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“I’ll hear them.”

A floorboard creaked overhead.

The young man grabbed the bag. “Do I have to go back with them?”

“They won’t know you’re here. You came to the right place, love.”

“Did we? I didn’t want to come here. I wanted to drive to a hospital, but he⁠—

His mouth stayed open, but nothing else came out. Then he bent over the bag, shoulders shaking.

The woman set the cup down and put her arms around him.

A stone struck concrete.

Leo jerked toward the sound.

“Leo?”

Nate.

The broken wall. The flashlight.

Leo looked back at the cot.

Empty. The blanket lay in its dusty heap, the blue stripe almost faded. There was no one there now.

But the memory had felt so real.

“Leo?” Nate asked again.

Leo didn’t turn around. “I remembered his face, just now. He was here.”

A beat of silence, then Nate asked, “the boy you loved?”

Leo nodded, momentarily unable to speak. There’d been sadness in this room. So much of it. And fear.

But hope too.

There’d been others as well. More people. Someone on the second bed. Someone sitting on the floor with their knees drawn up, listening to the footsteps overhead.

He couldn’t remember their faces, but they’d been here, and he’d been on the other side of the wall, keeping people away.

Now he was looking at an empty bed in an empty room.

Behind him, Nate went back to work.

Leo heard scraping. The careful placement of stones on concrete. Once, Nate said his name, and Leo answered, though afterward he couldn’t remember what he’d said.

By the time he looked around again, the opening reached nearly to the floor.

Nate laid the pry bar beside the hammer. He crouched, checked the stones above him, and came through sideways.

Leo moved between him and the cot.

Nate stopped moving immediately, waiting, Leo realized, for permission to proceed.

But what was Leo guarding anymore?