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“Quaint.”
Ripley killed the engine then fiddled with her cellphone. “Before I forget, I need to send you something. Edis texted me the contact details for our man in the field. If we want to see how things are getting on in D.C., he told me to call a fellow named Liam. He’s heading up one of the teams on the manhunt. I don’t know him myself, but it would be a good idea to get acquainted with him.”
“Oh, great. Send it across and I’ll check in with him.” Ella got the ping then stepped out of the car. “Black coffee please. Maybe two of them to get us through this.”
“Back in,” Ripley checked her watch. “God knows how long. Give it about three hours then send a search party.”
She drove off, leaving Ella at the door. Before she walked inside, she called the number Ripley had texted over. By now, the manhunt for Tobias should be underway. She didn’t expect immediate results, but it was reassuring to have a connection to the goings-on.
The phone rang once, twice, three times.
No answer.
Voicemail.
He was probably busy. She imagined he’d be down in the sewers by now, probably sifting through all sorts of crap – quite literally. She’d try him again in an hour. The FBI’s Most Wanted would have to wait. For now, it was time to turn her attention to this small town psychopath, and perhaps in turn, some of the locals in this close-knit town.
The circumstances surrounding the discovery of Eliza Matthews’s body still concerned her. She’d been found on a patch of land belonging to the police chief, and this chief had done what he could to prevent a civilian running through the area. Ella knew towns like this could be protective of their own, and that made her whole operation a little more difficult.
She braced herself for entry into her new office for the foreseeable future, and reminded herself to be on guard at all times. She didn’t know much right now, but she knew some of these people weren’t to be trusted.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Sixteen-year veteran on the force Liam Snegg waded through the foot-high water, kicking away yesterday’s discarded sanitary items. Down here was a lot more sinister than he’d anticipated. The sewers were vast, endless tunnels of distressing sights and even more distressing scents. Shadows obscured his vision any further than fifty feet head, and the mile-high walls ensured all the escape routes up top were invisible to the naked eye.
“Pathway here,” one of the officers up ahead shouted. He’d brought his twenty best men down here, pulled them off whatever cases they were working on to trawl through city-wide tunnels of black sludge and brown water. This wasn’t his proudest moment on the force, but bringing down one of the FBI’s Most Wanted would be.
The team assembled in a line on the pathway. Liam took charge.
“Men, we’re going to split up and go in either direction,” he shouted. “We’ve got nearly five miles of ground to cover and I want this whole place torn inside out. Stay together. Don’t go off alone, and we’re going to meet back here in four hours.” Liam pointed to the faded stencil on the wall behind them. “Entrance point 314-B. This is our rendezvous. I’m going to stay in contact with you every hour, understood?”
“Yes, sir,” the men said in tandem.
“If you find any living souls down here, radio me immediately. The chief wants us to bring this son of a bitch in alive. Keep that in mind, but I know it ain’t always so easy. If things go awry, you’ve got my clearance to blow him away. This guy is officially an outlaw, but that doesn’t mean we should go in all guns blazing. Alive is better.”
“What happens after four hours, Sneggs? What if we still haven’t found him?”
“We’re moving onto the next section of the sewers, but we’re bringing in the K9 team from Arlington to help us out. This is gonna be our priority for the next 48 hours, and I don’t need to tell you all how good it will be for us if we catch this guy. You all know what we’re looking for, yes?”
Liam’s phone started ringing but he ignored it. He was surprised he even had cell service down here.
“Yeah we do,” one of the officers said.
“This guy is as dangerous as it gets and chances are he won’t be alone down here. He might be running some kind of operation down here or he might be using this as a base to hide out. We don’t know exactly, but expect to find multiple people as part of his operation. We won’t just find this asshole sitting alone playing Tetris. He’s going to be armed as well, and he obviously has no qualms about killing cops. Keep it in mind.”
“He might be dangerous but traffic don’t stop for him,” one of the officers said. “He bleeds just like everyone else.”
“If he’s down here, he’s not getting out,” said one cop.
“At least not alive,” another said.
Liam relished his team’s enthusiasm. It took a real shitheel to unite his boys like this, but the idea of catching the world’s number one criminal enlivened something in all of them.
“Are we ready to do this?”
The officers cheered.
“We’re gonna get messy and we’re gonna smell like dung for days, but if we pull this off, this could lead to big things for all of us. We’ll put the city at ease and get the biggest payday of our lives. The boys who brought down Bin Laden don’t trawl deserts no more. Keep that in mind.”
