Chapter 5

I called Ellis back. “I’ll give you the ledgers. I’ll give you a car and a clear road to the bridge. But I want to see Danielle before I hand anything over.”

Ellis laughed. “You’re not in a position to negotiate.”

“I’m in a position to burn the ledgers,” I said. “Then you have nothing to sell and nowhere to run. Let me see her. Then we trade.”

A pause. “Fine. The exchange point is the old maintenance tunnel under the casino. Midnight. Come alone.”

He hung up. I didn’t plan to come alone. I planned to come early.

I took the B-3 key from my pocket. It was old brass, worn smooth. I had seen keys like it in the casino’s original blueprints. The building had been a hotel before it was a casino, and the sub-basement had a series of boiler rooms. B-1 was storage. B-2 was the cell. B-3 was supposed to be sealed.

I went down alone. The elevator stopped at B-2. I walked past the cell, past the drawings, past the mattress where Danielle had slept for a decade. At the end of the corridor, I found a door I had never noticed. It was painted the same gray as the wall. No handle. Just a keyhole.

I inserted the B-3 key. It turned with a click.

The door opened into a narrow room. Empty. No Danielle. No Toby. Just bare walls and a drain in the floor. On the wall, someone had scratched a line of pipe code. I knew it because Danielle and I had used it as kids. Three taps. Pause. Two taps. Pause. One long tap. It was the first bar of our lullaby.

I followed the pipe along the ceiling. It ran into a larger duct. I tapped back: three, two, one. I waited.

From deep in the wall came the answer. Three taps. Two taps. One long tap. Then a child’s voice, muffled but clear. “Mom! He’s here!”

My heart slammed against my ribs. Toby was alive. And he was with Danielle.

I tapped again. Where?

The reply came slow, careful. B-3. Deep. Water.

I looked at the drain. The water was moving. Not draining. Flowing. Somewhere below, there was another level. The blueprints had only shown three sub-basements. Ellis had built a fourth.

I pulled out my phone. Vance answered on the first ring. “I need every blueprint of this building, original and current. And I need a maintenance worker who knows the old pipe system. Ellis moved her deeper. B-3 is a decoy.”

I put my hand on the pipe. It was cold. But I could feel the taps vibrating through the metal, faint and rhythmic. The lullaby. Danielle was still teaching it to her son. She was still fighting.

I would find them.