, our boots slipping in the mud of the dirt floor. The iron crowbar scraped violently across the masonry, showering orange sparks into the dark.

Thomas was heavier than me, thick-waisted and dense from decades of manual labor, but he was slow, his reactions dulled by panic. He drove an elbow backward into my ribs, a sharp crack of pain flaring across my left side, but I didn't let go.

I hooked my leg behind his knee, twisting my entire torso to use his momentum against him.

We crashed down onto the floor together. Thomas hit the ground face-first, his chin cracking against the edge of the milk crate, sending the thermos and the half-eaten sandwich rolling into the dirt.

The crowbar slipped from his fingers, clattering loudly against the steel base of the vault door.

Before he could push himself up, I drove my knee down into the center of his spine, pinning him to the floorboards. With my right hand, I brought the hooked point of the iron poker down, lodging the cold steel bar firmly against the side of his neck, pressing his cheek flat into the mud.

"The key," I whispered into his ear. My breath was ragged, hot against the back of his neck. "Give me the key, or I will drive this hook through your jaw."

Thomas choked, his hands clawing uselessly at the dirt. He felt the cold iron biting into the flesh beneath his ear.

"Left pocket," he wheezed, his voice bubbling with saliva and fear. "The brass ring... front left pocket. Don't... don't kill me, Julian. I just fed her. That’s all I did. I just brought the bread."

I reached into the pocket of his canvas coat, my fingers closing around a heavy brass ring holding three long, notched keys.

I didn't let him up. I pulled a bundle of heavy-duty nylon zip-ties from the tool pouch strapped to his belt—ties he had used to secure the garden fencing against deer—and wrenched his wrists behind his back, pulling the plastic bands tight until the nylon bit deep into his skin. I looped two more around his ankles, cinching them until his boots were locked together.

I stood up, wiping the sweat and grit from my eyes with the back of my sleeve. My ribs throbbed where his elbow had caught me, but the pain felt distant, disconnected from the reality of my body.

I turned to the steel door.

There were three heavy deadbolts stacked vertically along the frame. I took the brass keys, matching the notches by the dim yellow glow of the hanging bulb.

The first key slid into the top cylinder.

Clack.

The sound of heavy brass tumblers falling echoed through the vault like a gunshot.

The second key.

Clack.

The bottom deadbolt took the longest key, the iron stiff from months of cellar moisture. I set both hands against the ring, twisting with all my weight until the metal gave way with a sharp, squealing screech of rusted gears.

Clack.

I gripped the central lever handle, pushed down with my forearm, and pulled the door outward.

The hinges screamed against the silence.

The air that poured out of the room was cold, stale, and thick with the suffocating stench of mildew, damp cardboard, and the metallic tang of dried blood.

The room was no larger than a horse stall, cut out of the bedrock beneath the greenhouse foundations. The floor was rough, unsealed concrete. In the center of the room, illuminated only by the faint rectangle of light falling through the doorway from the tunnel, sat a low cot with a threadbare woolen blanket.

Sitting on the edge of the cot was a woman.

She wore an oversized gray flannel shirt that had belonged to me years ago, the sleeves rolled up three times to clear her wrists. Her dark hair, once so thick and glossy, was matted with gray dust and tied back with a piece of frayed garden twine. Her bare feet were gray with dirt, tucked beneath the edge of the cot.

Her wrists were clamped in thick leather restraints anchored to an eyebolt drilled directly into the concrete floor by a three-foot length of steel chain.

When the door swung open, she did not scream. She did not flinch.

She slowly raised her head, shielding her eyes with one bound hand against the glare of the forty-watt bulb in the hallway.

Her face was gaunt, the skin stretched tight over delicate cheekbones, her lips cracked and dry. But her eyes—those deep, clear amber eyes that had looked at me across our kitchen table for ten years—locked onto mine.

"Julian?" she whispered.

The voice was barely a rasp, a fragile reed bending in the wind.