Chapter 17 - INTO THE LABYRINTH
The air inside the abandoned transit tunnel was cold, tasting of damp soot and old rust.
They ran along the rotted wooden ties between the long-disused tracks, guided only by the narrow beam of Leah’s heavy-duty emergency flashlight. Marcus led the vanguard with his weapon raised, while Leah covered the rear, her eyes darting between the shadows of old maintenance alcoves.
"How did she find this safe house?" Adam panted, carrying Noah against his shoulder. Noah was clinging to him, whimpering softly in terror. "This facility was off the books!"
"The phone," Leah realized with a bolt of horror. "The encrypted message I received with Noah’s picture! It carried a zero-click tracking trojan. They’ve been pinging our location through my cellular antenna ever since I opened that photo!"
Leah tore her phone from her pocket, threw it onto the iron rail, and stomped on it with her heavy tactical boot, crushing the screen and battery into twisted shards.
Ahead of them, Marcus suddenly stopped, raising his left hand in a fist.
"Silence," Marcus whispered, dropping into a crouch.
Through the subterranean gloom, two hundred yards down the curved tunnel, echoed the methodical, rhythmic clacking of high-heeled boots striking concrete.
Along with the footsteps came a soft, amplified voice, echoing over the abandoned tunnel’s maintenance speakers:
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"You really are remarkably resilient, Leah," Evelyn Vance’s voice purred through the static, sounding entirely devoid of the gentle warmth she had displayed in the restaurant. "Most waitresses would have simply accepted their corporate hush money and walked away. But you... you just had to be the hero twice."
From the shadows behind the rusted pillar, four men in black tactical gear and night-vision goggles emerged, their assault rifles raised, laser sights painting thin red lines through the subterranean mist.
