Page 11 of What Comes Around

“A pleasure,” one of them said quickly.

I nodded politely and stayed silent.

They began their pitch immediately.

Prime location. Perfect access. Casino complex. Hotels. Entertainment district. A future worth millions.

I didn’t interrupt. I observed. Took notes. Studied the surroundings. The air. The slope of the land.

Something about it felt wrong. Familiar. I tried to pull the memory forward.

And then one of the men said it.

“…and once excavation starts, the underground water flow can finally be redirected properly.”

That was enough. A memory snapped into place.

In my past life, during one of my forced detox periods, my captors had locked me in a room with the other girls and cut me off from everything. The television had been left on.

I had been clear-minded enough to watch a news report about this exact land.

They talked about underground water routes shifting during early excavation. About old tunnels collapsing beneath the surface. Sinkholes forming without warning. A forgotten network of mining shafts discovered beneath the soil.

A project had been shut down.

Declared dangerous. Too risky. Too unpredictable

I stared down at the ground. My two-thousand-dollar heels were slowly sinking into the soft mud. I shifted my weight, painfully aware of dirt clinging to my precious babies.

Beneath the surface, this land was already collapsing.

The hours dragged on.

Eventually, Knox turned toward me.

“Well?” he asked. “What do you think?”

Three pairs of eyes turned toward me.

I pressed my lips together, scanning the land once more. I couldn’t say what I truly knew. I couldn’t say I know the future. And I knew other firms had already approved this site.

So I did what I always did. I built the truth out of data.

“I think it’s a risk,” I said.

Knox’s eyes narrowed slightly. “What is the problem?”

I was already pulling information on my tablet. Geological surveys. Archived environmental studies. Old municipal reports buried deep in databases no one bothered to cross-reference anymore.

“There are inconsistencies in the underground stability reports,” I said, turning the screen toward him. “Water tables here don’t behave normally. There are gaps in historical mining documentation. Which means there are likely unmapped tunnels.”

The men exchanged quick glances.

“This land has been cleared by multiple parties,” one said quickly.

“There’s no record of..”

“This land sits over an abandoned mining network,” I said calmly. “The tunnels are unstable. Excavation will disrupt underground water paths. Sinkholes will follow.”