As the drone finally came out of the afternoon shadows, it was illuminated by the glorious wall sconces on the side of the hotel. Jake finally noticed that the drone seemed to be dragging something through the air with it. He couldn’t believe his eyes. The drone was lifting a long cable from the ground. Unspooling out from the back of Nik’s van, the drone was actually a delivery system. The drone collapsed onto the balcony. Rory fastened the cable to the stone building with a huge fish-eye loop secured by saddle clamps to an I-bolt.
▪
At the other end of the line, Nikolai was hard at work. A small motor rotated the cable along a spool in the van until it was taut. Nik’s muscles erupted in agony as he tightened the cable further using a one-directional winch.
▪
“All that bullshit about your crew. You don’t care about her. You’re going to let her die!” Jake screamed.
“I’m not an animal,” Rory glanced back at Jake. “That’s why I made a side deal for Mona already . . .”
“The hell?” Jake’s confusion accelerated into overdrive.
“I’m just saving you from yourself, noob. See, I know the guy who’s got Mona. Met him a couple days ago. Nice chap. Hector’s his name. You two have a history. I don’t think you like each other very much . . . Anyway, turns out Metropolis called upon him for a favor. But Hector’s done with favors. Our priorities aligned.”
“And what about me? The cops are on the way up!”
“That’s exactly why you’re here, Jake,” Rory said calmly and succinctly. He held his pistol casually by his side, keeping Jake at bay. “Did you think I brought you on for your skills? We didn’t need you. You’re our insurance policy. I know you’re good at telling stories. You’re about to tell the story of your life. It goes something like this. You were suspicious of Ziros. You followed him up here, where he incapacitated his boss and the mayor. Then he robbed the place—God knows why—and fled. If you tell the right story, you’ll be back in the solid with your people, and Mona will live a long and prosperous life. But if not? If I feel so much as one degree of heat from this day forward? Who knows? Mona might find herself at the bottom of a drain . . . The sewers are a dangerous place . . . She should never have gone alone.”
And without any further ado, Rory jumped off the top of the Waldorf’s tower. His harness was attached to the taut zip-line that had been formed between the penthouse and the van below. He raced through the air, only slowing his descent ever so slightly with a brake block.
Jake watched as Castle attached his own brake block to the chord. He could hear the Waldorf’s security force going after the door with an axe. Jake turned back to Castle, who was fiddling with his harness. Jake took this momentary respite to dive at Castle, smacking both of them to the ground. But Castle held onto Jake’s head, crunching Jake’s face into the stone balcony. Castle rolled over on top of him and flipped him into a submission hold, whaling on Rivett with his fists.
Jake saw stars—little dots of light flickering across his corneas—and then the pressure released.
Castle sprinted to the line. He reached for the brake block and jumped off the edge of the building.
Jake shook his head. The banging on the door was becoming more vital, more insistent. He glanced back inside. A large hole had been blasted through the wood. A hand was pushing at the levered chair . . .
In between Jake and the door was Metropolis, still on the ground of the living room—but stirring. Jake paced back into the penthouse, towards Arthur. “Arthur!” Jake screamed. Metropolis' consciousness was not fully complete. Jake smacked him directly on the face, three times in quick succession. Arthur finally focused on the angry eyes above him.
“Where’s Mona?”
“Screw you,” Arthur finally muttered.
“I’ll kill you if anything happens to her,” Jake spit out.
“Wait . . . Detective . . .”
But Jake didn’t wait. He pulled his backpack off his back. He wrapped his right hand around one of the straps. It would do. He exited towards the balcony. He flipped the backpack over the wire and secured his left hand to the other strap as best he could. He pulled himself up, orienting his feet on the balcony’s railing.
Jake Rivett took a deep breath—and jumped over the precipice of nothing.
TWENTY-NINE
THE TIERED ART DECO FAÇADE of the Waldorf gave way to the steel and glass cliffs of Park Avenue as Jake ripped through the middle of the city. It only took a few seconds for Jake to make out Nik’s van—the point of conclusion for his impromptu zip-line ride. Just avoiding a power wire’s potential garrote to his neck, Jake saw the Sprinter growing in stature ahead of him.
▪
Rory glanced upwards as he disentangled himself from the steel cable. He saw Jake, halfway down the wire and just a handful of seconds behind.
“Cut it!” Rory screamed at Nik.
Nik quickly pivoted, reaching for a huge pair of wire cutters. The seconds ticked as he gripped the cutters’ teeth onto the cable.
▪
Jake careened past a streetlamp—now milliseconds to arrival. He’d stopped braking because his hands could barely handle the tension on the backpack. Now his two feet aimed ahead, bracing for the impact of the van ahead.
Nik didn’t cut the wire in time. Jake smashed through Nikolai feet first. The van shuddered from the impact, rolling forward. Rory was thrown out, the pistol he’d tucked into the small of his back rolling into a small geranium garden.
Castle scrambled towards Rory, gripping the large duffel of cash. He helped Rory to his feet, and the two of them sprinted away from the van.
Jake moved his legs gingerly. He could feel the impact working its way up his body in slow motion—feet to ankles to knees to core—like a tsunami of pain. He dragged himself out of the van, which had fully impaled a small car parked ahead. Jake saw Nikolai passed out on the sidewalk. But Rory and Castle where nowhere to be seen.
Jake peered past the van. He noticed two small specks running away from him—holding a bag. Rory and Castle. He took a deep breath and doubled down.
▪
Tony Villalon stared over the balcony of the Waldorf’s penthouse, watching the steel cable flopping in the wind against the building. He was in awe. He glanced at his phone. Sure enough, the dot was finally moving again. It was progressing west of Park and towards Lexington. He turned around, passing the hotel’s security as he departed.
“Where you goin’, detective? Where’s your troops?” Alastair asked him.
“They’re . . .” To be perfectly frank, Tony had no idea where his people were. He was afraid of calling Susan, who he was sure was steaming from her nostrils. At that very moment, the elevator doors opened, and four cops raced inside. Saved by the bell. “Right here,” Tony said. He nodded politely at the officers and hopped onto the elevator, jamming the lobby button incessantly.
▪
After watching Rory and Castle round a corner a few hundred feet away, Rivett breathlessly reached the same nexus point and turned—to encounter nothing. He stood on a quiet and tree-lined street framed by brownstones on each side. Bewildered, Jake jogged slowly down the street. He gazed into each alleyway, trash nook, and stairwell. But he couldn’t locate them anywhere. Jake doubled back across the street, a panic now rising within his chest. He couldn’t lose those two. Not when he was so close. Not with Mona on the hook. As he glanced up at one brownstone, Jake suddenly stopped.
He bounded up the stairs. It was only when he was a few feet from the front door of the house that he realized what he was looking at. The small golden plaque had seemed slightly out of place, if only because it was attached directly to the front door. But this was no embassy or law office. He read the words transcribed on the plaque: “NYC TRANSIT - EXIT NO. 3.”
“Exit three,” Jake said to himself. Jake vaguely remembered Rory referring to something like this—weeks ago. Rory’s “favorite.” The fake brownstones. Here was one of them. Jake tried the doo
r. The lock had been pried open.
▪
Tony Villalon drove alone through the city, peering at his cell phone as he did. He was now right on top of the blinking GPS dot for the second time today, and like clockwork, his undercover was nowhere to be seen. As he craned his neck to stare out the windows, he was greeted by nothing. Just a row of brownstones standing idle and watching him—judging him with the weight of their beauty and stature. All of a sudden, the dot simply disappeared from Tony’s phone.
“Shit!” He slammed his hand on the dashboard. Ahead was the East River. He approached, still not sure what he was looking for. A yellow reflection caught his eye, emerging from the edge of an old brick aqueduct built into the bottom of the East River’s retaining wall. Tony screeched his car to a stop.
It was a large drain entrance. That was for sure. But where it led? Tony had no clue. Tony shined a flashlight inside the drain, attempting to figure out what he’d just seen a moment earlier. His flashlight beam eventually rested on two bright yellow-and-green motorcycles. A very odd location to park bikes. Tony reached for his radio.
“This is Detective Tony Villalon . . . I’m on the east side of the FDR. Just south of the Queensboro. I need backup, 10-45, 10-45.” Tony thought for a moment. “I, uh, Susan . . . I don’t think they’re in the hotel. They’re not at the hotel. They’re in the pipes.”
He pulled his gun and cautiously entered the drain.
▪
Susan Herlihy stood in front of the Waldorf, listening to the radio.
“Well, I guess he wasn’t getting food, was he? Send SWAT. Send everyone,” she said. “And me. Make sure I’ve got a gat, too.”
Fong nodded and escorted her back to the car.
▪
A grand-and-moneyed foyer did not greet Jake Rivett inside the brownstone. Instead, he finally understood what Rory had been talking about. The brownstone was a complete and utter façade. A fake. It had been designed by the city as an access point into the subterranean jungle that lay below the streets. The entrance hall was small, cement-lined, and industrial. It was lit by a bare bulb, and led to another door ahead. This one was marked clearly: “Electrical Distribution Room.” Rivett pushed through the door and descended stairs into the depths of the city.
THIRTY
THE ELECTRICAL DISTRIBUTION ROOM WAS a huge subterranean space filled with high-voltage switch boxes. The few lights that illuminated the room were quite low, casting the entire location in a murky darkness. Jake stalked through the room, careful to remain in the shadows. He couldn’t hear Rory and Castle—or anyone—ahead of him. That had him worried. Time was of the essence now. As he walked through the room, Jake saw an old chalkboard positioned atop an office table. He grabbed a piece of chalk and swiftly drew an arrow pointing the directly he was going. He stepped through the portico to another service stairway and began jumping down the steps, two at a time.
▪
Tony Villalon soon found himself inside a massive aqueduct sewer and deep underneath Manhattan. He padded slowly down the pipe, heading towards a loud male voice that echoed throughout the chambers. As Tony neared the end of a long, curving pipe, he could see a light growing slowly. He flicked off his own phone flashlight and slowed to listen further, making sure to step out of the pooling water so his footsteps didn’t cause a disturbance. Tony situated himself behind a large vertical buttress to the tunnel, then slowly peered around the edge.
Mona Rosas sat in handcuffs, sitting glumly on the ground. Hector Trizzo and Emanuel Vipa sat on either side of her, drinking beers, while Stian Ziros paced back and forth in front of them.
“What are you doin’ here, homie? I don’t need you to take care of her. You don’t trust me?” Hector asked Ziros.
“I gotta call Arthur again,” Ziros responded.
“Where is he?” Hector asked.
“That’s not your problem . . .”
“You guys don’t know what the hell you’re doing, do you?” Mona asked.
“Shut up, woman. You can drown in one inch of water. Did you know that? Is a fact! I done it before!” Hector screamed into her face.
“Fuck you!”
“That ain’t your decision, puta,” Hector pretended to pull down his zipper.
“Stop it. I’m going back up top to get a signal,” Ziros announced. He turned and headed down the pipe.
He was pacing directly towards the position where Villalon was holed up. Tony suddenly stepped into the middle of the drain.
“Put your hands up!” Tony screamed, the front sights of his sidearm trained directly upon Ziros.
The first thing that happened was nothing—a brief, shocked silence.
Then all hell broke loose, like a rat in a bridal suite. Ziros dove to the side of the tunnel and into the water. Tony kept his pistol trained on Ziros but caught Hector in the corner of his eye. Hector was reaching into the back of his pants. His weapon glinted as it rotated towards Tony.
Bam. Bam. Two holes drilled into Hector’s chest. Hector stared down at the abyss that was his heart, as his own blood erupted like a volcano. Then he dropped directly to the ground, doornail dead.
Tony trained his gun back on Ziros before realizing that Emanuel had disappeared.
“Where’d the other one go?” Tony asked Mona.
“That way,” Mona pointed into the catacombs behind her.
Ziros used the moment to his advantage. He launched himself at Villalon, tackling Tony onto the ground. The two men struggled for dominance, with Stian slowly gaining an advantage over the detective.
Ziros' eyes were wide, his pupils tight as pin pricks, as he held his thumbs into Tony’s neck. Tony felt the room getting darker and murkier than it already was. He thought he could hear Jake yelling for him, but he realized it wasn’t Rivett. It was his husband. It was his friends, his family, and every single person he knew. They were all calling out, telling him to come back from wherever he was going. And where was that? At least it wouldn’t be straight to Hell, like the man on top of him.
In his last second of consciousness, Tony heard an explosion. He blinked. The light came streaming back. Ziros was slumping over him. Tony glanced over Ziros' shoulder to find Mona, holding Hector’s gun, smoke articulating from the tip. Tony shook his head while the oxygen returned to his brain. Ziros moaned on the floor while Mona repeatedly kicked him. Tony realized that Ziros wasn’t dead—but he was certainly headed in that direction.
“You’re the girl. Jake’s girl,” Tony finally said.
“I’m myself, actually.”
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Tony said as he rose from the ground. “I think it’s this way. Come on!”
Ziros watched the light of Tony’s cell phone fade away in the darkness.
▪
Making his way down from the electrical distribution room, Rivett emerged onto an older brick pathway. This hallway seemed to access the steampunk-esque world of original copper and stone sewers underneath Manhattan. Above Jake’s head passed a keystone. A mystical creature, the hydra, stared back at him. Jake worked his way through the aqueduct sewer, making sure to denote his path with chalk at every turn. Jake realized that the sewer was getting wider, not narrowing. Strange. Where was it going? He realized that he’d reached a large abandoned room inside the hydra, no longer used for Manhattan’s sanitation or water.
As Jake stepped around one of the ancient brick columns, he caught a blur of motion behind him. A shape flung through the air—towards him. Jack Castle piledrove Jake into the ground, but before Jake could pull himself back onto all fours, Castle was holding him down. Rory appeared and bent towards Jake’s face . . .
“You made a big mistake following us . . .”
All of a sudden, Jake caught sight of a pistol flying through the air behind Rory. Rory’s neck snapped all the way back and ricocheted almost 180 degrees as he was pistol whipped. Tony stood behind Rory, who fell to the ground.
But Castle had regained his footing and jumped T
ony. They fought for the gun, which spun out directly in front of Jake. Jake held the pistol with both hands and used his back to push himself up against a wall.
“Don’t make me!” Jake screamed at Castle, who slowly rose, his hands in surrender.
Tony used the moment to push Castle face-first into the muck below, a knee in his back while the handcuffs jangled from Tony’s pocket and headed directly for his perp’s wrists.
Jake realized that Rory was splashing through the large dark room and away from them.
Mona stumbled over to Jake.
“Where’s Hector?” he asked.
“Dead,” Mona said, pointing to Tony. “It wasn’t me,” she added. “I didn’t tell them who you were. They already knew . . .”
“I know. You’re one of the good guys . . .”
“And so are you.” She hugged him, holding him tight. She could tell Jake was tensing for more action. She gazed in the same direction as Jake—where Rory had gone. “I’ll go with you,” she said.
“No. Stick with Tony or else you’ll never get out of here.” He pointed to the wall behind him and one of the white chalk arrows he’d drawn. “I was prepared. Follow the arrows in reverse.”
Jake raced down the dark tunnel in pursuit of Rory.
▪
Not so far away, Emanuel shined his flashlight down a dark and empty tunnel. It looked innocuous. Emanuel’s flashlight began to flicker. He shook the batteries inside, and the light grew powerful again but quickly began to fade a second time. As Emanuel passed through the entrance to the tunnel, his weak flashlight missed a spray-painted message on the wall: “NO ZONE . . . NO O2!”
After about thirty more steps, Emanuel’s face turned ugly. He couldn’t smell it. He couldn’t see it. But his brain could certainly feel it. He stopped in his tracks, turning back in the direction he’d come from. Emanuel sprinted towards the end of the tunnel—but his motor functions began to fail him. He ran at an angle, adjacent to the wall, before tripping over his own legs and falling to the ground. He sat up, a bewildered expression across his face. His lungs and chest began to heave horribly. He dropped to the ground, and his flashlight fell into the sewer water below him, extinguishing.
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