Page 9 of Girl, Unseen

‘Yeah, runs parallel to 684 for a few miles then dead-ends at...’ Luca trailed off, his cursor hovering over a pale brown patch of terrain.

‘At what?’

‘Bedford Quarry. Abandoned since '86.’ He ran a quick search. ‘They used to mine limestone here. Supplied most of the building material for downtown Manhattan back in the day.’

Ella felt the pieces click together. A geology professor with a missing rock hammer. An abandoned limestone quarry with no surveillance. And a road that wouldn't show up on any modern traffic system.

‘What kind of stone did you say Marcus specialized in?’

‘According to the labels in here...’ Luca gestured at the office's mineral menagerie. ‘Limestone was his thing. Wrote his dissertation on New York limestone formations.’

Ella's pulse quickened. The thrill of the hunt sang through her veins – that perfect moment when disparate pieces snapped into a picture that made horrible, beautiful sense. A geologist with a passion for limestone. A quarry that helped build Manhattan. A road that time forgot.

‘Think that's worth checking out?’

‘Better than canvassing industrial parks.’ Luca shut his laptop. ‘Though I gotta ask – what kind of research project needs a rock hammer and radio silence?’

‘Let's find out.’ Ella stood, her legs reminding her that Oregon's flames weren't done with her yet. ‘How's your climbing?’

Luca inspected the burns on his forearm. ‘Better than yours right now.’

‘Funny guy.’ She headed for the door and paused to examine a particularly wicked-looking chunk of obsidian. ‘Let’s go see what was worth breaking a twelve-year routine for.’

Ella cast one last look at the organized chaos of Marcus’s geological kingdom. Somewhere between these carefully cataloged specimens and that abandoned quarry lay the answer to his disappearance. She just hoped they'd like what they found.

But hope, like limestone, had a way of eroding under pressure.

CHAPTER FIVE

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.’

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