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“There’s a subway station up ahead,” she told him. “We have to get away from this neighborhood.”
The thought of going back into the subway tunnels made him nearly stumble. “If we go underground, we’ll be trapped.”
“Not if we keep moving,” she said. But he didn’t miss the soft “I hope” that she muttered under her breath. “We need a distraction.”
The nearest subway entrance was at the end of the next block. Harte didn’t have to look back to know the men were still following them, but when they came to the entrance, Esta cut straight through the crowd of people standing nearby, huddled around a barrel of something that was burning. When they were in the middle of the crowd, Harte stopped abruptly and shoved himself backward into one of the men warming his hands over the fire, knocking the guy into someone else. The effect was instantaneous, but he was ready for it. By the time the man caught himself, Harte was already pulling Esta through the crowd, leaving the men to turn on one another.
She gave him a bright, sharp smile and tugged him onward down the slush-covered steps.
Like the other stations, this one reeked of urine and trash, but in a stroke of brilliant luck, a train was already there, waiting. Together, they hopped the turnstiles and slid in just as the doors closed. Harte looked back through the graffiti-covered windows in time to see that the two black-eyed men had arrived at the station, but the train was already pulling away before the men could reach it.
The car was packed. The air was humid and warmer than the cold winter streets above, filled with the combined scents of too many bodies, cologne, stale smoke, and something mechanical. But the crowd wasn’t enough to keep them safe.
Harte braced himself against one of the metal poles as the train picked up speed and leaned in to whisper into Esta’s ear. “They saw us.” The Guard or police—whoever the men were—knew what train they were on and which direction they were traveling.
Their faces were close, and even with the thick, fetid air around them, the light floral scent of the soap she’d been using back in Chicago tickled his nose.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “We’re not staying here. Follow me.”
Harte held tightly to Esta’s hand as she dragged him through the press of bodies toward the rear of the car. When they arrived, she slid the door open, letting in a burst of air and noise. Harte turned to make sure no one was following. But if he’d worried at all that someone was watching and might try to stop them, he quickly realized no one cared. The other passengers kept their eyes forward or down, resolutely ignoring whatever was happening at the back of the train. This New York, for all its changes, wasn’t so different from his own time, it seemed.
Quickly they moved across the swinging platform and then through the next car. It was packed, but slightly less so, and they made better time passing through the crowd and out the back end of the car. The train rounded a bend, its wheels squealing, as they arrived at the final car on the line. The crowd was lighter there, and Esta led them through the car and out the rear doors until they were standing on the platform at the back. There was nowhere else to go.
“We need to get off before it enters the station,” she told him. “It’ll slow when it approaches the next stop, but you have to watch out for the third rail when you jump.”
She couldn’t be serious. “The what?” He could barely hear her over the noise of the tunnel.
“Third. Rail,” she shouted, pointing to the right side of the track. “There. It’s electrified. You touch it, and you die.”
He looked up at her but saw in less than a heartbeat that she was serious. This time, there was no hidden station, no platform to land on. She wanted him to jump from the train? Only a few hours before, he’d been planning on doing the same thing without any hope of surviving, and now she expected them to not only survive but to land without hitting an electrified part of the track? “Esta, no. This is insane. We can’t—”
“How’s your affinity? Because mine is dead right now,” she said, her expression bunching with frustration. “The men following us back there—whoever they were—are going to know there are only two directions heading out of the last station. They’ll have people waiting at both stops for us. This is our only chance, Harte.” She was already climbing over the back railing of the car. “We can do this.”
He wasn’t so sure, but there was no choice except to follow her. Once they were both hanging from the back of the car, he looked over to find her staring out into the darkness of the tunnel behind them. Her short hair was whipping around her face, and her jaw was set.
She’s afraid. For all her bluster and bravado, he knew by the way she was holding herself—stiff and apart from him—that she wasn’t sure this would work.
“There has to be another way,” he shouted, willing her to turn to him. To hear him.
She only shook her head. “It’s slowing,” she said. Finally, she looked at him, and her golden eyes were glinting with determination. “When I say go, you jump first.”
“No,” he said, moving his hand over so it covered hers. “We go together or not at all.”
Her mouth pressed into a tight line, but she nodded. “Together, then. Ready?”
“Not even a little—”
“Now!” she shouted, and together they released the car and tumbled down onto the track.
TRUTH AND LIES
1983—Beneath the City
The instant Esta released the subway car and began to fall, she realized that maybe she’d made a mistake. The tracks were farther down than she’d expected, and she had plenty of time to regret her choices before she hit the unyielding ground below. She landed hard enough to knock the breath from her lungs and make her teeth rattle. Ignoring the pain, she wrenched herself into a ball and rolled away from the deadly third rail.
As the train traveled off to the station, the sound of its squealing brakes receded along with it, but it took a few seconds until she could breathe again.
Nearby, Harte groaned, and she forced herself to sit up, despite the sharp ache coming from the side she’d landed on. “Are you okay?” she asked, pulling herself to her feet and looking back in the direction the train had come from.
