Only Lies Are Safe

Six college friends left a first-year zip-tied in a drainage culvert as a joke. Four days later he was found dead, and they built a lie that held for a year. Now a wildfire has pushed them into the Redlick Gap Tunnel, an abandoned mile-and-a-half bore where every wall carries the same warning in paint and blood: I WAS NEVER HERE. Something in the rock hears only truth. Blair Hamby must lie about everything—every direction, every measurement, every feeling—or be heard.