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An hour later,Ares, Kratos, Castle and I are using a crowbar to break down the door to the sub-basement under Serj’s parking garage at nine-fifty-two Lincoln Place. Kratos hits the light switch on the wall, and a string of construction site bulbs illuminates an old staircase that leads down to what looks like an earthen floor basement.
“The fuck is this?” Ares mutters as we all carefully descend the stairs.
It’s mostly full of nothing but old boxes. But at the far wall, there’s a plastic curtain drawn across a black hole. I frown, yanking it back and peering into the darkness beyond.
Castle steps next to me. “What is it?”
I shake my head. Just then, Ares steps forward, turns on the flashlight on his phone, and shines it into the darkness.
Woah.
The first thing I see is the skeletons—oldones, too, from the looks of it, covered in dust and dirt. Past them, there are two honest-to-Godcannons, and a giant pile of huge-ass cannonballs.
“What the fuck?” Castle mutters. “This shit looks like it’s been here for a century.”
“Two and a half centuries, actually.”
We all turn to Kratos, who is staring at a big, yellow, official-looking notice tacked to the wall next to the plastic curtain, with “New York City Historical Preservation Society” emblazoned across the top of it.
My brother grimaces as he turns to us.
“This says all of this was discovered six months ago while they were trying to expand the sub-basement. It’s an old storage house from the Revolutionary War.”
“Mother.Fucker!” Ares groans, turning and kicking a piece of rock across the dirt floor. “It’s a fucking historical preservation site. Rezoned or not, itcan’tbe developed.”
Serj, you sneaky. Mother. Fucker.
Ares scowls as he takes a breath.
“Vanya’s right. We’ve all been fuckingplayed—”
“Thank you.”
The four of us whirl, yanking guns out at the sound of the voice behind us.
Gavan Tsarenko’svoice.
And he’s not alone. There’s four of us, but Gavan’s brought three times that, and every gun in every Russian hand is currently pointed straight at us.
Tsarenko smiles, cracking his neck as he too raises a gleaming gun in his tattooed hand.
“Thank you for saving me the trouble of digging you all a grave.”
35
ELSA
All I know is darkness.
All I feel is the ever-present fear, hovering over us both.
Lurking.
Shivering, I pull close to Nora, glancing down at her as she sleeps. In the near-total darkness of the place that has been our prison for the last five days, I can barely make her out against the blackness that envelops us like ink. But I can hear her breathing.
Hopefully dreaming of a place that isn’tthis.
