The afterline bureau - the latchkey ghost

the latchkey ghostan afterline bureau thriller - book thirteenby tobey alvarez**some children escape the dark.some children become it.when a terrified boy named ben emerges from a storm drain miles from home, the afterline bureau is called in. ben didn't wander-he escaped an underground labyrinth hidden beneath the city, a maze carved across generations by missing children trying to survive.he insists he wasn't alone down there.he insists something followed him.the other kids had a name for it: the latchkey ghost.carter and the bureau descend into the buried tunnels to uncover the truth. what they find is a suffocating nightmare-endless stone passages, fossilized handprints, collapsed lift shafts, echo chambers that lie, and rooms where the walls themselves remember.throughout it all, ben's chalk marks guide them.throughout it all, something stalks them.silent. precise. engineered to hunt by breath and fear.a remnant of the first children taken-and changed.but the deeper carter goes, the clearer one truth becomes: the latchkey ghost wasn't created.he was a child long before he became a monster.now he remembers the tunnels that birthed him.now he remembers what the first room took from him.and now he remembers why ben must never leave.in a labyrinth that shifts under their feet, where echoes mimic voices and something ancient stirs beneath the stone, carter and the bureau must confront a monster who knows every passage, every vent cycle, every heartbeat-and who may not be the only one.some ghosts haunt.this one hunts.fans of the child finder, the silent corner, and dark places will devour this heart-pounding thriller where survival isn't just a fight--it's a race against the underground itself.