Dan was looking into a yawning void. How far under the earth did this place go, anyway?

The cold rushing up from the space below was shocking. His sweatshirt wasn’t close to being warm enough; he should have brought a damn parka. And couldn’t they have built the stairs a little wider? A safety inspector would have a heart attack—these stairs were steep, narrow, and had a sheer drop on both sides, with only a tiny pole of a railing to hold on to.

Clutching the rail in one hand and his flashlight in the other, Dan took the first step. Three stairs, four, ten. At fifteen steps, he reached a small landing, but he still couldn’t see the floor with his flashlight. Just more and more stairs, pitched at a nightmarish incline, leading into the bowels of the basement.

One more landing, twelve more steps, and at last he reached the bottom. He shined his flashlight up and around, watching as the meager light failed to find the top or even sides of . . . What, a cave? A vault? He couldn’t be sure, but he could tell it was enormous. Coughing, he listened to the sound bounce and echo for a solid minute before finally fading away.

He slowly walked forward into the huge space. There were wooden posts that ran from the floor to the ceiling. Otherwise, the hall he was in seemed completely empty.

Finally, he reached a square arch leading into yet another space beyond. Dan suddenly felt like laughing—he’d been creeped out by the expansiveness of the cell level and the warden’s secret office, but this was something else, something he could hardly fathom, even as his eyes fed him the information. It was like a palace down here. What could it have been used for?

But this was the last room; it had to be. Shining his light all around, he found a rusted metal box screwed into the wall beside him, and he carefully nudged open the front panel. The rusty hinges squealed, and the echoes in the chamber reverberated endlessly.

He’d hit the jackpot. There were switches in the box, and lots of them. Dan flicked the biggest one and was rewarded with a low hum, then a buzz, and finally a quiet pop as the lights came up. Only a few worked, and one exploded overhead in a shower of glass and sparks. Dan ducked instinctively, and then gasped.

He was looking down into an operating amphitheater.

In the very middle of the room was a raised wooden platform, and standing dead center was an operating table. It was covered with a smooth sheet, originally white, now gray with dust. There was a padded pillow at the top. Leather straps, buckled, trisected the bed. Around the main table stood a few smaller tables on wheels. They had surgical instruments on them.

Encircling the platform were stepped rows of chairs, like in a sports arena. The stands. As if watching someone’s surgery was some kind of amusement . . .

With a sickening lurch, Dan realized he’d seen this room before, too, in another nightmare. In his dream, he’d started out on that table.

He moved slowly down the stands, drawn to the platform. He walked a complete circle around it, his eyes never leaving the table. How many killers had been treated here? Had little Lucy been strapped down for surgery while people watched? Dan thought of the scar on her forehead that suggested a lobotomy. If it had been that, and she had survived, poor little Lucy wouldn’t have had much of a life.

Why on earth would an operating amphitheater be built so far underground? Were they concealing something?

A small desk and filing cabinet at the very back of the room caught Dan’s eye. They’d both been pushed into the shadows as if they wanted to be overlooked. Dan’s heart raced. If patients were operated on here—if Lucy Valdez had been operated on—there would surely be records of it. If he was lucky, those records might not have gotten lost in the shuffle when Brookline closed.

But as he approached the cabinets, his head felt suddenly heavy, like it had been stuffed with wool. He blinked once . . . twice. . . . The floor didn’t feel so sturdy anymore.

He stood over the table, ready, confident. This was his moment. He had an audience, and he would not disappoint them. This was his chance to prove that his methods, however unorthodox, worked. He was the warden, the trusted father of the Brookline family, strict but ultimately fair. Daniel looked down at his clean white coat and the instruments in his hands, sanitized and gleaming. Everything was prepared.

Necks craned as each man tried to get a better look. Before him, strapped to the operating table, was a young boy who liked to set fires. When Daniel blinked, it was someone new, someone else who needed fixing—a cruel widow who had poisoned six husbands, a pretty young girl with fiery red hair. Blinking again, he found the most wretched creature of all. He looked at the man’s waxy face, slack now from the sedatives. This man was broken, but he wouldn’t be broken for long. He could be fixed, they could all be fixed. . . .

Dan—the warden—started. Sudden sounds . . . A pounding like thunder . . . Footsteps overhead . . . His vision blurred, spinning out of control. Not now! They couldn’t come for him now. The authorities would never understand what he was trying to do.

Dan . . . Dan . . .

They were calling his name now, they were coming for him.

“Dan! Hello? Dan, are you all right? You’re scaring me, snap out of it!”

Snap, snap, snap.

Dan was cold all over and realized with a jolt that he was lying on the floor. Abby’s face materialized above him through the fading blur of the vision. For a moment, he was relieved, but then he felt instantly ashamed. What would she think if she could see inside his head?