"Daddy, I'm sorry," she whispered back, her voice barely audible over the hum of the refrigerator.

The rusted iron bridge groaned under their boots as Mark and Deputy Miller crossed over the churning creek below. The metal mesh flooring was rusted through in places, revealing the dark, rushing water underneath. The cold night wind whipped through the ravine, carrying the distant sound of an owl hooting in the deep woods.

Mark kept his eyes locked on the faint, winding footpath that disappeared into the sprawling, desolate expanse of the old stone quarry. Massive piles of gray limestone rubble towered like jagged mountains against the starlit sky, casting surreal, distorted shadows across the ground.

"Sarah!" Mark shouted again, his voice cracking with exhaustion. "Sarah!"

"Save your energy, Mark. We need to watch our footing out here," Deputy Miller advised, sweeping his flashlight across the uneven terrain. The ground was littered with loose shale and sharp rocks that shifted dangerously underfoot.

As they crested a small ridge of gravel, a faint beam of light flickered near the entrance of a boarded-up mining shaft. It wasn't the steady glow of a flashlight, but rather the erratic dance of a dying battery or a cheap lantern.

"Over there," Mark whispered, pointing a trembling hand toward the abandoned shaft.

They crept closer, moving silently from one limestone boulder to the next. As they drew within fifty yards, the sound of raised voices drifted toward them on the cold wind. One voice was unmistakably Sarah’s—shaking, angry, and pleading all at once.

"I gave you everything! I left it all behind just like you demanded!" Sarah’s voice cried out, echoing off the stone walls of the quarry.

"You left, Sarah, but you took something that didn't belong to you," a deep, gravelly voice replied, sounding cold and calculating. "A ledger. A notebook with names and numbers. Where is it?"

"I burned it years ago!" Sarah shouted back. "I swear to God, it's gone!"

Mark couldn't listen any longer. He bolted from behind the boulder, ignoring Deputy Miller's frantic warning, and charged directly toward the entrance of the mining shaft.

"Sarah!" Mark yelled as he burst into the clearing.

Standing near the mouth of the dark shaft was a tall, imposing man in a dark trench coat, holding Sarah tightly by the arm. Sarah looked exhausted, her face pale and smudged with dirt, her bare feet bleeding slightly from the sharp quarry stones. When she saw Mark charging toward them, her eyes widened in absolute terror.