Catacomb (28 page)

Dan let the papers fall out of his hands, not caring that they landed in jumbled disarray. Dozens and dozens of photos had
been taken of his parents, all obviously from a distance, taken with a telephoto spying lens when they weren’t aware of it.

“Wish I could say I was sorry.”

His mother had stumbled onto the connection between Trax Corp. and Brookline, even if she’d been many years too late to stop the warden’s experiments. If only she’d known that Trax Corp. itself was a front, she might still be alive. Of course, he thought darkly, Dan had gone digging around in all the history, too, and even though he was paying the price for not learning from his mistakes, it was a comfort to know there was a part of his legacy he was
proud
of. The part that cared about uncovering the truth.

“Something funny?” Finnoway asked, leaning closer.

“You wouldn’t get it,” Dan murmured. He studied the Artificer. Finnoway looked so absolutely assured of his victory, it only made Dan want that much more to find some way to outsmart him.

Sighing, defeated, Dan turned back to the folder. He held up a photo of his parents huddling under an umbrella. The city behind them was a blur of gray and brown. It was impossible to tell the location, but their faces were in focus. Evelyn leaned into his father, her head tucked under his chin. Finnoway had started yapping again, chatting to the Bone Artist who had returned with food, but Dan wasn’t paying attention. He was distracted by a tiny, bright crest on his mother’s jacket, red and white, a minuscule beacon.

DUCATI.

His heart leapt to his throat. He hustled back to the other side of the vault, ignoring the sandwich and soda that had been
laid out for him on a small card table at the center of the room. Finnoway watched him with crossed arms, grinning a little as Dan breezed by, accurately guessing where Dan was headed.

“Would you like me to get it down? You can say good-bye to your father in person.”

Dan did his best to ignore the sting of that barb. “My father . . . Just my father. Why isn’t there a bucket for my mother?”

That cool, charming smile of Finnoway’s faltered. It was quick and he tried to catch himself, but Dan saw it. Finnoway uncrossed his arms and stuck his hands in his pockets. “Their car crashed into a river. Her body was washed away.”

“So you don’t have it,” Dan needled, returning to the card table. He took a seat on the stool provided and forced himself to take a bite of the sandwich. There might be a moment soon when he would need his strength. Chewing, swallowing, cracking open the soda, he crossed one leg over the other and played his one and only card.

“You don’t have a bucket for my mother,” he said firmly, “because she’s still alive.”

D
an waited for Finnoway’s incredulous laughter to subside before adding softly, “I want to trade up. Again.”

“With what? What could you possibly have that I would want?”

The Bone Artists milling about the vault gradually stopped what they were doing and turned their attention to Finnoway and Dan. One set down a tiny drill, dusting bone grit from his gloved hands before turning to listen.

Dan took another bite of the sandwich and washed it down with soda. “She’s still alive,” he repeated, “and I know where to find her.”

He’d realized what was off about the trial testimony. Maisie Moore had told him that his parents had died a mere week after Trax Corp. got shut down in the trial. It was the same year the
Whistle
folded, 1995. But Dan hadn’t been born until ’96.

And that motorcycle. The Ducati jacket. The person stalking them across the country hadn’t been taking pictures for Finnoway. It was Evie, and he knew it now. But there was no way to prove to Finnoway that he’d seen her. And if he could—if he played this card and traded his debt in for hers—it meant his mother, who had evaded the Bone Artists for so many years, might finally be caught.

He had to risk it. She’d abandoned him all those years ago. Really, he was repaying two debts in one. He hesitated to use the word
deserve
in this case, but maybe she really did deserve some kind of comeuppance for leaving him to whatever foster-family fate awaited him. Sure, he had gotten lucky with Sandy and Paul, but only after years of being made to feel like he wasn’t wanted. And if Paul and Sandy hadn’t taken him in, well—she might have doomed him to a much harder, lonelier life. Anyway, she seemed capable of taking care of herself. Finnoway might not actually best her, given her talent for evasion.

For leaving.

“She’s been following me and my friends for days. I’ve seen her at least four times now. Today, even.”

That wiped the smile off Finnoway’s face for good. He took three menacing steps toward Dan, lording over him with his height and his cold, chiseled face. “How is this a bargain?”

Swallowing proved a challenge, especially because Dan hated the next thing he had to say. He would take his chances, and now so would she. “If I show you where to find her, you’ll agree to stop hunting me. You’ll get me out of this bogus murder charge, and you’ll leave my friends alone, too.”

He could see the Artificer weighing his options, chewing the inside of his mouth as his bright green eyes searched Dan’s face for the truth.

“You’re bluffing,” Finnoway finally said.

“If she was dead, you would have her here,” Dan replied. “She’s been trying to reach out to me. I just didn’t realize it until now.”

The room went frigid. Nobody moved or spoke, and Dan’s hand burned with pain. He could hear the faint
drip-drip
of a distant faucet counting out the seconds as Finnoway made up his mind.

“Where is she?”

Dan finished the sandwich, taking an unsteady breath. He had bet correctly—his mother was a bigger prize than the warden’s blood. Sure, Dan was related to her, but he hadn’t ruined the family business or Jacob Finnoway’s life, and apparently the strength of the grudge overrode his valuable DNA.

“You’ll tell me right now!” Finnoway bellowed it in Dan’s face, the façade cracking for an instant before Finnoway collected himself, leaning back and tugging on his tie. “All right, Daniel, we’re bargaining. So bargain.”

Time. He had bought himself time. He wasn’t so sure about the cost, but he could worry more about that later. If he lived.

He didn’t know if he was trusting Oliver, his friends, or his theoretically still-living mother to save him. But he was desperate here, and his odds aboveground were better than they were down here. He
did
trust Abby’s plan. If nothing else, even if he didn’t survive, a new crop of journalists would rise to try to take the Bone Artists down.

“Take me back up. I want to see my friends and tell them I’m okay, then I’ll bring you to her. You don’t have to take the cuffs off. I won’t run.”

Finnoway snarled down into his face. “Maybe I underestimated you. You’d sell out your own mother?”

Dan nodded, slowly, fighting a tremor in his chin. “She left
me. All this time she was gone, I didn’t know if she was dead or just didn’t want me. But now it doesn’t matter. I choose my new parents and I choose my friends. I choose the family I made. I choose me.”

D
an had never been so relieved to see sunlight in his life.

There it was, just a few slivers of it peeking from beneath the final door to freedom, and it filled him with hope. Even if he survived, there was the minor, itsy-bitsy matter of him facing a murder charge with evidence stacked against him.

But for now, he was alive. And after everything, he trusted deep down that his friends wouldn’t abandon him to his fate.

The alley, smelly and damp, was a welcome reprieve after the stifling air of the Bone Artists’ Catacomb. Dan glanced down toward Rampart Street, seeing Finnoway’s Rolls-Royce there, already running and waiting for them. He glanced desperately in the other direction, but the motorcycle was no longer there. Onto the next phase in his last-ditch improvisation.

The two assistants were at the car, ready to intercept Dan from Finnoway, preventing any chance of him running.

“If you’re lying,” Finnoway whispered in his ear, clinging hard to his back, “I will keep you awake as I remove your bones one at a time, starting with the rest of your fingers.”

Dan flinched.

Finnoway chuckled and wrangled Dan toward the backseat of the car. “Maybe I’ll let Briony handle it.”

The car blocked off the entrance to the alley, and if Dan didn’t duck inside soon, the assistants would probably cram him in using force. He didn’t think those ladies would hesitate to use the weapons he saw outlined beneath their blazers. He scanned the sidewalk on the other side of the car, peering into the coffee shop he’d seen the other night, hoping someone, anyone, would see him and notice something odd was going on.

Come on, please. . . . Someone please be there.

But there was nobody. He went limp, scrambling to think of how he was going to get out of this.

“Dan!”

His heart stopped, his heels skidding out on the pavement. He whipped his head up to see Abby and Jordan sprinting toward the Rolls-Royce from across the street. A horn blasted, and both of them stumbled back, narrowly avoiding the front bumper of a truck that sped down the road. Dan felt Finnoway’s grip give on his cuffs and then felt a hard, round barrel poking into his lower back.

“Tell them to turn around and leave, or I’ll shoot. It’s silenced, and your body will be in the car and driven away before anyone’s the wiser,” Finnoway warned, one hand on Dan’s left shoulder, the other digging the gun into his back.

Dan opened his mouth to shout to his friends, but a pop and a crack rent the air, loud enough to echo above the noises of the city. A bullet buried its way into the bricks of the building immediately to their left. Dan tried to follow the sound, dragging his eyes up from Jordan and Abby to the roof above the café. A young man’s silhouette blazed against the wan afternoon clouds. Oliver and his rifle. So he was
intent on making good on his promise. His friends had all come for him.

Dan couldn’t see Sabrina, but he had a feeling she was somewhere else, maybe hidden, and hopefully armed with more than the baseball bat.

We’re all going to jail
, he thought wildly, excitedly, imagining the police cars that would arrive any second to respond to the gunshot. The funeral home was already on their radar from the supposed break-in. Dan tossed his head, trying to signal Oliver to stop before Finnoway ended him.

“Just turn around!” he shouted to his friends, going still when he heard Finnoway cock the gun pressed to his back. “Don’t come any closer! Tell Oliver to stop firing!”

A crowd began to gather in the coffee shop across the street. Dan could see the scared faces pressing up to the window, a few customers on their cell phones or holding on to one another.

Jordan and Abby hesitated in the middle of the street, then seemed to sense Dan’s urgency and carefully backed up to the sidewalk. There was just a road separating them, but they couldn’t have felt farther away. Dan froze, helpless. If the police didn’t get here
now
, he wasn’t sure how he could get them all out of this alive.