Chapter 6

Ellis sent the decoy at 4:30 a.m. A black van rolled up to the casino’s service bay. My men surrounded it. Guns drawn. Vance yanked open the back doors. Empty. Just a phone on the floor, ringing.

I answered. “You think I’m stupid?”

“I think you’re predictable,” Ellis said. “You always send your men first. That’s why you never see the knife until it’s in your back.”

“I’m not sending anyone,” I said. “I’m coming for you myself.”

“Then you’ll die tired.”

He hung up. I threw the phone against the wall. The crew watched me. I could see the doubt in their eyes. Ellis had been their boss too. He had paid their salaries, covered their mistakes, bought their silence. They didn’t know if I could beat him.

Neither did I.

Then the pipe in the corner tapped. Three. Two. One.

Everyone froze. The sound came again. Three. Two. One. Then a child’s voice, barely audible through the metal. “Uncle Marcus. She’s cold. Please hurry.”

My throat closed. “I’m coming, Toby.”

I turned to the maintenance worker, an old man named Grady who had worked in the building since before the fire. He was pale. “That’s the old coal chute,” he said. “It runs down to a sub-basement that wasn’t on any map I ever saw. The city sealed it in the seventies.”

“Can you get us in?”

Grady nodded slowly. “There’s a hatch behind the boiler in B-2. But it’s welded shut.”

“Then unweld it.”

We went down. Grady led us to a wall of pipes behind the B-2 cell. He pointed to a steel plate near the floor. It was covered in rust and old paint. Vance brought a torch. Sparks flew. The metal groaned.

I knelt by the pipe. I tapped the lullaby again. Three. Two. One.

This time, the answer came from right behind the wall. Three. Two. One. Then a woman’s voice, cracked and raw. “Marcus. Don’t let Ellis see you coming.”

Danielle.

I pressed my forehead to the cold metal. “I’m here,” I said. “I’m not leaving you again.”

The torch cut through the last bolt. The hatch fell inward. A ladder descended into darkness. The air smelled of wet coal and something worse. I clicked on my flashlight and looked down.

At the bottom, a small hand reached up. Bruised. Thin. Toby.

I climbed down.