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Neither one of us says anything because there's nothin' to say. Mercy needed savin' and Savannah was fine.

Mercy needed savin' and Savannah was fine.

Mercy needed savin' and Savannah was fine…

I keep repeatin' it over and over in my head. Like I'm tryin' to talk myself into somethin'.

I try her again. Immediate voicemail. I don't hang up. I just listen through the greetin'. Her sweet voice that sounds like a smile. It's bright, even out here in the total darkness where the only light comes from stars that streak across a sky that looks like a belly someone tried to cut open with a sharp rock a thousand years ago, but only managed to mangle it.

We turn off the dirt road and head past the bunkhouse, Cash still speedin', tires spinnin' on the loose gravel.

He’s probably going fifty when he suddenly hits the brakes.

I brace one flat hand on the dash, clutchin' the shotgun with the other. "What the fuck⁠—"

But I don't finish, because in the faint glow of the headlights up ahead is a dark figure runnin' towards us.

I can't make out who it is, but Cash does. "Fuck." He hits the gas and we go lurchin' forward. "It's Wyatt."

It's Wyatt.

Eight little letters that spell failure.

I breathe in. Out. Heart poundin' as Wyatt comes into focus in the hazy headlights. He's running towards us, gun in one hand, the other pointin' at the house behind him.

Cash speeds up, making up the distance between Wyatt and us, then hits the brakes with a spray of gravel as the driver's window slides down.

Wyatt is breathless, already talkin'. "She's not in there! I checked the whole fuckin' house. But in her bedroom, I found her phone on the floor and there was a gun propped against the closet door."

Neither Cash nor I say anything for a moment.

The closet door.

For a moment I let myself believe the best-case scenario. I allow it because I need to allow it.

So when Cash says, "She's fine, Legion. She went into the archive. Something spooked her, and she bolted for the elevator. And now she's safe in the archive."

I accept it.

Yep. That's what happened. That's exactly what happened.

"No," Wyatt yells. "No! That's not what happened! Look, his fuckin' truck is right there!"

I don't wanna look. I don't want to see Marcus White Jr.’s truck in the Ashby parkin' lot. I wanna live in the world where Savannah gets away.

Men start yellin', calling out words like, "Clear!" and "He's not over here,” and "Nothin' out that way."

And I realize, Wyatt has mobilized the entire fuckin' bunkhouse to find Marcus. Hopin' against hope that he didn't do what we all now know he did.

He didn't confront Savannah in her bedroom after I left. They didn't struggle. She didn't drop her phone and Marcus didn't get the shotgun away from her.

And then he didn't take her down into the archive.

They are not, in this very moment, hiding in the safe room, thirty feet below ground.

Beneath the mansion at the bottom of a shaft. Embedded in the bedrock thirty feet below the Montana dirt, with no one comin' to save her because no one has the code.

I laugh. Maybe a handful of seconds have passed since Wyatt pointed out Marcus's truck. And all of them empty and silent.