“What’s the tip?” Gorilla said.
I smiled reassuringly. “Keep following the passage behind you. You’ll get to a room full of wooden crates stacked floor-to-ceiling, hundreds of them.”
“What’s inside ‘em?” Gorilla was becoming a conversationalist.
I forced a blank expression. “Bomb shelter supplies, in case the Soviets drop the big one. Food, water, medicine. Maybe a pocket knife so you can cut those ropes.” I pointed to their chummy ankles.
“Leave us one of the flashlights,” Hard Ass said, not quite a demand but short of polite. An hour earlier, he’d complained he wasn’t allowed to shoot me dead. Now he wanted a favor.
I offered the prisoners my last advice as Tricia and I strolled away. “No need for flashlights. You’ll find plenty of candles and matches, maybe even gas lanterns. Just yank up the slats and feel around inside. You’ll be fine.”
. . . . .
A minute later, Tricia stopped me short of the transit tunnel. “You’ve got one wicked streak. You better hope the big guy sticks his hand into those caskets first. Hard Ass will have a heart attack.”
“Wicked streak? This from Trachea Tricia, master of the timed blackout?”
“Not trachea. Carotids. The brain blinks out quick without blood, but you’ve got to cut off both main arteries for the technique to work.”
I couldn’t hold back a smile. Surely she was in on the joke, even if every word was true.
She smiled back. “The handles of hedge shears work too, but then there’s the risk of snipping off your opponent’s fingers.”
“You’re shitting me.”
She twisted her lips into a squiggle. “Actually, I’m not.”
“How do you know this stuff? I mean, for real.”
She shrank back a bit, as if worried how far my questions might go. Still, she pondered before appearing to reach some internal decision. “Improvisational defense. I got into a bad relationship—went fast from separation to restraining order to shadows on my curtains at night.”
“You took matters into your own hands—literally?”
She lifted her face to mine, her chin leading in a kind of declaration of independence. “I didn’t feel safe, so I trained until I did.”
“And who’d want to waste all of that good training?”
Her new candor reversed direction. “I told you I wouldn’t say what happened, so don’t ask.”
“I won’t, but whatever you did to the guy—”
She cut me off with a scowl. “Stop fishing, Lucas.” She closed her eyes for the duration of a deep breath before continuing more deliberately. “Listen, because I won’t repeat it, okay?”
I nodded and waited.
“I never killed anybody, never maimed anybody, and never hurt anybody who didn’t deserve it. The judge disagreed, but he never heard the truth.” Her eyes glossed with fresh moisture. “He only heard what the lawyers said, and that had nothing to do with the truth.”
How much had I told her about the Drax legal team and the damage done by their lies? Six years had passed, but the bus ride home from the courtroom felt like yesterday, holding hands with Mom so tight our fingers cramped.
“But Alfred heard the truth—from me,” she said. “I held nothing back, not one detail. That was when he put me in charge of the shop.” She studied my eyes for a reaction. “So does that work?”
I didn’t understand.
“Alfred trusted me. Doesn’t that prove I’m not a horrible person?”
As I peered back, I searched for the right words. But nothing sounded right in my head, so I touched her shoulders, pulled her to my chest, and squeezed, expecting her to push me away. She didn’t.
We had no time to waste, but nothing was wasted in those seconds I held her. And I would have held her longer if not for the sound of a distant whistle, Reuben’s whistle, three blasts at even intervals, the universal distress signal.
CHAPTER 27
“How many of them?” Tricia spoke from close behind with the faintest whisper. Renegade locks of hair teased the back of my neck.
I tweaked the scope’s focus ring. “Four.”
“Others must’ve come down later. Can you make them out?”
“Not yet.” I lay prone, my midsection and thighs settled into the carpet of grit, the scope steady on my forearms. The subjects of my reconnaissance milled about Maggard Street Station a few hundred feet ahead, a straightaway separating us. As if expecting visitors, one of the men periodically swung a flashlight in our direction, but futilely. We lay obscured behind stacks of supplies, abandoned by utility companies when the project got mothballed.
“What are they doing?” she asked.
“Waiting, I guess. They’re spread out. The guy holding the flashlight is leaning against the banister. One’s pacing, one’s sitting halfway up the stairs, and one’s on the landing.” The stale odor of sweat snaked up from my collar.
“Waiting for us?”
“Maybe, maybe not. Without radio communication, they can’t know about their buddies. As far as they’re concerned, Hard Ass and Gorilla are bringing us in.”
The pacing man switched on his flashlight and ascended the stone stairs. He halted just below the seated man and leaned in as if exchanging a few private words. Why the secrecy? “Wait a minute,” I said. “That’s Valentine, and he’s talking to Tony Drax. He must’ve arrived later.”
“The other two?”
“The guy by the banister’s big like Gorilla. I don’t recognize him.”
The exchange with Tony ended and Valentine cast his light upward toward the man perched on the landing. My throat constricted, cutting off my next breath. I twisted to face her in the dark, the dust squeaking beneath me. “The fourth guy is Reuben.”
. . . . .
We needed an advantage. In desperate search of one, we zigzagged through service passages and approached the station from the southeast, the river to our backs. The effort seemed hopeless but Tricia had insisted. Overwhelming Hard Ass and Gorilla must’ve made her feel invincible. She’d whispered of “another sneak attack,” unwilling to accept a cruel new reality. Reuben was now a hostage, and instead of two, we faced three adversaries, one of them a highly skilled soldier.
“But we have a gun,” she’d said, searching for agreement in my eyes.
“You ever fired one?” I replied.
She said nothing.
“Me neither.” I took no pleasure in exposing her flawed judgment, keenly aware of my many screw-ups.
Another factor became clear as we crouched in the nearest service passage to Maggard Street Station. Valentine had chosen his command post wisely to eliminate the element of surprise. We’d stand out amidst the featureless floor and walls of the straightaway.
I tested the air—a precautionary habit by that point—and a pint-sized idea tottered into my consciousness. It was a ludicrous little notion, terribly dangerous and complex, and requiring both advanced planning and rehearsal, neither of which we had time for. Hard Ass and Gorilla would soon fail to report, and Valentine would turn to Reuben for answers, extracting them by whatever means had worked against his prisoners in lawless jungles.
I should’ve sent the idea away, but as we huddled there surveying our hopelessness through the scope, the idea tugged on my shirtsleeve like a single-minded child.
What the hell. No harm testing my brainstorm with Tricia to gauge her reaction. As I turned to meet her eyes in the thinnest vapor of light from the station, the radio on her belt crackled to life, filling the air with military authority. “Mr. Daley, this is Valentine. Authenticate your locat
ion. Over.”
We pounced on the radio as if speed could reinsert the broadcast, but slapping the OFF button changed nothing. We were as exposed as bucks in a clearing.
Fresh swaths of illumination from the station swept the ashen surfaces of the transit tunnel, searching for the source of the aberrant echo. Tricia’s face lit up with fear and apology. “I’d been testing to see if maybe—I—I forgot to switch it off.”
Valentine had probably been trying to radio Hard Ass all along, but now, without barriers of earth and concrete, the signal reached a receiver.
“Mr. Daley, make your presence known.” Again, the voice was Valentine’s, but not through the radio, rather through the stagnant air that separated us, the acoustics bringing his voice frightfully close.
Five seconds passed.
“Then my assumption was incorrect,” Valentine went on. “Lucas Tremaine, you should be thankful. I lost one of my best scouts near Kanangao when he failed to suppress his walkie-talkie. A foot patrol first wounded and then executed him. Reveal yourself now and you might do better.”
Another five seconds passed, my mind reeling—what to do?
“Mr. Tremaine, your bargaining position is weak. I have your friend, and if you don’t comply in thirty seconds, I will cut him behind his right knee. He might bleed to death, or might not. I’ve seen it go both ways.”
My pulse raced. I might’ve dismissed such a threat coming from Tony Drax—he didn’t have the spine. But Valentine was an unknown at best, a mercenary lunatic at worst. I had no choice. But Tricia did. “You’ve got the film,” I whispered to her. “Go northeast and find Alpha Portal. I can talk us out of this.”
A wave of uncertainty splashed her features and she started to speak but stopped herself. The anger and determination roared back. She shook her head. “I’ve got the gun and the element of surprise. I’ll… I’ll think of something.”
Valentine rendered our debate moot. “Fifteen seconds left, and don’t forget to bring your companion. Clever business with all your footprints—got us all turned around. But shoe sizes are a dead giveaway.”
A breeze chilled the skin on my forearms, but there was no breeze, only our lives at stake. I wouldn’t risk Tricia or Reuben, not for Dad, Mom, Alfred—not for all the progress we’d made, and we’d come so far.
“One more thing,” Valentine said. “Since you’ve got Mr. Daley’s radio, I assume you’ve got his weapon. Hold the barrel by your fingertips and extend both hands high above your head. If I don’t see this, I cut Mr. Klein.”
“Okay,” I shouted, my heart like a stone in my chest. I rose and stepped into the transit tunnel. “We’re walking your way.”
. . . . .
“Where are they?” Valentine said coldly. He stood hands on hips, legs slightly spread, boots firm as if bolted to the concrete.
I’d been trying to figure out the seating arrangement. They’d placed me dead center a few marble stairs up from ground level, with Tricia below left, and Reuben above right and out of my sight. Maybe Valentine wanted to survey their faces for evidence of lying. Or maybe he wanted to mess with our heads.
“Where are they?” Valentine repeated, his impatience amplified. Gorilla Two stood alert, halfway to the landing, his back against the winding banister. Tony Drax, black stitches above his eye from Reuben’s revenge, lurked in the shadows with his arms folded across his chest.
“Why do you care?” I replied. It was a serious question. Valentine seemed to treat his subordinates as tools. Hard Ass was like a crescent wrench, adjustable but not ideal for any particular task. Gorilla was a hammer, designed to pound things. But like all tools, the men we’d secured behind an iron gate were replaceable. So why bother?
“Answer the question,” Valentine said, lifting the corner of his upper lip with a canine snarl.
Then I understood. Valentine, an ex-soldier with khaki blood, had lost his subordinates to an architecture nerd and a girl. “This makes you look bad to Rudolph. We disarmed and locked up your men, that you trained.” Our leverage paled compared to Valentine’s, with our three lives dangling by a whim in a wild underground, but it was leverage nevertheless.
The harsh light deepened the crevices in Valentine’s face and reduced his eye sockets to circular shadows. He relaxed his expression enough to allow a synthetic smile to spread across his lips. “There’s a quiet city street twenty feet above us, but it might as well be a thousand miles away. You’re in a war zone.” He squared his shoulders and widened his stance. “No police, no kindness of strangers, no phones to call for help. And no laws. Understand?”
I said nothing.
“This battlefield won’t exist in a few weeks. It’ll be buried, along with whoever doesn’t make it out. Now maybe you don’t care. I’ve met enemy soldiers like that, defiant to the end. But even they cared about their buddies.” Valentine took three easy steps toward Tricia, a foot-long knife retrieved from nowhere now dangling from his hand. Tricia stiffened, jaw fixed. Valentine locked his gaze on mine, waiting, the threat requiring no words.
The seating arrangement suddenly made sense. Tricia was Valentine’s leverage, in full view.
I swallowed. “They’re locked up in a spur.” Valentine showed no reaction. Perhaps spur meant nothing to him. But before I could clarify, he crouched, pressed down Tricia’s ankle with one hand, and laid the knife’s edge against the back of her knee with the other hand. She gasped.
“Don’t do that!” I flashed open palms. “It’s a section of tunnel with a dead end—doesn’t appear on the maps.” Again, no recognition. “I’m telling you the truth.”
Strangely, Valentine glanced at Reuben as if seeking validation. But then again, Reuben radiated the earnestness of Captain Kangaroo.
“He’s telling the truth,” Reuben said with absurd calm from behind my shoulder. “It branches from a transit tunnel but goes nowhere. They hid it with cinderblock and stucco.”
Valentine lowered the knife from Tricia’s leg. Her shoulders eased. I released my breath.
As if sensing an opportunity, my bastard child of an idea tugged again on my shirtsleeve.
No. Too risky. I sent the child away. “One service passage winds back to it,” I told Valentine, my voice quivering, half performance and half physiological reaction to imagining Tricia’s face gray from blood loss. “Your men are behind a reinforced iron gate.”
“Draw me a map.”
Another tug. Success would require coordination among the three of us, but that would be impossible—we couldn’t communicate with each other. Or could we?
The child fidgeted.
“A map isn’t enough,” I said. “There’s no key to the lock, but I know how to pick it.” Speaking the truth felt natural and believable, even though the child had a different destination in mind, miles from our impromptu jail.
“He’s not lying,” Reuben said, unaware of the insistent imp. “The tools are in his bag.”
On Valentine’s command, Gorilla Two produced the pick set from my backpack. More validation.
The child yanked my sleeve, demanding commitment. It was too risky, but too risky compared to what? You’re both dead, Hard Ass had said to Reuben and me. After retrieving his men, Valentine would probably finish the job. No plan was too risky against such hopelessness.
“We can show you where,” I said and paused, hoping to attract my friends’ full attention. “A mile and a half to the southeast.”
The child smiled with satisfaction.
Reuben sighed. “Toward the river,” he said, signaling that he understood, however reluctantly. But what about Tricia? I gambled on a sideways glance. She seemed preoccupied, as if plotting her own attack.
> . . . . .
Valentine designed our marching order with soldierly brilliance. He placed me in the lead, far from my companions. Gorilla Two followed me with the flashlight. Reuben marched solo in third place. Valentine and Tony brought up the rear surrounding Tricia, the meat in the middle of their leverage sandwich.
“I’ve seen every trick, Mr. Tremaine,” Valentine said, “so don’t waste your time—and don’t waste your friend.” He slapped the knife in its sheath for punctuation. “Anything stupid and she gets the first cut.”
I needed Tricia to understand our true destination. Her life might depend on it. But how to tip her off without raising suspicion? Plodding along in silence wasn’t helping.
I angled my head to one side to project my voice to the rear. “Why haven’t you asked what we’re doing down here like Daley did?”
Mimicking his toolbox twin, Gorilla Two said nothing.
“Shut up, Tremaine,” Valentine growled.
“Well, if you’re waiting for us to tell you, I wouldn’t hold your breath.”
Reuben signaled back with a cough. Gorilla Two shoved me hard at the base of my neck. I staggered before righting and shrugged my backpack into position.
A minute passed. The static air carried streaks of vegetable decay. With new intensity, I studied the footprints Reuben, Andy, and I had left behind, but my own shadow sliced up the view. More defined was the elevation change as we began our slow descent toward the river.
I cooked up a different angle and gave it a try. “It’s all her fault,” I railed into the void, my voice echoing, “her and her senile grandfather. But no, she doesn’t say a damn thing!”
Gorilla Two’s next blow sent me crashing and skidding, dust billowing, particles like colliding galaxies in the bitter light. I rolled on my side to project my grand finale toward the rear of the column. “Penny for your thoughts, bitch?”
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