Page 74 of The Grave Artist (Sanchez & Heron #2)

Damon tried to control the panic.

The claustrophobia was like a poison in his soul.

And how cruel Maddie . . . no, Lauren had been . . .

She might have buried him alive completely. It would have been a horrific death, but a short one. How long can the body survive without oxygen? A few minutes tops.

But the monster hadn’t been so kind. She’d buried him up to his head, then stuffed a stinking oily tube in his mouth, something from an old car. And then continued the burial process, covering the rest of his face.

He gagged and nearly puked. That would be the end. He controlled it.

He tried to lift his knees. No. He was under several feet of earth.

It might as well have been concrete.

Breathe out, breathe in.

He tried to scream, but this stole precious oxygen, and what was the point anyway? The abandoned buildings looked like no one had been there for years.

Breathe out, breathe in.

A wisp of air, but not enough.

The panic subsided for a moment. Then returned.

How could this be happening? It was like torturing Michelangelo to death. Rembrandt.

He was a genius. He was special.

Damon Garr had known it was true, from the moment Miss Spalding had come to the house and laid eyes on him.

“You’re not like everyone else, are you?

No, no ... You’re special. I think I’ll call you ‘Little Pup.’ I don’t mean a puppy dog.

I mean a fox. Their babies are called kits or pups.

And that’s you, Damon. You’re smart, you’re clever.

And you’re born to hunt, aren’t you? I can see it in your eyes. Can I call you that, ‘Little Pup’?”

“I guess.”

“Give Miss Spalding a hug.”

She squeezed him so hard he could barely breathe.

Like now.

The panic unfurled like a snake within him. He screamed again. Dirt trickled into his mouth. He choked.

He shivered.

He began to cry.

More dirt trickled down.

And between the waves of panic he realized an irony. Maddie had turned the tables in more ways than one. She was killing him the way he had killed—a blow to the head and drowning. Though he would drown not by water but by earth and sand.

No . . .

But nobody understood . . .

He was special.

He was the Little Pup who had created Serial ... Killing ...

There was no light, of course, but behind his closed eyes one darkness became a different kind of darkness.

Two.

Point.

Oh.

And just as consciousness slipped away, he heard, or believed he heard, a sound. A chunk, chunk. Maybe his heart was giving out.

Then pressure on his leg, and pressure on his belly, on his groin.

And through his closed lids, he was aware of a haze of light.

More dirt trickled into his throat, and he began to gag in earnest.

Then the breathing tube was snatched away, and he felt hands on his body. Two, then four.

Gripping at his clothes and his hair and tugging hard. Pulling him to the surface.

He emerged from his grave, pulled up by Carmen Sanchez and Jake Heron and the huge officer he remembered from the Brock funeral. They rolled him onto his side, where he spat the sand and pebbles and dirt from his mouth and coughed dust from his lungs.

He glanced around him.

There stood Lauren Brock—no longer Maddie Willis—her hands cuffed behind her. She stared down at him as if instead of his body, the officers had just unearthed some thousand-year-old bones from an ancient site of human sacrifice.

A minor curiosity.

And nothing more.