Page 10 of Girl, Unseen

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. Themetal 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?’

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