Undertow (The UnderCity Chronicles) (6 page)

Lindsay was about to conclude that the man was taking her on a wild goose chase when he brought her to a platform where he pointed out a couple of rough-looking Hispanic teens standing with the commuters. “Them guys are tunnel folk. Y'all stay here while I talk to ‘em, okay?”

Without waiting for her answer he shuffled over to the boys, gesturing to her when he caught their attention. The arrival of a train created too much noise for her to catch what was said, she could see the teens watch her coolly as they listened. She felt like a T.V. they were looking to lift. The doors of the train opened, people came and went, and when the train moved off, her fifty-dollar guide waved her over.

“Okay, these here are Chase and Stray,” he said, by way of introduction. “They can take you where you want to go.”

Chase gave her a predatory smile and ran his tattooed hand over his shaved head. Lindsay stood straighter and looked him in the eye.

“Why you want to go down?” he asked as the older man faded away.

“I’m looking for my niece. Her name is Seline. Seline Sterling.”

Chase glanced at Stray picking at a sore on his chin. “Oh yeah, we know her.”

“You do?”

“Yeah. We can take you to her friends. They’ll know where she is. Fifty bucks for each of us should do it.”

Forget the T.V. She was an ATM every low-life knew the PIN for. Just punch in ‘Seline’. Though Lindsay was almost positive the boy was lying to her, there was only one way to find out for sure. “Okay,” she answered, sliding her hands into the pockets of her jacket, one of them curling around the pepper spray. With the other she pulled out a small money clip, flashing it like a badge. “You get the hundred when we reach them. Let’s go.”

Chase and Stray looked at each other, shrugged, then led her to the far end of the platform where there was a small metal gate, the sign on it warning of danger and an alarm. Not a peep sounded as they pushed past it. She followed them down a short flight of concrete stairs where they emerged into a tunnel. Both Chase and Stray pulled flashlights out of their pockets, and Lindsay did the same.

“Watch that third rail.” Chase laughed, looking back at her in the dark. “Six hundred volts. Fry you like bacon.”

Lindsay shone her light on the subway rails, including the electrified third one, and edged closer to the wall.

They walked on, flattening themselves against the concrete whenever train cars whipped past. In the narrow space the violent gusts ripped at her, threatening to drag her under the wheels. The kids saw her fear after the first train and laughed as if it was the funniest thing they’d ever seen.

“Don’t worry, baby. We’ll protect you,” Stray wheezed, his taunt ricocheting through the tunnel.

Twenty minutes later, they were deep underground, the light from the station having long since faded to nothing. The only illumination came from the flashlights, and what they revealed was nightmarish. Lying along the tracks were scattered needles and crack vials, garbage and human feces. The walls were sprayed with graffiti of the crudest kind, and above them ran a tangle of hissing steam pipes and decayed catwalks too dense for their lights to penetrate.

The smell was nauseating, a mixture of oil and piss, rot and mold. The only living occupants she spied were diseased-looking rats, scurrying to avoid the flashlight beams.

This was worse than with Jack eighteen years ago. Had time so crumbled the tunnels or was it because being with him had made it better?

“Where is everyone?” she squeaked out.

“They’re all over the place,” Chase said in a hammed-up spooky voice. “You just don’t have the eyes to see ‘em. Don’t worry though. Almost there.”

The three came to a fissure in the tunnel, a sort of subterranean alley flanked by rusting pipes and two oversized electrical boxes.

“Down here,” Chase directed her, and following the two, she stepped into a chamber so small that their combined beams fully lit it.

Six-inch blades appeared in the boys’ hands, and they circled to cut off her escape.

“What the—?”

“Stupid blonde bitch,” Chase grinned. “Now give us your fucking money.”

Dammit, she should’ve known. She pulled out her can of pepper spray and took aim, then realized that with them blocking the only exit, she couldn’t push past even if they were blinded.

They knew it, too. “Ooooh,” Chase said in mock fear.

“Back off you bastards or you’ll be sucking down this whole can.” She held it up a little higher.

He snickered. “Baby, you’re the only one who’s going to have something to suck.”

“The hell she is!” The voice boomed from behind the two boys, and out of the darkness of the passage came Reggie. The kids spun around, jaws dropping at the sight of the giant.

“This got nothing to do with you, Reggie,” Chase said, his blade wavering between Lindsay and her rescuer.

Reggie grinned. “That a fact, Chase? Says who? You?”

“Look, we don’t have no problem with you,” Stray interjected, his reedy voice quavering.

Reggie swiveled his head toward him. “You do now, bitch! That’s Cole’s woman you got there. Better be glad I found you. Least now you die quick.”

At the mention of Jack’s name, Chase and Stray looked as if Reggie had pulled out a flame-thrower.

“We didn’t know that,” Stray whined. “We’ll leave, okay? We don’t want no trouble.”

Reggie’s golden smile disappeared. “Too late for that, Stray. Way too late.”

With a kamikaze yell, Chase dropped his flashlight and leapt at the man, the wild play of the beam momentarily blinding Lindsay. There was a meaty thud, followed by a sickening crack and a howl of agony. Lindsay recoiled as she saw Reggie holding Chase’s arm at a highly unnatural angle.

Reggie hurled the boy against the brick wall, the impact cutting off the wailing. Plastered against the other side of the room Stray held up his hands in surrender, the knife clattering to the floor.

“Please, Reggie. Please….”

Turning from the limp Chase, Reggie seized Stray by his shirt collar and dragged him down the narrow passage back to the tunnel.

“Man… Reggie…please… no…” Stray begged.

Picking up the dropped light, Lindsay followed them out to the tunnel. She gasped at the sight of Reggie hauling the boy toward the third rail.

“Time to die, bitch,” Reggie growled, heaving the boy up by his shirt until he kicked the air.

“No man… oh God, no….”

Reggie brought his face up against Stray’s. “Scared to die, huh?”

The kid’s head vibrated in frantic agreement.

“Then you better be spreading the word ‘bout Cole’s woman. I find you, or any other man, messing with her then I’m going to have myself a third rail barbecue. You get me?”

“I get you, man, I get you.”

Reggie tossed Stray aside, letting the youth sprint off into the darkness.

“Thank you,” Lindsay said, as she slid the can of pepper spray back into her pocket.

Reggie turned on her. “Those were
kids
, woman! You still think you got what it takes to find your way down here?”

Lindsay shook her head. “But I still have to try.”

The shoulders on the big man drooped, and he let out a long sigh. “You’re one dumbass blonde. Even a blind man could see you’re going to need help.”

* * *

“You told them
what
?” Jack demanded of Reggie.

They were in the kitchen of the basement apartment, Jack leaning against the counter beside a full cup of coffee, Reggie on the wooden chair holding a half-drunk one.

“I had to tell ‘em something. Nobody’s going to mess with her if they think she’s yours. She even looks like your type, y’know? Kind of classy and…clean.”

Jack rubbed his eyes. It had been a little past midnight when Reggie had shown up. Not that it mattered. As usual he hadn’t been able to sleep, though this time it was from thinking of something new. Lindsay.

Although it hadn’t been the first time he’d thought of her in eighteen years, it had been the first time he’d let himself think of her—really think of her—since the disaster of his return nearly a year ago. Even when Seline had turned up all those months back, he’d kept memories of Lindsay at bay. Her showing up at his piss-poor place, looking so damn good and so damn needy—it had shook his already precarious purchase on sanity.

The New York girl who’d been his best friend had grown into the woman he always knew she’d become: smart, tough, beautiful. And successful. She wore those designer clothes as if they’d been made for her alone. She made success seem as if it were her right, that failure wouldn’t dare cross her path. Even that heart-wrenching accident had made her stronger.

And then Reggie had pounded his way in hours ago and told him about what had nearly happened to her, and he got the shakes so bad he’d had to set down the coffee cup. To have all that bright, bold beauty, all that made Lindsay so…exclusive, to have all that wiped out by those punks, sent jolts of fear through him every bit as bad as when he’d been trapped beneath the city. He wished to hell she’d never shown up. He couldn’t give her what she needed. There were things that could crush a person, things worse than death that could snap even the strongest spirit. Once he would have marched into hell itself to help her, but a big part of him had died on just such a journey. He’d been broken, and he was beyond fixing.

“I know where you’re heading with this, Reggie, and I’m telling you right now, I’m not going down there.”

Reggie sucked in his lips until there was a thin dark line. “And I’m telling you, that woman’s not quitting. Even after tonight, she’s still going back down there. Not many people would do something like that. I only ever met one other.”

“And look where it got me,” Jack said, reaching for his coffee. This time he got it all the way to his mouth and down again steady enough.

Reggie looked down at the floor. “I know a lot of people who lost everything. Lost ‘em to meth, crack, booze…you’re the only one who lost ‘em for another living soul.”

Jack shook his head. “Shit. Don’t go there.”

“She gave me her number, and promised she wouldn’t go down till I called.” Reggie paused. “She also said she’d be trying again tomorrow night if she don’t hear from us. Don’t think she won’t.”

“She always was pigheaded,” Jack muttered.

“Yeah? High school, she said. She an old girlfriend or something?”

“No. We were…good friends. Then I moved and we lost touch.” Patching it together, he realized she’d stopped answering his letters around the same time as the accident. Now he could understand her need to move on. Back then, he was filled with hurt. He’d looked forward to her visiting him, and he’d entertained fantasies of them taking their friendship to a whole new level. “I had heard she’d gotten married.”

“Uh-huh. Well, I don't think she is anymore,” Reggie observed. “No wedding ring. No talk of a husband. You'd think if she had a man she'd have said something.”

Jack had noticed that, too. He didn’t want to think about why his eye had traveled to her bare finger twice, to confirm. He wondered what the lousy cretin had done to screw up a life with Lindsay.

Reggie rubbed his stomach as if thinking of something warm and good. “All I’m saying is she’d be someone I’d be getting back in touch with, if you know what I mean.” His hand stopped under Jack’s glare. “You know I’m in deep with Cassie. It’s you I’m thinking of, man.”

“If you were thinking of me, you wouldn’t be here,” Jack retorted, then breathed out. “Look, I’m sorry. Can we just stick to the topic?”

Reggie regarded Jack, then tactfully did what he was asked. “Thing is, you and I know Seline could be still breathing. Maybe taken to Seneca, or—”

“No, we don’t,” Jack snapped. “For all I know, Seline got hit by a train or murdered by some methhead or tripped on the third rail. Maybe she’s lost, or she’s hanging out at one of the camps. Anyway, it’s not my goddamn problem. What am I, the patron saint of stupid people?”

“You’re Jack Cole,” Reggie replied, holding Jack with his gaze. “Everyone beneath the streets knows who you are. Maybe even better than you do.”

Jack slumped against the counter. “I know, Reggie.” His voice dropped to a near whisper. “I’m afraid that if I go back down I won’t have the strength to make it back up again.”

His friend’s faith wasn’t shaken. “You did it before.”

Jack looked at him wearily. “That was…different.”

“This time it would be for a woman, too,” Reggie said quietly.

Jack shook his head. “Not incentive enough.”

Reggie continued quietly. “Then try this. Try this woman gang-raped and hung over the third rail. You try holding onto your coffee cup, then.”

Jack winced.

“Listen,” Reggie added, “you don’t want the guilt. Trust me on that one, man.”

Jack frowned. “I’ve never blamed you.”

Reggie lowered his head and gazed into his cup. “Don’t need to be blamed to feel guilt.”

They fell silent, each lost in their own harsh memories of the underground. For Jack, it went deeper. For him, there was one more memory of a moment that happened neither in the darkness of the underground nor the light of the surface. It was an elevator ride with Lindsay and his dad, down into the underground. He knew Lindsay was scared stiff. At the first jolt of the elevator downward, she’d reached for his hand, pulling back at the last moment. He’d waited, hoping, and then at a scraping of steel against rock, she grabbed his hand like it was a lifeline. Her grip was hard and painful, and he was pretty sure there’d be permanent damage. He never felt so happy. He let her hold on as she made small talk with his dad, and when the elevator stopped, and he finally mentioned her hold on him, he felt the sting of loss as she released his hand, and a weird satisfaction that in times of fear, her instinct was to seek him.

Today, she’d done the same thing, reached out to him. And he’d set her aside. Now, through Reggie, she was doing it again. This was his second, and final, chance. He flexed his left hand, the one she’d held. There’d been no damage, of course. But eighteen years on, her grip on him was as strong and painful as ever.

Jack poured his coffee down the drain and went for his parka. “Give me her number. I’ll make the call.”