by Lincoln Cole
In the end, he decided to wake Niccolo. It took a few tries and a lot of shaking, but finally, the priest opened his eyes. With a groan, he rubbed his forehead.
“Wha ... what happened?”
“We’ve reached the site. Naomi should be somewhere inside the plant.”
Niccolo perked up. “We have?”
“Yeah. Wait here. I’ll come back in a couple of minutes.”
Niccolo argued, “No. I’ll come with you.”
“It’s too dangerous. Naomi likes to lay traps to catch idiots, and this could get hairy.”
“Are you implying that I’m an idiot?”
Arthur shrugged. “If the shoe fits.”
He smiled, hoping Niccolo knew he meant it as a joke. From the priest’s expression, however, he felt unsure.
“We’re in this together,” Niccolo said. “I’m coming with you.”
Arthur groaned internally. “No, you aren’t.”
“You look exhausted. You shouldn’t go in there alone.”
“It will be dangerous, and you’re not ready for something like this.”
“Maybe not,” Niccolo said. “But I’ll not stay behind. If even a possibility exists that Bishop Glasser is in there, then I have to go in with you. End of story.”
Arthur hesitated for a moment longer. He didn’t want to bring Niccolo in with him until he knew the place would bring safety or danger, but he liked the idea of having him go in as well. And, exhausted, having a fresh pair of eyes wouldn’t hurt in spotting possible traps. Worse, leaving Niccolo alone could end up more dangerous. What happened if the bishop had guards patrolling the area and they stumbled across Niccolo in the car?
They would shoot before asking questions.
The safest place for Niccolo would be with Arthur. Though not ideal, it seemed better than nothing. At least by his side, Arthur could keep him safe.
Probably.
“Fine,” he said. “Stay close, and don’t say a word.”
Niccolo nodded. “Okay.”
“Do you have your tranquilizer gun?”
Niccolo held up the weapon and nodded. “Yeah.”
“All right,” Arthur said. “Don’t shoot unless I say so.”
He didn’t add that he didn’t want Niccolo shooting at all because he would likely miss. Even after the few days of training back at the cabin, he only had the confidence that Niccolo would find his target about one in every five shots. And that only if his target stood still and no outward stimuli cropped up. He had brought a lot of backup darts with them and plenty of tranquilizer, but he still didn’t want to waste the ammo.
Arthur climbed out of the car, and Niccolo followed suit, closing the door behind him gently. The night air blew cool and clean this far away from the city. Arthur let it wash over him, waking him. He needed to get ready and alert in case something went down.
As they approached through the empty fields, the building grew in size. Most of the windows looked to have been knocked out by earthquakes in the preceding years. The graveyard of pipes appeared ominous on the other side of the building, though it remained completely quiet.
He made his way toward a side door of the closest building on the eastern side. Sealed up tight, it had a chain and hefty lock to keep it closed. The old door had rusted, but the chain seemed brand new. Arthur breathed easier knowing that Elgin hadn’t betrayed him.
For definite, they had come to the right spot.
He dug out his lock-picking kit and knelt.
“You can pick locks?” Niccolo asked.
“Yep.”
“Is this legal?”
“The city didn’t put this lock here,” Arthur said.
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“Then, what do you think? Does breaking-and-entering sound legal?”
“Point taken.”
“Keep an eye out,” Arthur said. “Make sure no one sneaks up on us.”
Niccolo turned around, clutching his tranquilizer gun with a shaking hand, nervous and on edge, which didn’t surprise Arthur. He hadn’t expected the priest to handle this easily.
He scanned the area behind and around them, squinting through the darkness to watch for anyone coming toward them. Niccolo would prove easy to sneak up on, but at least it kept him busy and out of his hair while he worked on the surprisingly complex lock.
Or, maybe, the lock was fine, and he just felt that tired.
A few moments later and it clicked free. He slipped the chain off the door and set it on the ground. Then they went inside the abandoned water treatment facility, moving through the dark interior of this building and listening for any sound of movement. Each step they took echoed in the huge chamber, though they could do little about it.
After a few minutes of searching, though, he grew confident that no one else had heard their movements. Whatever he’d expected to find in here, they found nothing. He allowed himself to relax and slipped his gun away.
With this first building producing nothing, that meant they had three left to search. Maybe, though, he would find something left behind that would show him what Naomi had gotten up to.
They moved across the first floor of the structure and discovered nothing but old and empty pipes or discarded trash. Many of the pipes had disintegrated with rust since water no longer flowed through them.
He gestured for Niccolo to stop moving, and then headed up the stairs to the second floor. The tight and grated walkway gave a clear view of the ground down below. Arthur crept along the overhanging walkways and searched for any signs that Naomi and her crew had hidden out here.
Not a thing. No traps, no signs of life. Just an empty building. A discouraging sign because it meant that maybe she had received a warning and moved along after all. If she remained here, she would have to have hidden out in one of the other adjacent structures.
Or maybe, he surmised, spotting an entrance to a basement level down below, she’d gone underground.
Alert, he headed back down to where Niccolo stood waiting and led him to an access hatch leading into the tunnels. The place would have underground maintenance access tunnels to protect some of the pipes and wiring that connected these buildings.
Without power to the building, those tunnels would prove dark and uncomfortable and completely invisible to the outside world. They would make the perfect place for Naomi to set up shop, because even if she lit the tunnels with flood lights, nothing would be visible from the roads.
He had one flashlight with him, which he pulled out. Though he had extra ones in the car, he decided not to bother with them just now. He could test out the area, and if they found any sign of life down here, he could head back and get more gear.
“Ready?” He grabbed hold of the hatch and glanced at Niccolo.
The priest couldn’t possibly have looked less ready if he had tried, but he did nod. “I guess.”
“All right, then. Here goes nothing.”
HE OPENED THE HATCH and, immediately, felt disappointed to discover nothing. No light, no sound, no anything.
Maybe he had it wrong about the tunnels providing Naomi’s hiding place. For a few moments, he listened at the top of the tunnel but couldn’t hear a sound.
She must have gone to ground in one of the other buildings after all. Still, it seemed worth checking the tunnels before heading to another structure.
Arthur descended the ladder into the basement, shining his flashlight back and forth. A layer of dust coated the floor, riddled with boot prints. It proved impossible to tell how fresh they were, however, considering the stillness of the area. They could be a week old, or a year.
He glanced back up at Niccolo, and then pointed at the prints, mouthing, climb slowly. Niccolo nodded and then came down the ladder in silence. Arthur could tell he was afraid, but he didn’t complain and continued to move ahead. It impressed the Hunter, but not enough to make him confident the priest had complete control. Hopefully, the priest wouldn’t panic when things turned ugly.
Arthur edged through the narrow underground tunnel, flashlight in one hand and tranquilizer gun in the other. The tunnel split off in multiple directions, following the pipes and connecting the buildings, and he followed the one with the most boot prints. That one led off to the west.
He became confident that they headed in the right direction. For once, he might manage to get the jump on Naomi rather than the other way around.
Barely had he finished the thought when a warning shout came from up ahead. It sounded like an order of some kind, but not directed at him.
“Uh oh.”
A second later, the access hatch they had opened up slammed behind them, the noise echoing around them.
Definitely a trap.
“Crap.”
THEN THE SHOOTING STARTED. It came from further down the tunnel, ahead of them, and these people didn’t have tranquilizer guns like Niccolo and himself. They fired off real lead bullets, which bounced off the tunnel walls around them.
At the same time, what sounded like a car engine revved from up ahead. It clicked and roared but didn’t turn over on the first try. For a split second, a blinding light flashed at them and then went away.
A generator, he realized, but the engine had flooded, and so it hadn’t started up all the way. Lucky because then the tunnel would have filled with light, and the ambushers wouldn’t have to fire blindly at the two of them. The gunshots echoed through the tunnel, growing louder and drowning out all other sounds.
He stepped back and shoved Niccolo out of the way, rounding the corner behind them and out of sight of the shooters. Niccolo tripped, and Arthur had to catch him to keep him moving, and in the process, lost his flashlight. He didn’t have time to go back for it.
Luckily, it took another few cranks to start the generator, but when it flared to life, the hallway behind them became awash with bright light. The assault rifles kept firing, but Niccolo and Arthur had left their sightline.
In retreat, he pushed a terrified Niccolo back down the hallway in the direction they had come. The exit hatch had closed, so instead, he headed down another tunnel and deeper into the network. Though not ideal, their enemies had rifles, and he had sorely under-prepared for something like this.
Niccolo made gasping noises and stumbled in fear, and Arthur had to struggle to keep him moving. In the tunnel behind them, the gunshots stopped. The men had set off in pursuit. Not much time remained to get out of the way.
They made yet another turn, heading deeper into the underground complex. It grew dark again, and the floodlights had fallen out of sight. Arthur wished for his flashlight. It lay on the floor back near the ambush, and what little light reached this far in the tunnels did almost no good.
He came into a larger open area, which had a few paths leading out of it, including a short door on the right-hand side. A heavy and solid door, which hopefully led to the surface. Upon testing it, he found it unlocked, and then pushed Niccolo inside. They had to duck to get through.
On this side, the door had a pair of hefty bolts on the top and bottom. He shoved the door closed and threw both just before the pursuit team caught up to them. Angry shouts sounded on the other side, as well banging fists, but the assault had little effect on the thick metal.
A second later, the sound stopped. The attackers had, apparently, realized that the metal wouldn’t yield, and no doubt, now searched for another way to get at them. Arthur glanced behind them. Two tunnels led deeper into the darkness. Which one should they take? Or ought they double back to where their attackers were?
Just now, he couldn’t feel sure of much of anything.
Niccolo still gasped for air in the darkness next to him.
“What do we do?” he asked.
Arthur frowned. “I’ll let you know as soon as I figure that out.”
Chapter 7
While Garfield Tesfay slept off an all-nighter, his phone buzzed. If asked, he would have said he’d had a long night at work. If you asked his friends instead, they would have said a long night drinking.
Not that he had many friends.
It took him a minute to realize that something other than his alarm buzzed, and that it remained dark outside. Only one person had this number, so he knew who was calling him.
Frieda.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he mumbled into his pillow, arm hanging over the side of the bed and all tingly. It had fallen asleep and felt awkward.
It took him several seconds to pull himself up from the comfortable hotel sheets, and then another minute to clear his mind enough to think straight about his situation. And during that time, Frieda’s first and second call went to voicemail, and each time, Frieda was quick to dial again.
Persistent, that one.
He lay in a seedy hotel room, one of a recent string that Frieda had provided for him while on this job. He had grown used to cheap accommodations, but things had become steadily worse in the last few weeks or so. Two of his credit cards had got shut off, and the Council finance department had become nearly impossible to get hold of.
Something big had gone down, and he continued to wait for his post-mortem on what had gone wrong in the last few weeks. Maybe one of their safe houses had gotten hit, or a ranking Councilor murdered, or the Church had pulled the plug on their finances. It was hard to say exactly, but a lack of information like this just meant par for the course. He hated it but could do nothing except wait to hear.
For days, he had tried to get hold of Frieda to get an update, but so far, she’d been too busy to take or return his calls. This call would have made him happy, except that it came in the middle of the night, and he had an extreme hangover.
He snatched the cell phone off the counter and flipped it open.
“Yeah?” he muttered, clearing his throat. It tasted like he’d eaten an entire bag of cotton balls.
“I need you to get moving. You don’t have a lot of time and have a lot of ground to cover.”
He hadn’t expected Frieda to say that at all.
“What?” he asked, still groggy. “Nothing has changed. My target has checked out for the day and won’t get back on the move until the sun has set.”
“This isn’t about your target,” Frieda said. “It’s something else.”
He sat up. “What else, Frieda? What could be more important than taking this guy down?”
“Arthur didn’t check in last night. I haven’t managed to get in touch with him, and I think his phone has died. He’s in trouble, and you’re my closest asset in the region.”
He didn’t think anything could piss him off faster than when Frieda called him an “asset.” He nearly said something less than friendly but bit it back, and then took a deep breath. She was his boss, and if he made her mad enough, she could smother him with any number of bad jobs for the next run of months. Already, he’d fallen on her bad side and didn’t want to make it any worse. “Yeah, and?”
“And,” Frieda said, clearly not pleased by his response, “you need to get out of bed, pay the hooker, and get your ass on the road.”
He ignored that middle part. Frieda just wanted to get a rise out of him. “I’m in the middle of a case. You put me on this case, and I’ve followed the target for six weeks.”
“This takes priority.”
“Why? Because it’s Arthur?” he asked coldly.
“Because one of our own has landed in trouble,” Frieda said without missing a beat. “Doesn’t matter who it is; it is one of ours.”
“Would you pull me off this case if it were anyone else?”
“Of course I would.”
He wanted to call her on that and could think of multiple times she’d left him high and dry when he found himself in trouble, but his headache and hangover only helped him make bad decisions. Instead, he said, “Yeah, okay.”
“We don’t have time to argue,” Frieda said. “Forget that it’s Arthur. He’s working on something critical t
o our organization’s survival.”
“So am I.” Garfield sat up on his bed. “This guy has killed ten of our order in the past two years. Or did you forget?”
“It’s only a few hours out of your way. You’ll be gone a day or so.”
“By then the trail will be cold,” Garfield said. “This Wendigo won’t stick around forever.”
“If that happens, then we’ll wait. He’ll resurface, and we’ll get him then.”
“How long, though? Months? Years? This is the closest anyone has gotten to him in a long time, and it offers our one good chance to end him forever.”
“We’ll have another.”
“This is a mistake.”
The other end of the phone went silent for a long beat. He’d overstepped. When Frieda spoke again, her tone sounded entirely different, much colder and with an undercurrent that sent a shiver up Garfield’s spine.
“I apologize if I made you think I sought your opinion,” Frieda said softly. “I’m not asking. Get your ass on the road.”
She didn’t say “or else,” but she also didn’t need to. The threat came clear, and she felt pissed at him. She would, likely, stay angry for a while. Frieda Gotlieb could sure hold a grudge.
Before he could respond, she hung up—probably for the best. For another minute, Garfield held the phone to his ear, furious and annoyed, before flipping it closed and sliding it into his pocket. He leaned over and punched the hotel pillow, and then punched it again because of how unsatisfying it proved.
His grimy clothes felt uncomfortable and clung to him in awkward places. He couldn’t smell himself, but if he could, it would be gag-worthy. When he’d returned to his hotel room, he hadn’t taken a shower, and honestly, he wasn’t even sure if he’d taken one this week.
Not that he much cared, though, either. His job description didn’t specify that he smell good. His job bade him eliminate targets. And, apparently, to babysit the infamous Arthur Vangeest.
Garfield stood and stretched out his back. It would turn into a long day. He grabbed a bottle of whiskey from the counter. It sloshed, almost empty.