CHAPTER 15
MARGARITA
Damon’s grip on my wrist is a tourniquet, his leather glove slick and wet with the blood of the man he just carved open.
We are moving too fast. The air down here in the main conduit is fifty degrees colder than the burning fortress above, heavy with the stench of wet concrete, fried ozone, and centuries of rat shit.
A distant train rumbles somewhere overhead, sending a vibration straight down through my combat boots that rattles my teeth and makes the thick dust dance in the absolute dark.
"Don't stop."
His voice is gravel grinding on iron. He hauls me deeper into the labyrinth, moving with the stiff, unnatural gait of a man whose body is currently trying to decide whether to go into hypovolemic shock.
My medical brain is cataloging every broken rhythm in his movement.
His breathing is a mess. It’s too shallow, too fast. The adrenaline from the firefight and the knife fight is the only thing keeping him upright, masking a massive physiological crash from the bullet I dug out of his liver mere days ago, compounded by whatever new trauma he just picked up.
My boot catches hard on a rusted rebar spike protruding from the uneven floor. I pitch forward, bracing to eat concrete.
Damon doesn't even break his stride. His massive hand snaps from my wrist to the collar of the oversized jacket he put on me, catching my entire body weight and hauling me violently upright like I weigh absolutely nothing.
The nylon of the jacket digs sharply into my throat before he drops his hand back to mine, dragging me forward again.
"Your breathing is erratic, Damon."
"Shut up and move."
I taste the grit in the back of my throat with every breath.
The rhythmic drip-drip-drip of water from a cracked overhead pipe echoes off the curved walls, mocking the frantic, desperate pace we’re setting.
Even in this freezing tunnel, the heat radiating off his broad back is insane.
It’s like standing next to an open furnace.
I’m counting my steps—one, two, three, four—forcing my brain into analytical mode to keep from spiraling into a full-blown panic attack, but there is no escaping the smell of him.
Gun oil. Sweat. Fresh, hot copper. He smells like pure, unadulterated violence.
We hit a massive structural fork. Three identical, pitch-black tunnels yawn open in front of us like open mouths.
Damon pauses. His head bows for a fraction of a second.
He sways, taking a heavy, unsteady step sideways until his shoulder hits a reinforced concrete pillar.
He leans into it hard. Through the darkness, I can feel the dampness of his blood soaking entirely through the tactical jacket I’m wearing, sticking the fabric to my forearm where he was holding me.
The predator is losing his orientation. Blood loss is dulling the feral instincts that usually make him infallible.
"Which way?" I ask.
"I... I don't know." He exhales a harsh, wet breath, keeping his head down. "It all looks the same."
He wipes his face with the back of his hand.
Even in the gloom, I can see the dark, wet smudge of blood he leaves smeared completely across his brow.
The sight of it—the sight of Damon Locke faltering, leaning against a filthy pillar in a subway tunnel like a dying animal—is somehow more terrifying than his rage.
If he drops here, I am dead. We are both dead.
The hierarchy we’ve been playing at since he locked me in his fortress instantly evaporates.
I have to step up, or we are going to be buried under this city.
"Look at me." I step into his space. "Damon, look at me."
I pull my hand free from his grip. It’s a small, stupid act of defiance that usually earns me a growl or a bruise, but he lets me go. His dark, glazed eyes slowly track up to meet mine.
I fish my phone out of my pocket. The screen is a shattered spiderweb of glass from getting thrown against the bathroom tile earlier.
I blow the thick layer of pocket lint and plaster dust out of the charging port, pressing the power button.
The screen flickers to life, casting an artificial, sickly blue glow over the oppressive black of the tunnel.
The battery icon is a razor-thin sliver of red.
Four percent. It’s a literal countdown to our execution.
"Give me the light." He reaches for it.
I pull it back. "You’re barely standing."
"Just find the way out, Doc."
I sweep the weak beam of the flashlight across the slimy walls. The light catches on a large, metal plate bolted to the concrete about ten feet away. It’s a maintenance schematic, buried under decades of calcified mineral deposits and black grime.
"Hurry."
"I’m trying." I step up to the plate, grabbing the hem of my shirt and vigorously scrubbing the thickest layer of dirt off the map’s legend. The metal is freezing. "This map is decades old."
"We don't have decades."
A scrape of rust tears into my knuckle, stinging like a bitch, but I ignore it.
My surgeon's brain takes the wheel. I filter out the noise, the cold, the fact that a hit squad is actively hunting us, and I focus entirely on the structural logic of the lines. It’s no different than a venous diagram.
Blue lines for water, red lines for power, thick black lines for priMargarita transit.
I find our position relative to the coordinates of the fortress above.
Damon is watching me. He’s propped against the wall, one hand clamped tightly over his side, but his eyes are fixed completely on my profile.
The intensity in his stare makes the hairs on my arms stand up.
He’s looking at my competence, watching me solve the problem, and the possessiveness radiating off him is suffocating.
His fingers twitch toward his belt, a clear physical tell that he wants to reach out and grab my waist, but he stops himself, his jaw clenching.
"There's a service bypass," I say, tracing a thin, dotted line with a trembling, soot-stained finger.
"Does it lead to the water?"
"It leads to the shipyard." I memorize the turns, internalizing the route. "It's the only way."
I turn and point down the left-most tunnel.
It’s noticeably narrower than the others, filled with the rushing, hollow sound of water moving fast behind the concrete casing.
Damon gives a curt, pained nod. He pushes off the pillar, his movements stiff, heavily guarded, but entirely determined.
He doesn't take the lead. He lets me walk first.
"Left. Keep close."
"I'm right behind you, Margarita."
"Don't lose me in the dark."
We move. The sound of our footsteps echoes chaotically—his heavy and dragging, mine light and frantic.
The tunnel walls immediately begin to close in.
The ceiling drops. It’s a secondary service pipe meant for running heavy electrical conduits, not foot traffic.
We have to move single file. The air in here is stagnant, dead, smelling sharply of scorched copper wire and mildew.
I hold the phone up, but the battery is failing, the light output dropping to little more than a dying ember.
A massive, filthy rat scurries out from behind a conduit pipe, running directly over the toe of my boot. I bite the inside of my lip hard enough to draw blood to stifle the scream building in my throat.
"It's getting tighter."
"Keep moving," he says from right behind my shoulder. "Don't think about the walls."
"The phone... it’s going to die."
We both stop dead.
From the main conduit behind us, a sound cuts through the rushing water.
Heavy boots hitting concrete. It’s not the chaotic scrambling of junkies or subway workers.
It’s a rhythmic, syncopated, military cadence.
Multiple sets of boots. Voices, deeply distorted by the tunnel's weird acoustics, bark sharp, professional orders.
Damon’s hand instantly goes to the massive tactical knife on his belt. His other hand finds my shoulder, his thick fingers digging into my jacket, squeezing hard to command absolute silence.
"Shh."
"They’re close," I whisper, the metallic clack of a weapon being readied echoing down the pipe.
"Closer than you think."
He reacts with terrifying, predatory speed.
He reaches over my shoulder and kills my phone screen, plunging us into a darkness so absolute it feels like a physical weight pressing against my eyeballs.
He hauls me backward by the jacket. His body is a solid wall of hot, wounded muscle.
He pins me flat against the cold, weeping wall of the tunnel, enveloping me from behind.
He presses his heavy forearm diagonally across my collarbone, locking me in place so I can’t move a single inch.
"Don't. Breathe."
I let out a tiny, involuntary, muffled sound against the pressure.
"Not a fucking sound."
Powerful beams from high-lumen tactical flashlights suddenly slice through the darkness just twenty yards behind us at the tunnel fork.
The harsh white light sweeps over the entrance of our conduit, catching the wet glint of the pipes.
The mercenaries are moving methodically, sweeping every shadow, checking their corners like professionals.
"They're searching the alcoves," I breathe, closing my eyes tightly as if that will somehow render me invisible.
"Stay still."
Damon’s eyes are fully adjusted to the gloom.
He’s searching our immediate vicinity, his head swiveling slightly.
He spots it before I do. Set low into the concrete wall across from us is a circular opening—a rusted, filth-caked drainage pipe.
It’s a secondary overflow line, barely two feet in diameter.
He grabs my hand, practically dragging my arm down, and guides my palm to the jagged, rusted edge of the opening so I can feel what he sees.
"In there."
"It’s too small." My medical brain instantly calculates the infection risk of the stagnant water, the risk of getting wedged in, the sheer impossibility of two adults fitting inside.