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‘What can I say? You got stuck with the ugly one.’

The girl blinked in surprise. ‘A–are you really a policeman?’

Preston grinned. ‘I’m not only a policeman,’ he said proudly, ‘I’m also a Texan.’ He lowered his
voice to a whisper. ‘Which means I will shoot any bad guy who even thinks of coming to hurt you.’

MaryAnn smiled and her body began to relax.

‘Let’s get these hands free, OK?’ Preston pulled a small penknife out of his pocket and cut the plastic bonds around the girl’s wrists. As soon as her hands were free, the girl wrapped her arms around the detective’s neck and held on for dear life.

Preston rose to his full height, the girl wrapped tight in his arms. ‘Everything will be OK,’ he said soothingly. ‘Your dad will be back soon.’

At that moment, a porter in a smart blue uniform rushed up. ‘Can I be of assistance?’

Preston nodded at the ransom abandoned on the platform. ‘Get a cart to carry those bags, and then show us where we can get a warm dressing gown for the young lady and a couple mugs of hot chocolate.’

The girl lifted her head. ‘And a hamburger?’

‘Definitely,’ agreed Preston. ‘A Texas burger with all the trimmings. Fries, onion rings, a milkshake, the works.’

MaryAnn hugged the detective even tighter until he croaked that he couldn’t breathe.

120

‘Give me your gun.’ Davey stood outside a locked cell door just a short distance from where Zack had rescued Jasmine. The three of them had already looked in the remaining cells and found them empty.

Zack handed over the gun without hesitation.

Davey aimed the small gun at a spot on the wooden doorjamb where it appeared the dead bolt would lie, and pulled the trigger. The ancient wood exploded inward, leaving a hole the size of a man’s fist and exposing the iron bolt.

Davey reached in, yanked back the bolt, and threw open the door.

The sickening aroma of burned flesh stopped all three of them in the doorway, and the nightmarish sight in the corner made Davey recoil and Jasmine gasp.

Zack’s reaction was different. His gaze was drawn to one of the cell walls covered entirely in repeating images of a teenage girl whose life had
been dramatically altered twenty-five years earlier.

One photo, in particular, showed three cheerleaders. Two bookend blondes and—

Zack entered the cell and looked down at the smouldering corpse. The sight filled him with an incredible, soul-deadening sadness.

‘God, I’m so sorry.’ He fell to his knees beside the bunk. ‘You didn’t deserve this.’

Jasmine grasped her husband’s shoulder as if to lend him what little strength she had left. ‘Did you know her?’

Zack nodded, his eyes filled with pain. ‘Her name was Susan Millar. She was an old friend.’

Lucas disappeared through a metal door marked
Maintenance
, which was set into a small alcove just before the station ended. Sam quickly followed, grabbed the door before it closed, and found himself at the entrance to a steep set of metal stairs.

He descended rapidly, taking the stairs two and three at a time. At the bottom, he found himself in a tiny concrete storage room, empty except for dusty bottles of forgotten cleaning supplies and a scattering of rat traps.

Sam spun around, scanned for other exits and found none. He ran back to the stairs, heard someone banging on the door above him, and cursed.

Lucas had vanished.

‘We have to move,’ Davey said urgently. ‘Sam will need us.’

Zack wiped tears from his eyes and rose from the ground with the aid of his wife. Jasmine looked into his eyes with such love and kindness that Zack hated to break the spell.

But he couldn’t take another step before she knew the truth.

Panicking from the sounds above, Sam ducked underneath the stairs, his feet colliding with chunks of broken mortar. He spun to face the wall, found where the mortar had fallen from between the bricks and inserted his fingers. When he pulled, a hidden door swung open to reveal a dark crawlspace.

Sam ducked his head and plunged into the darkness.

‘Kalli is dead.’ Zack’s voice cracked.

Jasmine’s face aged before him as she tried to shake away his words.

‘How can . . . ? How can you . . . ?’

‘I was there. Lucas made me watch while the house she was in exploded. I thought you were inside, too, but . . .’ Zack’s voice drifted.

Jasmine wiped at her eyes and straightened her shoulders, her face set in stone. Zack could tell that although the news stabbed deep, it wasn’t something she hadn’t already suspected on her own.

‘Are you positive?’ she asked.

‘The police confirmed it.’

Jasmine’s lips tightened and her eyes folded into angry slits. She turned to Davey. ‘Get us out of here. We’re not finished yet.’

121

Sam had only crawled a few feet when the passageway opened into a natural cavern and he was able to stand.

He moved forward blindly when suddenly the cavern blossomed in light from strings of bare bulbs hung haphazardly along the walls. The unexpected illumination caused an angry screech to ignite from the ceiling. As Sam shielded his eyes and looked up, hundreds of bats flapped leathery wings before vanishing into dozens of blunt-mouthed air holes.

When Sam lowered his hand again, Lucas was waiting, a gun aimed directly at his chest.

‘Tired of your daughter already?’

‘Where’s Hannah?’

Lucas laughed without mirth. ‘Didn’t Zack tell you?’

‘Tell me what?’ Sam felt the cold worm stir in his belly again.

Lucas’s lips curled upwards. ‘And you thought
he was a trusted friend. Just goes to show, Sam, you’re learning the same lesson I did twenty-five years ago. You can’t trust anyone.’

‘I know what you made him do, but he never betrayed me. You didn’t—’

Lucas pulled the trigger.

Sam spun from the impact, his right shoulder on fire as the bullet cut through muscle before exiting flesh. He fell to the ground and fought the pain to draw his own weapon.

He fired without aiming. The bullet smashed uselessly into the cavern wall.

Lucas laughed and fired a second shot. The bullet tore through Sam’s right wrist, breaking bone and making his trigger hand useless.

‘You son of a bitch!’

Lucas walked closer and pointed the gun at Sam’s face. ‘Never knew my mother, Sam. But I am definitely the son of a bastard.’

‘A dead bastard, though. Right, Luke?’ said an unexpected voice.

Davey appeared from the shadows of another tunnel. He was breathing heavily as though he had been running hard.

‘I wondered when you’d show up,’ said Lucas. ‘I was saving him for you.’

Sam’s eyes narrowed, the pieces he hadn’t wanted to join finally clicking into place. ‘You were both in jail.’

Davey’s face lost its mischievous innocence to be replaced by something much, much harder.

‘We survived together,’ Lucas explained. ‘I wanted to die when they locked me away. Do you know what they do to people who look like me, Sam? The freaks? I didn’t think I had the will to survive until Davey showed me how to use my strengths to make the other prisoners fear us. And fear they did.’

‘Once you got a taste for it you just never knew when to stop though, did you, Luke?’ Davey added.

‘Why would I want to stop?’ Lucas grinned as he turned the gun back on Sam.

The bullet slammed into Lucas like a sledgehammer, dropping him to the ground as a wide spray of blood erupted from his side. He gasped for air, his mouth opening and closing like a dying fish.

The tiny bullet had caused mortal damage and as his chest heaved, his lungs began expelling pints of bright arterial blood at a rapid pace.

‘You shouldn’t have tried to burn me, Luke. I took that personally.’

‘It was a test.’ Crimson foam bubbled from his mouth. ‘I knew he wouldn’t do it.’

The gun fired again and Lucas howled as his left ear vanished in a puff of blood.

‘J–Jesus, Davey, we’re partners.’

‘Partners?’ Davey laughed. ‘You’re living the high life while I make do with fucking hand-outs. I watched your back inside for years and how did you reward me? As soon as you were out you forgot I even existed.’

‘I–I never forgot,’ Lucas croaked.

‘Nah, you just never gave a shit. Well, now you know, neither do I.’

Lucas reached out his hands in a plea for help.

Davey shook his head. ‘It’s not the bullets that kill you, Luke,’ he said calmly, ‘it’s the shock.’

Lucas’s eyes grew wider as his breath became more laboured. From there, it only took seconds before a final hiss rattled from his throat and the flow of blood began to ebb.

Davey turned to Sam. A playful smile danced across his lips, but failed to find purchase.

‘It was fun being together again. I really missed you, man.’

‘Then why, Davey?’ Sam groaned as he pushed himself into a sitting position and cradled his broken wrist. ‘Why this?’

Davey’s eyes turned dark. ‘I was angry at you, Sam. I was just the clown, the sidekick, someone to be overlooked. I was the one nobody took seriously – but when we were inside, Lucas listened. He saw what I had to offer and helped make me realize all that I was capable of. Without me, he was weak. But together we were unstoppable.’

‘I always knew—’

‘Knew what, Sam?’ Davey snapped. ‘Knew that I was destined for nothing? What did you see when you met me under the bridge? A bum who had wasted his life? Someone you felt sorry for? You never once thought of me back then, did you?
Even when I called from prison, you could never be reached. I was told you would return my calls, but you never did. You were more interested in living
your
dream. But what about mine, Sam?’ Davey wiped at his eyes. ‘I only wanted you to need me again, like old times, but Luke fucked that up, too. It wasn’t supposed to be this way.’

Sam’s voice caught in his throat, but another voice spoke the words.

‘How was it supposed to be?’ Zack walked out of the tunnel, holding hands with a woman of indescribable beauty, despite the cuts and bruises that marked her chocolate-brown skin.

Sam’s heart ached when nobody else appeared and the stark realization sunk in.

‘I’m sorry, Sam,’ Zack said. ‘Hannah wasn’t there. I prayed we would find her.’

‘What about MaryAnn?’ asked Jasmine.

‘She’s safe,’ Sam answered. ‘Up above.’

‘Why don’t you join her?’ Davey said. ‘You’ve all been in the dark far too long.’

‘Just like that?’ said Sam. ‘You’re going to let us walk away?’

Davey shrugged. ‘Luke was the one into blood sports. I only wanted some money of my own and a chance to relive old times. I never expected a new life. Besides, I lived better inside jail than I ever did out here.’

‘You bastard!’

Davey raised his arms too slowly as Jasmine
launched herself at him, the gun flying free from his grasp.

‘Get her off!’ Davey cried in panic as Jasmine went for his face.

‘Jasmine!’ Zack snatched up the loose gun. ‘I can end it.’

Jasmine released her grip on Davey as Zack moved forward, aiming the gun.

A gunshot, louder than all the others, made everyone freeze.

‘Police, goddamnit!’ Detective Hogan entered the cavern from the same short tunnel Sam and Lucas had used. ‘Nobody move. You need him alive.’

‘Why?’ Sam’s voice was cold as he stared across at the boyhood friend he had never really known.

‘Think about it,’ Hogan snapped. ‘He has the evidence to clear you. He can show you were coerced to save your daughter.’

Davey and Sam locked eyes, blood dripping from a serious gash along Davey’s cheek. In the briefest of instants they shared a hundred memories and a thousand laughs from their youth. But when Davey tried to move, Zack cocked the hammer.

‘Don’t do it!’ Hogan warned. ‘If you kill him, it’s murder. That’s a lot of years behind bars. Your wife doesn’t deserve to be without you again. You need to bury your daughter. You need to heal.’

Zack reached his free hand behind his back to be met by Jasmine’s. They squeezed tenderly.

‘Lower the gun, Zack,’ Sam said softly, his own need for violence now quenched. ‘It’s over.’

Sam turned to look behind him and say, ‘He’s all yours, Detective,’ when his words were lost in the sharp report of a tiny, stainless-steel handgun.

Zack dropped the smoking gun on the ground. ‘I’m already going to jail for Ironman,’ he said with a shrug. ‘Nothing I can do about that.’

He locked eyes with Sam and smiled weakly. ‘For Hannah and Kalli, that prick really deserved to die.’

122

Sam found his daughter wearing an oversized cowboy hat and devouring a hamburger within the Victorian-era walls of Wilf’s Restaurant connected to the station.

When she saw her father, MaryAnn dropped her hamburger and rushed into his awaiting embrace. Sam dropped to his knees, his broken wrist held tight by his side as his daughter kissed his filthy, unshaven face over and over. Sam closed his eyes and breathed her in, never wanting to let her go.

‘Jasmine!’ MaryAnn squealed in delight as the rescued woman appeared over her father’s shoulder.

Jasmine rushed forward and fell to her knees, too. She patted the girl’s face through a veil of tears as MaryAnn wrapped one of her arms around her neck and squeezed tight.