Page 6

Night painted the Hudson Valley in shades of black and blue as Ella steered her SUV down what was left of Barrett Road. The pavement had lost its war with nature decades ago; weeds thrust through cracks like drowning hands reaching for air.

‘You sure this is the right way?’ Ella swerved around another crate.

‘Unless there's another abandoned road leading to another abandoned quarry.’ Luca consulted his phone. ‘GPS doesn't even recognize this place exists, and it keeps dipping out on me so don’t get lost.’

‘Perfect.’ A branch scraped across the hood. ‘Guess Marcus knew his backroads.’

They'd been driving for twenty minutes since leaving the highway, each turn taking them deeper into a part of New York that time had forgotten. Trees pressed in on both sides and their branches formed a tunnel that seemed to swallow what little moonlight made it through the clouds.

‘Hold up.’ Luca pointed through the windshield. ‘That's gotta be it.’

The quarry rose before them like a wound in the earth. The chain-link fence stretched across their path, topped with rusted barbed wire that had long since lost its bite. A sign hung askew on the gate: BEDFORD LIMESTONE QUARRY - NO TRESPASSING .

‘Welcoming.’ Ella killed the engine.

The silence that followed felt absolute. No traffic noise reached them here, no hint of civilization. Just the tick of her cooling engine and the whisper of wind through dead leaves.

Ella grabbed her flashlight from the glove box. ‘You armed?’

‘For rocks?’

‘You never know.’

'True.' Luca jumped out, and Ella followed towards the fence. Her breath ghosted in front of her face.

‘Gate’s padlocked.’

‘Yeah, but look.’ Luca's beam swept across tire tracks in the dirt. Recent ones, cutting through older ruts. ‘Someone's been here.’

They followed the fence line until they found what they were looking for – a section pulled back just enough for a car to squeeze through. The metal was bent with precision, like someone had taken their time about it.

‘After you.’ Luca held the fence back.

The quarry sprawled before them in the darkness, like a giant had taken a massive bite taken out of the earth. Ella's flashlight beam seemed pathetically inadequate against the scale of it. Terraced levels descended like steps for giants, each one thick with scrub brush and fallen rock.

Luca said, ‘Nice place for a midnight stroll.’

‘How deep do you think it goes?’

‘About four-hundred feet at its deepest according to the schematics. Multiple levels, each one roughly fifty feet high.’

‘God’s staircase.’

‘Yeah. I love heights.’

‘You afraid of falling, Hawkins?’

His eyes met hers for a fraction of a second before sliding away. Time was, he would have fired back with some smart-ass comment. Now, a wall of silence stretched between them. Ella tried to read the expression beneath that wry smile, but the distance was there. The one that had started in Oregon and followed them home to D.C. and now to New York.

‘No. Just of what happens at the end. Where do we start?’

‘Ground level.’ Ella started down what remained of the access road. ‘If Marcus drove in here, his car has to be somewhere.’

They followed the tracks down the service road. The quarry walls rose around them like ancient fortifications, with faces scarred by decades of drilling and blasting. Here and there, remnants of industrial activity poked through the undergrowth. Rusted equipment, collapsed outbuildings, tangles of cable that resembled petrified snakes.

‘Place must've been something back in the day,’ Ella said. ‘Now look at it.’

‘Progress marches on. Cheaper to import limestone these days than dig it out of the ground.’

Ella glanced at her partner. Sometimes, she forgot that beneath that charm lay a mind that noticed things others missed. It was what made him good at his job, that ability to see the stories buried beneath the surface.

The service road leveled out at the first terrace. The gravel path ended in a makeshift parking spot, but Marcus's Mustang was nowhere to be seen. If he came here, he must have found another way up .

Their flashlight beams carved yellow swaths through the darkness to reveal a flat expanse roughly the size of a football field. Loading bays gaped like empty eye sockets along one wall while a decrepit crane loomed overhead like a prehistoric skeleton.

Luca said, ‘We should split up. Cover more ground.’

‘Are you insane? We’re in a pitch-black maze with no signal.’

‘Fair point. What are we looking for, exactly?’

‘Marcus. A rock hammer. Anything.’ Ella surveyed the scene. ‘But it’s gonna take us until morning to cover this whole place.’

‘Then we go until morning.’

Ella swept her light across the terrace. ‘If Marcus came here for research, he would've wanted height. Better view of the rock formations.’

‘So we go up?’

‘We go up.’

They found the access ramp to the next level hidden behind a stand of scrub pine. The climb was steep, forcing them to pick their way carefully over loose scree and broken concrete. Ella's legs protested with every step as the burns from Oregon sang a chorus of complaints. Ella was partly annoyed that Luca didn’t seem as burned by his injuries as she did. They’d survived the same inferno, although in Ella’s defense, she’d ran back into the flames to save a murderer’s life. That decision was on her.

‘You okay?’ Luca asked.

‘Just peachy. Nothing like a midnight hike up a death trap to get the blood flowing.’

‘You regret refusing that payout yet?’

‘I thought we agreed not to mention that.’

‘You’re right. Sorry,’ said Luca.

The second level opened onto another broad terrace, this one cluttered with abandoned mining equipment. A row of rusted-out dump trucks squatted against one wall. Their tires had long since rotted away, leaving them settled on their axles like beached ships.

‘Check this out.’ Luca approached one of the trucks. ‘These things must weigh thirty tons easy. And they just left them here?’

‘Probably cheaper than hauling them out.’ Ella played her light over the cab. ‘Though I bet the scrappers stripped anything worth taking years ago.’

They worked their way methodically across the terrace and checked each potential hiding spot. The temperature had dropped another few degrees, and their breath fogged in the beam of the flashlights. Something about the cold made the silence feel more absolute, broken only by their footsteps and the occasional scatter of disturbed gravel.

‘Third time's the charm?’ Luca asked when they reached the next ramp.

‘Getting tired already?’

‘No. You?’

‘No, Just wondering if Marcus really climbed all this way with his hammer and whatever else he brought,’ Ella said.

‘You know what an obsession is like, Ell. Someone like Marcus would have climbed to the moon to find what he wanted.’

Ella couldn’t deny, so she climbed up to the next layer. This level was different. Instead of equipment or loading bays, she found a maze of stone pillars – support columns left in place to prevent collapse.

‘This is more like it,’ Ella said. ‘Perfect spot for studying rock formations.’

‘Perfect spot for getting lost, too.’

They threaded their way through the pillars and checked each alcove. Their footsteps echoed strangely here, bouncing off the stone in ways that made it impossible to tell direction. More than once, Ella caught herself turning toward what she thought was Luca's voice, only to find empty air.

‘So much for a pleasant trip to New York,’ Luca said. ‘If this doesn’t work out, are we still going home tomorrow?’

‘Less talk, Hawkins. More finding.’

There was something unsettling about this place. Maybe it was the way sound played tricks on you, or how the pillars seemed to shift in your peripheral vision. Or maybe it was just the knowledge that you were standing in the middle of a man-made cave with millions of tons of rock suspended overhead.

They were halfway across the terrace when Luca stopped suddenly. ‘You smell that?’

Ella inhaled. Beneath the mineral tang of limestone and the musty scent of decay, there was something else. Something chemical. ‘Gasoline?’

‘Yeah. Fresh, too.’

They followed the scent to its source. As they rounded the last pillar, their lights fell on something that didn't belong in this graveyard of industry and abandonment – a gleaming black Mustang, its paint job still showroom-perfect despite the film of quarry dust that coated it.

‘Got you,’ Ella said .

The car sat there like a chunk of midnight given form, but something about it made Ella's neck prickle. Maybe it was how pristine it looked in this wasteland of rust and ruin. Or maybe it was the way it was parked. Perfectly parallel to the quarry wall, as if its driver had taken particular care in positioning it.

‘Check the plates.’ Ella circled toward the driver's side while Luca verified what they already knew. The car was Marcus Thornton's pride and joy, restored to better-than-new condition. Through the window she could see the immaculate leather interior, the perfectly polished dash.

‘It's his.’ Luca joined her. ‘But where's Marcus?’

Ella tried the door. Locked. She played her light across the seats, looking for any sign of struggle or violence. Nothing jumped out except the tidiness of it all.

‘Pop the trunk?’ she asked.

Luca cocked a brow. ‘Are you asking me to do it? Or asking permission?’

‘Do you know how to pop a trunk?’

‘No.’

‘Well then.’ Ella fished her keyring out of her pocket and found the flat piece of metal she kept for such situations. She jimmied it in the gap between the rear and the trunk door. A second of wiggling later and the thing sprung open.

‘The lockmaster strikes again.’

Ella pocketed her keys. 'These things might look great, but they're not exactly secure.'

‘Like many women I’ve been with. What’ve we got?’

The trunk lights revealed what looked like standard geology gear – hammer, chisels, sample bags. All arranged with the same precision she'd seen in Marcus's office.

‘He came prepared.’ Luca picked up a hammer. ‘But for what?’

'And why hasn't he left?' Marcus's car had been here for at least three days. No food or water in sight. No camping gear. Just tools.

Something cold settled in Ella's stomach. The thrill of discovery curdled into dread as she realized what they weren't finding. No signs of violence. No struggle. Just a perfectly maintained car with a perfectly organized trunk, sitting in a perfectly horrible place to disappear.

‘We need to search this whole quarry.’ Ella shut the trunk. ‘Every level, every corner. Marcus – or what’s left of him – is still here somewhere.’