The yellow dog gave him a hurt expression, as if he would never think of coating himself with the stink of a dead rat, and trotted to stand next to Joe’s leg. Joe bent and ruffled the animal’s soft ears. “Good boy.”
The dog stayed close to his leg as Joe walked toward home. He’d warned Edison about the dangers of the third rail, but Joe didn’t like to take chances and kept him to heel when he could.
They arrived at a round metal door faced with an ornate pattern molded into the Victorian-era steel. On it, Joe tapped his own addition—a high-tech electronic keypad. Nineteenth-century security combined with twenty-first-century technology kept people, and the occasional floodwaters, out of the most personal part of his domain. He entered an eight-digit code on the keypad. At the green light, he inserted an old-fashioned key from his key ring, turned it, and pushed open the heavy door.
He took off his night-vision glasses and entered a large tunnel floored with wooden planks long worn gray with dust and soot and lit by amber bulbs strung along the ceiling. The bulbs looked old enough to have come from the workshop of the original Edison—Thomas himself.
His Edison bounded ahead. Joe followed along the planks toward home. As always, he paused before entering his house, amazed that he lived there.
The amber lights illuminated the neatly painted facade of a full-size Victorian house. Surrounded by stone, it looked as if someone had chiseled a house-shaped cavern into the schist, then teleported a building into it. He blinked, but the house was still there when he opened his eyes. Even now, his mind had trouble fathoming it. It was completely incongruous, but it was real. A three-story Victorian house built deep underground.
Nearly a century before, the eccentric lead engineer on the construction of Grand Central Terminal had been granted the weirdest perk Joe had ever heard of—a house buried in the tunnels far below Grand Central Terminal, deeded to his family in perpetuity, combined with access to all the tunnels in the system. It was his key ring that Joe carried on his belt, and the keys on it had opened every underground door that he had come across.
The engineer and his wife had raised their children in this fantastical house in the world beneath, taking them up in the elevator each day for school and outings. A few articles about their unusual living situation had appeared in turn-of-the-century newspapers, and then the world had moved on and forgotten.
The engineer’s children had opted for lives aboveground. Following generations had used the family house only for parties. Joe’s ex-girlfriend Celeste Gallo and her twin brother, Leandro, Joe’s college roommate and old friend, were the final heirs to the house. Ever since Leandro had told him about it, Joe had itched to see it, but had never found time until he became trapped in New York not far from the house’s entrance.
Tonight, Joe gazed at the house. The wooden facade glowed bright sulfur-yellow with clean white trim and gingerbread accents picked out in brick red. It resembled the famous painted ladies lining Alamo Square in San Francisco, except that this house stood a hundred feet below where it ought to.
Buried treasure.
He could see why Leandro had fought so hard to keep it after September 11, when the government had tried to have it closed down as a security risk. But Leandro’s great-grandfather’s contract had proved ironclad, and the house had stayed in Gallo hands.
He was just grateful that he’d persuaded Celeste, with whom he shared a complicated romantic history, to let him live here. It hadn’t been easy, and Leandro had fought it. Leandro had claimed, “Digging Joe into a bigger hole is just enabling him.” Leandro had told Joe that what he really needed was a good kick in the pants. That would cure his agoraphobia, and he could fly back to his life in California.
That wasn’t going to be possible.
Celeste had won in the end because, like everyone else, Leandro couldn’t deny her anything she wanted. So, the house was Joe’s.
Edison stood in front of the front door, wagging his tail. He was ready to sack out. So was Joe.
As he walked up the stairs to open the door for the dog, he had an uneasy feeling. He and Edison had been exploring the tunnels for months, and they’d encountered only the occasional maintenance worker down this deep. Tonight, Joe had come across unfamiliar prints. They’d had pronounced ridges, more like hiking boots than the simple straight-line treads of the shoes worn by most transit employees, and they had ranged across dozens of the lower tunnels.
He’d met homeless people underground before, of course, clustered near subway platforms or in the upper tunnels, but no one had ever dared to come as deep as Joe’s house.
Until now.
And Joe didn’t like that at all.
Chapter 2
November 27, 4:25 a.m.
Carrie Wilbur Home for Adults with Special Needs
Oyster Bay, New York
Ozan Saddiq loved coming to New York because he could visit his brother, Erol, in the home. He couldn’t care for Erol in his own home, because he didn’t have one, and both of their parents were dead, so he paid a fortune to keep him in this expensive facility, and Erol repaid him by being happy. Erol excelled at being happy.
Erol liked Ozan to stay by his bed while he slept, so that was where he sat. The home didn’t allow overnight visitors, so Ozan had to break in at night, after everyone left—a simple task for a man with his talents.
Ozan studied the familiar room, the one constant in his nomadic existence. Erol had his own room, for an extra fee, decorated with manatees and sea turtles. The carpet was aqua blue as were the walls. Even his comforter had an aquatic theme—sea turtles swimming on a blue background with bright yellow fish nibbling on their shells. Ozan watched his brother breathe—almond-shaped eyes closed, yellow-framed glasses folded on the nightstand, body abandoned to a deep sleep Ozan could only imagine.
Chance had given Erol a genetic blueprint with Down syndrome. It could just as easily have been Ozan in that bed.
Ozan tucked the cover under his brother’s soft chin and turned to the demands of his latest client—Dr. Dubois. He wanted the job done immediately. He always did. Ozan had worked for him a few months before—driving a Navy boat laden with cargo he was forbidden to look at to a certain GPS location and then scuttling it. As the ship had sunk beneath the oil-black waves, he’d untied the motorized dinghy and piloted it across miles of open ocean to Florida.
Before he’d sunk the vessel, he’d examined the cargo. Corpses. One hundred and three of them. One hundred had had no visible wounds and might have died of natural causes. Three had had their throats slit with a savagery that spoke of great anger and strength, one of them burned beyond recognition. When the doctor had contacted him again this time, he’d doubled his fee.
He took a teacup from its place on Erol’s nightstand next to a picture of the two of them together at the New York Aquarium. Ozan had brought his own thermos of Turkish tea, brewed strong like their mother used to make. It would be a long night for him.
He inserted the memory stick into its port in his laptop, aware that he would be unable to copy anything from it and the data would erase itself twenty-four hours from the time he viewed it. He could memorize details quickly, another gift he’d received from their parents that Erol hadn’t. It was a useful talent in his business.
Because Ozan’s business was killing.
Like many men, he’d learned to kill in the Army. Like few, he was very good at it. People noticed the care, if not the pleasure, he took doing it, and those people put him in touch with others who would pay for his unique gifts.
He was an aficionado of death. He could be quick and brutal, or slow and elegant. What he was, above all else, was discreet. His murders were viewed as accidental deaths when required, or pinned on others if necessary. He rose to the demands of each occasion.
His prey always underestimated him. A slight man, he didn’t seem like a threat. With black hair cropped short, compact small hands, graceful movements, wide brown eyes—he looked like a waiter.
<
br /> Erol snorted in his sleep. It sounded like a laugh, and Ozan smiled at him before returning to his reading. For this job he must locate the target, known only as Subject 523, and kill him. That part was straightforward.
A moth fluttered against Erol’s bedside lamp. Ozan’s hand flicked out and caught it. He held the creature against the hot bulb with his forefinger. It waggled its tiny legs as if it could escape him. He held it there, ignoring the pain in his finger until the faint smell of burning hair reached his nostrils, then he let it go. The dead moth fell to the nightstand, and he brushed it to the floor.
He read the next paragraph of the file, twice, surprised by the requirement that he send the doctor a very particular kind of proof that he had completed the job. He wasn’t squeamish, but the strangeness of the request startled even him.
He read on. If the subject possessed classified documents, they must be returned unread. If the subject had shared those documents with others, then additional targets might need to be defined. But he didn’t think on that yet. He would deal with each challenge as it came, examine it thoroughly, then let it go.
A few minutes of research on his laptop dug up a press report that told him Dr. Dubois wasn’t telling the whole truth about his target. Clients rarely told the entire truth, but the flash of disappointment made him frown. It wasn’t that they lied, it was that they thought him naïve enough to believe them. As if he were Erol, open and trusting.
He scanned the article. A homeless man had beaten an unidentified businessman to death with a hammer outside the Grand Central Hyatt a few weeks before. The businessman need not remain unidentified—Ozan recognized his picture in the newspaper. They ran in the same circles, competed for the same jobs, although his fees were reportedly lower than Ozan’s. Regardless, he wouldn’t have been an easy man to surprise or overpower, even by a hammer-wielding crazy man.
Ozan must assume that the murdered man had pursued the same quarry as he, and he’d not only been killed while doing so, he’d also attracted attention, which made Ozan’s job much more delicate. The target had been on the run for an indeterminate amount of time before the murdered colleague had found him. Then the target had killed the man sent to kill him, and more time had gone by.
For this man he should take his time, be even more thorough and careful than usual. The man was dangerous, and Ozan wanted to know all the variables in play.
Instead, he was to rush, as the doctor had made it clear that the subject must be dead within four days. After fumbling about for months, they had given Ozan ninety-six hours.
What could possibly be so urgent?
Chapter 3
November 27, 7:00 a.m.
Brooklyn Bridge, Manhattan side
Vivian Torres drew in a deep breath. Sure, it smelled like smog, but it was still good. The cold winter sun shone on her long-sleeved running suit as she tightened her shoelaces. She stood at the Manhattan end of the Brooklyn Bridge, watching random tourists amble across its iconic span. They were bundled up in jackets and scarves, breath frosting out in front of them.
She gathered her black hair into a ponytail. She’d just gotten it cut, and it was barely long enough. When she did a few quick stretches, she drew admiring glances from a couple of passing guys. At six feet tall and Army strong, she was used to the attention and ignored them.
“Just a short run, right? Nothing competitive,” asked Dirk. He’d come to run with her. They’d served together in the Army before her discharge, and he knew she was competitive.
“More like a stroll than a run.” She stood and stretched first one leg and then the other.
“Sure,” he said sarcastically. Dirk, with his honorable discharge and family connections, had gone straight from the Army to the police. Vivian, with her dishonorable one, had been stuck working private security.
“Ready?” He ran a hand through his short blond hair and bounced from foot to foot. He was an inch shorter than Vivian but a faster runner.
She counted down from three, and they took off. She took an early lead and lengthened it. In a straight line, she was slower than he was, but she was better at dodging obstacles, which is how she thought of the tourists. His well-muscled physique, kept in top form through daily weight lifting, looked good, but it meant that he couldn’t get around people as quickly as she could.
She poured on more speed when she hit an open stretch, knowing he’d make up time on her when he got clear of people. Crisp air cooled her sweaty cheeks.
The Brooklyn end of the bridge beckoned, but she slowed to let Dirk catch up. They both knew she would have won, and that was all that mattered.
They reached the end and stopped, both breathing hard. She stared up at the Watchtower, the Jehovah’s Witnesses building in Brooklyn. As usual, she felt as if someone in the tower was spying on her, and a shiver ran down her back.
“How the hell did you pass the lady with the double stroller?” Dirk sounded winded.
“Matrix-style,” she told him. “Same as always.”
They headed back across the bridge, walking without talking, catching their breath. She’d missed this—the easy camaraderie of soldiers. She was close to her family, but it wasn’t the same as the bond she shared with Dirk.
“So, what’s bothering you?” Dirk asked. His sea-blue eyes met hers, and he waited.
He’d see right through a denial. “About six months ago, I lost a guy I was supposed to be following.”
“Happens to everyone sometimes. Even you.”
While they walked, she told him how she’d been assigned to babysit a Silicon Valley software executive. He wasn’t supposed to know she was there. It had started out easy, but then he’d left his hotel and disappeared in the column in Grand Central Terminal—the one inside the famous clock. She could still see it in her mind—she’d been across the concourse, checking out the time on its four opal faces, when he’d stepped into the information booth and then actually gone inside the pillar.
“I never knew the pillar had a door,” Dirk said. “Don’t see how that’s your fault.”
“Maybe.” She shrugged. When you were tailing people, sometimes they got lost. But it usually happened to other people, not her. “Anyway, he came out a couple of hours later, totally trashed.”
“Drunk?”
“Something like that,” she said. “I dragged him back to his hotel, had an altercation with another guy along the way, and tucked the executive into his own little bed.”
“Altercation?” Dirk grinned. “Did the other guy walk away?”
She paused to stretch her hamstrings, muscles gone stiff from the air outside. “Actually, the jerk was kind of curled up in a fetal position when I left him. But he had it coming.”
“What did he do?” Dirk put on his jacket.
“He jumped me by the shoe-shine benches in front of Grand Central. You know the spot?”
“I do.”
“I was coming out practically carrying my guy, and this teenager comes up and asks for our money. Nicely, he said he was collecting for charity and needed a donation.”
“And so late at night, too. That shows dedication.” Dirk moved aside to let a teenage couple pass, their hands in each other’s back pockets.
“He flashed a knife to make sure I contributed the right amount.”
Dirk winced. “Poor kid.”
“I disarmed him,” she said. “Without doing any permanent damage. I couldn’t turn my back on him, so I made him aware that it takes one hundred ten pounds of pressure per square inch to rupture a testicle.”
“Does it?” Dirk moved a step back.
“So I’ve read,” she said. “Sadly, I was forced to apply about eighty pounds of pressure to the aforementioned area.”
“I bet that subdued him.”
“He gave me no further trouble while I took my client back to his hotel.”
Dirk laughed. “Sounds like you did a hell of a job protecting your client, even from himself.”
“That’s
what worries me.” Vivian pulled the most recent issue of Forbes magazine out of her backpack and handed it to Dirk. “It’s the cover article.”
Tesla’s face smiled from the front cover. He was pale, like software engineers were supposed to be, with high cheekbones and well-formed lips, the top one dipped in the center like a bow, almost feminine. Curly black hair was cut to his jawline. He wore a light blue suit that matched his eyes. And he grinned like he’d played the greatest trick ever on the world.
Dirk read aloud as he skimmed it. “Joe Tesla, software millionaire…set to ring the bell at the New York Stock Exchange on the day his facial-recognition software company, Pellucid, went public…software uses a revolutionary algorithm…CTO never showed up…has disappeared from sight…rumors are that he has developed agoraphobia and not left the Grand Central Hyatt for six months.”
Vivian sighed.
“This was your guy?”
She stared down at the green water flowing far beneath the bridge. “Something happened to him down there.”
Dirk stood close to her, his warm form sheltering her from the wind. “How do you know?”
“He had no trouble going outside when I was following him. He trotted right over to the terminal and stumbled back. He didn’t have agoraphobia then, but he does now.”
“Weird, but not your problem.”
“What if it is?” She shifted from one foot to the other in the cold. “What if something happened to him down there, something that wouldn’t have happened if I’d been there, and that’s what changed him?”
“Even if,” he said. “He’s a big boy. Not your job keeping him out of trouble all the time.”
“That night, it was.” She clenched her jaw. “And I blew it.”
“What are you going to do about it?” Dirk asked. She liked it that he didn’t try to talk her out of anything, just asked questions.
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