Page 80 of You Can Run

“I need your help,” she said. “I've never been inside the building. I don't know the layout, the exits, anything. I needwhatever you and Julian can find—property records, building permits, anything that's public.”

“I'll see what we can find,” he said after a moment. “Julian has access to property databases through the clinic's legal aid contacts. It's not much.”

“It's more than I have. I'm going in blind, Santiago. Anything you can tell me about that building is the difference between a plan and a suicide mission.”

“I'll call you back in two hours.”

He hung up, and she got back on the bus.

Somewhere in Virginia, in the grey early morning, Santiago called back. Julian had pulled the property records. The Dollhouse sat on a commercial lot owned by a shell company registered in Delaware, which traced back through two more entities before dead-ending at a name that matched nothing in any public database. But the building permits told a different story.

“There's a basement level,” Santiago said. “It was permitted in 2011 as a storage renovation. But the square footage doesn't match the original plans.”

“How much doesn't match?”

“About three thousand square feet too big. Whatever's down there, it's not what the permits say it is.”

Jessica closed her eyes. Three thousand square feet of unaccounted space underneath a strip club. The infrastructure of something designed to operate invisibly, indefinitely, right beneath the feet of customers who had no idea what was below them.

“There's more,” Santiago said. “Julian found the utility records. The building draws three times the electrical load you'd expect for a club that size. And there's a separate water line feeding the lower level—permitted as a fire suppression system, but the capacity is way beyond code requirements.”

“I need you to sketch me a layout,” she said. “Best guess from the permits. Square footage, stairwell access points, anything that looks like it could be an entrance to the lower level. Can Julian do that?”

“He's already working on it. I'll send you a photo when it's done.”

“Santiago.” She paused. “Thank you.”

“Bring him back.” His voice was rough. “That's all the thanks I need.”

She hung up and looked at the time. Four hours to Philadelphia. Four hours, and then she'd be standing on a sidewalk, looking at the building that had lived in her nightmares for two years, and now, the one she was now choosing to walk into.

The Philadelphia skyline appeared sometime after seven—rising out of a flat industrial sprawl, grey and dense against an overcast sky. Soon, she picked up her bag, got off the bus into the cool morning and started walking south.

THIRTY-TWO

Daniel saton the edge of the bed in his room in the Beaumont motel and looked at the carpet and waited.

He'd showered and changed into the clothes Sofia had produced from the Camry's trunk— jeans, a grey shirt, both the right size, which he'd decided not to think about too hard.

There was a soft knock at the door, followed by Sofia’s voice. “It’s me.”

He opened the door for her. She was carrying the hard-sided case and two paper bags from the diner across the road. She set both on the small table by the window and sat down in one of the two chairs.

He took the other chair. She'd bought him a burger and a coffee and he ate without tasting it and watched her eat with the same efficient attention she brought to everything, and neither of them said anything until the bags were empty.

She pushed hers aside and put the case on the table between them.

“Before we talk about Philadelphia,” she said, “I need you to understand what you're walking into and why. There are things about this operation?—”

Dante cut her off. “How long have you been inside his operation?”

“Four years in an official capacity.” She folded her hands on the table. “Before that, in a different one.”

“What kind of different one.”

She looked at the window, like she was deciding something. She seemed to make up her mind about something because she turned back to him and said, “I was seventeen when I came to the United States. From Odessa. My mother had died the year before and I had a brother who was using, and a man in our neighborhood who knew people who could arrange work visas and travel documents for young women who needed a way out.” She said it evenly, her face showing no emotion. “The work was not what the man in the neighborhood described.”

Dante understood what she was telling him.