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Ella was almost disappointed.
She pulled a pair of cuffs from her pocket and slapped them on Chuck Pierce’s wrists. She gave the wound on his leg a quick once-over. A flesh wound. He’d bleed for a day and hurt for a week but then he’d be back to normal, if normal was living in a jail cell for the rest of your life.
The relief came in a heavy wave. One problem down, a few more to go.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
Day two of their search and Liam Snegg already felt he knew these sewers like the back of his hand. So far, they’d made two notable discoveries: a collection of masks and a bunch of firearms. It was good, but it wasn’t enough. Masks and guns weren’t going to net him that police commendation he wanted so badly. For that, he needed to bag this Campbell creature – preferably alive.
Liam and his two most trusted allies had returned to the portion of sewers they canvassed the previous day. The rest of his team had since moved on, but it was sometimes a good idea to circle back around to check you hadn’t missed anything. Plus, if this Campbell guy was as ballsy as they said he was, returning to a previously raided area was something that might get him off. He might think it was safe to return, or he might panic at the prospect of being discovered and therefore remove any remaining trace evidence.
That said, it was quite optimistic of them. He knew for a fact that he and his boys scoured every inch of this dump so it was unlikely they’d discover anything new. But still, he couldn’t deny that if he was a power-hungry psychopath, coming back mere hours after the FBI had been here would have certainly appealed to him.
Liam branched out on a solo venture. They had five miles of sewers to cover and three people to do it, so splitting up was the only way to cover all ground in a timely manner. Liam’s first point of call was the storage room where they found the masks, because something told him there was more to see there. If he could determine how Campbell and his group had gained access to the room, it could be a hot lead for the FBI and their teams. It was never a bad thing to get in the good books with the fed big cheeses.
The storage room loomed in his vision, unmissable given the massive steel door lying in the middle of the pathway. About twenty feet away, Liam stopped, sensing movement amongst the darkness. Footsteps in the water, weight on top of the shattered door. He couldn’t see much given the lack of overhead lights, but years in the military and cop game had honed his tracking senses like a predator in the wild. Sneggs had always considered himself a man of the outdoors, a Viking born in the wrong era. He once spent ninety days lost in Iraq. It was the experiences like that, the ones that forced you to confront the dynamic between man and nature, that sharpened your natural senses to superhuman levels.
Liam pulled out his gun and trained it on the darkness. Was this him? Was this the man that was going to cement Snegg’s legacy as a celebrated cop? The illustrious Liam Snegg, the man who brought down the world’s most dangerous criminal.
A figure manifested in the darkness. A shape, an outline with two white eyeballs. Liam repositioned his aim as his eyes adjusted to the gloom. He considered firing on sight, taking no chances, crippling him for easy capture.
But the shape began to take flight, vanishing into the deep tunnels ahead.
And Liam was on the person’s trail, leaping into action like a switch had been flipped. Liam almost felt sorry for the person up ahead because this idiot had challenged Sneggs the Legs to a battle of physical conditions, and in such events, there could only be one winner. The figure gave it the old college try, but through the splashing water, over the stone bridges and down the walkways, Liam gained on the person inch by inch. Despite his twenty-foot head start, Liam now had the perp within grabbing distance.
But the figure picked up speed. Their heavy footsteps echoed around the cavern. Liam knew that in twenty yards, a turn was coming up, meaning the perp would naturally slow down to navigate the sharp junction.
Liam hurried to the right, anticipating the turn. As expected, the fleeing suspect slowed, panicked, hesitating. Liam rushed at him without concern for his own well-being and shoulder-tackled him to the cold ground. Only now did he see the man was dressed head to toe in black with a hood covering his face.
The veteran cop yanked down the suspect’s hood, praying to God that he’d find himself staring at the same man whose mugshots he’d seared into his brain.
It wasn’t him.
Anger and frustration got the better of him. He lifted the man up and slammed him against the floor. “Who are you?” Liam shouted in his face. “What are you doing down here?”
The suspect, now a picture of sheer terror, waved his hands around in defeat. The man was sickly thin, yellow in color, eyes glued open like he hadn’t blinked in years.
“I live in here, man,” the suspect said.
“Don’t lie to me. Do you work for him?”
“Who? I don’t know what you’re talking about, man. I live on the streets.”
Liam loosened his grip but kept his wits about him. “What’s your name?”
The suspect pointed to his jacket pocket. He reached in slowly and pulled out an ID card from HOPS – the Helping Ordinary People Survive group. Homeless people could register with them for occasional shelter.
“Goddamn it,” Liam said.
The police commendation would have to wait a little longer, he thought, concealing his rage. “What the hell are you doing down here?”
“I’m sorry, man. He paid us to stay here. It’s not my fault.”
Liam wasn’t sure he heard the man right. He tightened his grip on the guy’s shabby jacket. “Paid you? Who paid you?”
“The guy. The man in the mask. We don’t know his name.”
“You’re gonna need to start explaining yourself, buddy. Talk me through it. Slowly.”
