Andy opens the van door and orders the children to get out. Sage sees that both he and Ted are present; she is grateful that they don’t notice the spot where she scratched the paint off the window.

Ted and Andy line the children up next to a hole in the ground, the opening to the shaft which leads to the shipping container. They begin removing the zip ties. As the children realize they are going to descend into the hole, panic breaks out, and one of the children makes a run for it. Ted easily grabs her, and Andy reiterates that he will shoot Jessa if the children do not cooperate.

Back at Bright Beginnings, a police officer takes Sheena’s statement about the confrontation between her father and the driver. The officer reiterates that no one knows the location of the bus or the children, and that neither Jessa nor the children are answering their phones. The FBI has been called in to assist.

Sheena and her father return to their car and prepare to drive home to Sunset Springs. Sheena has her father’s watch in her pocket since the clasp is broken. Sheena feels very isolated and reflects on the collapse of her marriage. When her daughters were two and six, Sheena’s husband Jacob abruptly left her for another woman. He moved away with his second wife and new family and has no contact with Sheena or the girls.

Due to the cognitive symptoms associated with Alzheimer’s, Sheena’s father does not remember or understand that the children on the bus have disappeared. He tells Sheena about a case he investigated decades earlier, in which a woman disappeared, and investigators initially ignored her young child, who kept insisting that her mother had been hiking a particular trail. Since the woman’s car had been found parked at a different trailhead, the child’s statement did not seem plausible, but when Sheena’s father went to search the other trail, he found the woman’s body. Sheena’s father explains that the incident taught him that “kids know more than you give them credit for” (98).

He then begins rebuking Sheena for being emotional, mistakenly believing that she is crying about her divorce. Her father’s inability to understand what is happening makes Sheena even more distressed.

Jessa is forced to remain in the van after the children have exited. She reflects on her fears that Sage’s defiance will lead to greater violence. Jessa is motivated to comply and do as she is told because she desperately wants to survive and eventually be reunited with her daughter, Sophie. As she observes Andy, she thinks back to how her ex-husband Matt presented a charming and likeable persona to other people, all while frightening and abusing her in the privacy of their domestic life.

Eventually, Andy orders Jessa to get out of the van and cuts the ties binding her hands and feet. Jessa is stunned to see the gaping hole in the ground, and to realize that the children have already descended into it. Ted and Andy force her to descend the ladder into the shaft. Ted notices how terrified she is and tells Jessa, “[I]t’s not that bad down there” (106).

Sage descends the ladder along with the other children; she is surprised that they meekly obey. Sage tries to encourage Bonnie and to closely observe the details of everything she can see while descending. She notices that the shaft is made of plywood and that there are mattresses within the bunker.

As Jessa descends into the shipping container, Ted calls down that the bunker contains water, some food, flashlights, and a bucket that can be used as a toilet. Once Jessa is in the bunker, Ted and Andy retract the ladder so that “it looked like the ladder was suspended in midair above [the children]” (110). Sage notes that there is no way to climb up to the top of the bunker without access to the ladder; Jessa and the children are now trapped inside.

When Ted and Andy begin closing over the entrance from the ceiling into the shaft, the children begin panicking and screaming. Ted gruffly tells them that no one can hear them anyway and that if they are quiet and obedient, they will only be in the bunker for a short time. He also explains that there are air tubes running through the shaft to provide oxygen.

Ted seals the hole in the roof of the shipping container with a heavy piece of plywood and then positions a heavy piece of machinery on top of that. He pushes away feelings of guilt about imprisoning the children, telling himself that children are resilient. He feels confident there is no chance of anyone escaping because “even if the kids—or the bus driver—could somehow get to the plywood, twelve feet above them, without a ladder, they wouldn’t be able to push that battery away from the opening” (114). Satisfied with how the plan is going, Ted climbs out of the shaft using the ladder, and then he and Andy drag the heavy covering over the hole in the ground. Andy then immediately gets into the white shuttle van and drives away, as he is late for his job at the airport.

Alone, Ted reflects. He is planning to take his share of the ransom money and move to Cuba. He is eager to escape from his unhappy home life with his mother, who struggles with substance dependency and is emotionally abusive towards Ted.

Sheena and her father arrive back home. She notices a pizza box sitting on the front porch. She brings it inside and then notices the note taped to the top of the box. The note tells her to follow all instructions if she wants to see her daughters again, and not to contact the police. Sheena is instructed to withdraw $50,000 in cash in separate transactions from five different banks. She is then supposed to bring the money to a specific trailhead at a specific date and time. There are additional steps related to a digital transfer, and the note cautions that if she follows all the steps precisely, the children will be released. The note cautions Sheena not to tell anyone about what she has been ordered to do. Sheena is still looking at the note when she hears screams.

Sheena rushes out of the house and sees her father banging on the front door of their neighbors’ home while screaming for help. She tries to soothe him, although she is embarrassed by the scene he is making. A neighbor stops and helps them.

Once Sheena has gotten her father back inside, she ponders what to do about the note. She decides not to go to the police, even though she wonders if they could help. She hides the note and the pizza box in case she needs them later.

As she thinks about the actions she now needs to take, Sheena realizes that she needs to devote her full attention to the ransom demands and cannot take care of her father. She returns a phone call from the elder care facility and learns they have an unexpected opening. She asks if it would be possible to drop off her father that very night.

With the shipping container now sealed, it is completely black inside. Jessa is terrified of the air hoses malfunctioning or of the walls of the container collapsing under the weight of the dirt. However, Jessa clings to the belief that Ted and Andy will eventually liberate them if they follow instructions. She encourages the children as they locate the food, water, and toilet bucket. Sage suggests that if she, Sage, stands on the bucket, she might be able to reach the ceiling of the bunker, but Jessa shuts down the suggestion, explaining that, “we are going to do exactly what the men said, and then we are going to get out of here” (135).

Jessa begins to comfort the children, giving them some water and asking them to each state their favorite animal. She feels sad that she is discouraging Sage’s courageous spirit but believes that Sage’s reckless instincts would only cause more problems.

Sage continues to ponder whether she could somehow reach the ceiling of the bunker. From there, she might be able to remove the cover and access the shaft. Sage reflects that adults might try to stop her from pursuing her ideas, but she trusts her instincts. She is determined to find a way out of the bunker.

Sheena confirms that she can bring her father to the memory care facility; she tells the staff there that it will be a temporary trial. The facility is located a 20-minute drive from Sunset Springs, in the foothills near the old quarry.

Sheena receives a text update from the investigation that the cell phones from the children have been located. The other updates all indicate that the investigation is progressing, and anyone with information should come forward; Sheena feels hesitant about her decision to follow the instructions from the ransom note. However, she is terrified that the kidnappers will hurt or kill the children if she does not follow their instructions.

Another update informs Sheena that the bus (but not the children) has been located. Determined, she coaxes her father into the car and tells him that there is a work emergency and she needs him to stay somewhere else for the night. Sheena’s father reacts with anger and confusion but softens after she becomes emotional and tells him that he cannot safely be left alone. She hastily packs a few necessities for him, promising him he can come home in a few days. Sheena’s father asks about his watch, and Sheena tells him that it is being repaired.

Andy comes back to the quarry and reunites with Ted. They sit down to drink beers, positioned so that they can see the opening to the bunker shaft but so that their voices will not carry down into the bunker. Ted’s reflections reveal that he briefly worked as a bus driver for Bright Beginnings—this is why he seemed oddly familiar to Sage. Ted only worked for a week and a half before he was fired after cursing in front of the children. When his girlfriend at the time expressed irritation about his actions, Ted broke up with her. These events occurred right before the dirt bike accident that led to Ted going to jail and being unable to complete high school. He associates the time at Bright Beginnings with the start of a dark turn in his life.

After getting out of jail, Ted realized he could still access the Bright Beginnings computer system with an old login. He spent time idly reading internal documents and memos and learned that there was a two-million-dollar surplus in the local municipal budget, which Bright Beginnings was planning to use for upgrades to their programs and services. At first, Ted ignored this information. He began working at the quarry with Andy, and the two of them began the project of setting up the secret bunker.

One day, he mentioned the budget surplus to Andy, who began asking a lot of questions based on Ted’s time as a bus driver, such as the bus route and access to phones and video cameras. Eventually, Ted and Andy accessed the roster of families whose children took the bus. They learned that Sheena worked as the city council treasurer and would be able to access the budget surplus bonds; they hypothesized that Sheena would be desperate to keep her children safe and hatched the plan to serve her with the ransom note.

Ted reassures himself that the children are fine and that the whole ordeal will soon be over.

In the hushed darkness, Jessa and many of the children fall asleep. Sage wakes Bonnie up and shares her plan: “[I]f we stack the mattresses on top of each other, we’ll be able to get a lot closer to the top of the hole” (159). Jessa awakens, overhears, and tells Sage to stop. Sage refuses, reflecting that she is significantly taller than Jessa and that the latter cannot physically force her.

As other children start to awaken, Sage rallies them, explaining that she can hear the men at the top of the hole. If she can get close to the ceiling, she might be able to hear what they are saying or hear the sound of cars if they drive away. Sage deduces that if she can’t hear the men from the bottom of the bunker, they won’t be able to hear the sound of the mattresses being moved.

As Sage explains these details, it occurs to her that the men will eventually leave the quarry. They seemed confident that the children would not be able to escape and had set them up with food and water, so there’s no need to access the bunker any time soon. Sage suggests folding the mattresses to make them as thick and high as possible, and the other children hurry to help her with folding and stacking. Jessa watches passively but does not interfere.