The highway was empty, a long stretch of asphalt cutting through the dark New Jersey pine barrens.

I pushed the gas pedal down, the engine whining as the speed climbed.

I watched the rearview mirror, looking for headlights, but there was only the black void behind me.

My mind kept drifting back to my childhood.

I remembered the Maryland house before the government seized it.

It had been a grand place once, surrounded by acres of thick oak forest.

But my father had spent all his time underground.

He would disappear for days into the basement, leaving my mother and me alone in the quiet rooms upstairs.

My mother never complained.

She just sat in the parlor, drinking tea and staring out the window, as if she knew exactly what he was doing down there.

Now I knew she did.

She had been part of it from the very beginning.

I crossed the state line into Maryland just as the sky began to turn a bruised, dark purple.

The rain had slowed to a miserable drizzle.

I turned off the main highway onto a narrow, unmarked dirt road.