Chapter 14 Chapter 14
She dropped into the tunnel, water splashing around her ankles. He slid in behind her and pulled the hatch shut just as the door to the safe room crashed open. Gunfire chewed the air above them, sparks raining through the narrow gap.
They ran bent double through the crawlspace, their breaths echoing off the stone. The air smelled of oil and rust. Behind them, muffled voices argued, uncertain which direction they’d gone. Adrian touched her shoulder, motioning left at a fork.
“This way.”
“How do you—”
“I built the place,” he said. “Old smuggler routes. Viktor loved symmetry; every exit has a twin.”
The passage angled upward. Water dripped steadily from the ceiling, soaking them both. Nina’s lungs burned, but she kept pace. Every few seconds, Adrian glanced back, listening. When the tunnel widened, he slowed, pressed a hand to the wall, searching for something.
A hidden latch clicked. A section of brick slid inward, revealing a spiral stair lit by weak emergency bulbs.
He gestured upward. “Surface.”
The stairs opened into an abandoned tram depot. The main doors were chained, but a wide crack between them showed the street beyond—dark, rain-slick, empty. For the moment.
Adrian leaned against the wall, breathing hard. The blood on his thigh had seeped through the makeshift bandage, darker now.
“You’re bleeding again,” she said.
He waved it off. “They’ll be regrouping. We have maybe ten minutes.”
“Then we run.”
“Running makes noise.” He nodded toward the far end of the depot. “Over there—maintenance pit. Hide until they sweep past.”
Nina looked at him, rainwater tracing down his face through the grime. “What about you?”
“I’ll draw them off.”
“Absolutely not.”
“You said you wanted to help.” He gave a thin smile. “Here’s your chance. Do as I tell you.”
Something in his tone made refusal impossible. He handed her the flashlight. “If I’m not back in fifteen minutes, follow the tracks east. There’s a freight yard with a red signal tower. Hide there.”
She wanted to argue, to ask what “if I’m not back” really meant, but headlights flared outside the depot, sweeping across the walls.
Adrian turned to her, voice dropping to a whisper. “You said once you weren’t afraid of the dark. Prove it.”
Then he was gone, melting into the rain through a side door before she could answer.
The depot was filled with the sound of engines. Nina crouched beside the maintenance pit, trying not to breathe. Through the crack in the doors, she saw silhouettes moving—six, maybe seven men. Flashlights sliced the darkness.
“Check every carriage,” one ordered. “Marin’s wounded. He won’t get far.”
Their beams passed inches from her hiding place. The smell of diesel and wet metal pressed around her. She gripped the disk in her pocket until its edges bit into her palm.
A crash echoed from the opposite end of the building—metal striking metal. Shouts followed. Gunfire flared white through the rain.
Adrian.
The men near the doors pivoted and ran toward the noise. Nina crawled out, heartbeat a drum in her ears. She sprinted across the floor, slipping through the same side exit he’d used.
Outside, chaos. Smoke drifted from a burning car near the fence. Two men lay motionless beside it. Adrian moved through the haze like something pulled from myth—every motion exact, controlled, lethal. He saw her and shook his head once, but she was already running toward him.
A bullet cracked the pavement between them.
He caught her by the arm, spun her behind the wreckage. “Didn’t I say wait fifteen minutes?”
“You were taking too long.”
“Stubborn,” he muttered, and fired back toward the advancing figures. Glass exploded overhead.
“They’ll box us in,” she said.
“Not if we make them think we’re already gone.”
He yanked open the door of the burning car, grabbed a flare from the seat, and tossed it into the driver’s compartment. Flames roared higher. “Smoke covers everything. Stay low.”
Together they crawled along the fence line until they reached a storm drain. Adrian pried the grate loose with the butt of his weapon and gestured. She slid through first, landing in knee-deep water. He followed, pulling the grate back into place just as another explosion shook the depot above them.
Darkness swallowed them again.
Nina turned, light trembling in her hand. Adrian leaned against the tunnel wall, eyes closed, blood running down his leg.
“You’re hurt worse than you said.”
He opened one eye, managed a faint grin. “Remind me to stop getting shot around you.”
She almost laughed, then caught the sound in her throat. From far away came the echo of sirens, the city’s pulse closing in.
Adrian pushed himself upright. “Come on. Before they realise the smoke’s empty.”
They limped together into the black tunnel, the flare’s dying glow behind them painting the water red.