Chapter 12: No One Was Coming to Save Them
The grate didn’t move when Luke shoved it. Rusted chains held it from the street side, each link thick as Clover’s thumb.
Above them, a man’s shoes crossed concrete. Then Gideon’s voice cut through the drain, low and impatient.
“The ledger. Get it before the responders do.”
“I’m working on it,” the fixer answered.
Bruno’s breath rasped against the wet stone. Clover pressed one hand between his shoulder blades, steadying him as smoke crept down the passage behind them. Luke looked from the chained grate to the dark branch of the drain leading back toward the office.
“I can get them to follow me,” he said.
Clover tightened her grip on Bruno. “You can barely stand.”
“I didn’t say I could win a race.”
“That isn’t funny.”
“No,” Luke said. His mismatched eyes held hers in the murk. “It isn’t.”
He shifted the cloth bundle higher against his chest. “Don’t mistake me walking into danger for proof I’ve changed.”
The words hit harder than an apology would have. Clover wanted to ask what, exactly, he thought he was proving. Instead she heard Gideon’s shoes stop overhead, and the pause that followed felt like a hand closing around the drain.
“Luke—”
He was already crawling backward.
“Find another way out,” he called. “Get Bruno clear.”
His shoulders disappeared into the dark. A moment later, a clang rang through the passage, followed by the scrape of metal and a shouted curse. The fixer had taken the bait.
Bruno leaned against the wall, eyes squeezed shut. Clover caught his arm before his knees gave.
“Stay with me.”
“I’m here,” he managed.
“You’re not leaving me to drag you through a burning tunnel.”
His gaze flicked to hers. In the weak light, the old hurt between them looked almost as visible as the fear. He didn’t ask her to forgive him. He just nodded once and followed as she felt along the drain wall.
Her fingers found a narrow iron handle, half-hidden beneath grime. She pulled. Something groaned beyond the wall, but the passage stayed blocked.
A pale rectangle of light showed through a vent farther ahead. Beyond it, a jumble of discarded display pieces lay beneath a shelf—painted clouds, a chipped toy mobile, and a small wooden crib with one broken rail. A faded sign on its side advertised a Sterling family-safety display.
Clover crawled to it and seized the loose rail. It was long enough to reach the handle.
Bruno slid closer, grimacing with every breath. “Let me.”
“You can barely breathe.”
“I can still push.”
For one beat, Clover saw the child she had been, watching Bruno lift a sagging roof beam after a storm because there was no one else to do it. Then she saw the man who had kept Mara’s truth from her for twenty-five years. Both were real. Neither canceled the other.
She wedged the crib rail under the iron handle. Bruno braced the other end with both hands.
“On three,” she whispered. “One. Two—”
They pushed. The wood bent. The handle shifted a fraction, and the hidden sluice shrieked open. Water burst around their wrists, cold and filthy, but the gap widened enough for a narrow channel to appear beyond the wall.
Clover’s phone vibrated in her coat. She flinched, then saw Miles’s name on the screen and answered.
“Clover? Can you hear me?”
“Yes. We’re under the garage.”
“I found the matching payment copy,” Miles said. His voice crackled in the drain. “Same dates, same amounts. It ties the transfers in Mara’s ledger to the test runs.”
Bruno shut his eyes for a second. Clover felt the difference between proof and hope: proof had dates, amounts, and a name in ink. It could still be taken. It could still burn.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“Clear of the property. I’m calling two reporters now. I’ve sent them the records.”
A crash sounded behind them. The fixer shouted again, closer this time.
“Get out,” Miles said. “I’m staying on the line.”
Clover shoved the crib rail deeper into the sluice gap. “Then keep talking. Keep them listening.”
“I will.”
She and Bruno squeezed through the opening one at a time. The channel was low and narrow, but the air beyond it carried the sharp, wet smell of night. Clover crawled until her hands met open ground, then pulled Bruno after her.
They emerged beside the loading bay, coughing beneath the cold strip of sky. For the first time since the doors had slammed shut, nothing pressed down on Clover’s lungs but ordinary air.
She looked back for Luke.
At the drain outlet, a figure stood between them and the garage wall. Gideon’s coat was still neat. In his hand, he held the cloth-wrapped ledger bundle, its folds torn open.
Luke was on his knees beside him, one arm drawn behind his back.
Bruno seized Clover’s sleeve. “Go.”
She looked at the dark street beyond the loading bay—the open way out, the way that might keep Bruno alive. Then she looked at Luke, who had once vanished when she needed him most and had now gone back into the smoke without asking her to trust him.
May you like
Clover pulled free of Bruno’s grip and stepped toward them.
Luke was still on his knees beside Gideon, and the ledger was in Gideon’s hand.
