When Shadows Fall (31 page)
Authors: J. T. Ellison
“Shocking suspense, compelling characters and fascinating forensic details.”
—Lisa Gardner, #1
New York Times
bestselling author
If you loved
When Shadows Fall
by
New York Times
bestselling author J.T. Ellison, don’t miss
A Deeper Darkness
and
Edge of Black
in the thrilling Samantha Owens series. Available in ebook format.
Order your ebooks today!
Be sure to also catch J.T. Ellison’s thrilling Taylor Jackson series, available now in ebook format:
Where All The Dead Lie
So Close to the Hand of Death
The Immortals
The Cold Room
Judas Kiss
14
All The Pretty Girls
Connect with us on
Harlequin.com
for info on our new releases, access to exclusive offers, free online reads and much more!
Other ways to keep in touch:
Harlequin.com/newsletters
Facebook.com/HarlequinBooks
Twitter.com/HarlequinBooks
HarlequinBlog.com
Chapter 1
Washington, D.C.
A single beam of light illuminated the path ahead, hovering and bobbing against the concrete walls. The tunnel was narrowing, growing tighter across his shoulder, forcing the joints to compress, pushing on his lungs. His breath came fast. He reminded himself to calm down, inhale through his nose. The mask was making it difficult to see, to smell, anything that might give him a sense of where he was. He paused, counted the number of times his limbs had moved forward. Once, twice, three times, twenty. Roger that. Five more evolutions and he’d be in place.
He squeezed forward, slithering like a snake along on his belly, his legs bunching up behind him, his arms forward, the Maglite in his left hand, his right feeling for the way. Slowly. Slowly.
There. He felt the hinge. Turned it gently, sensed the cooler air blowing up into the vent from below. Reached down into his shirt and pulled out the canister. The gloves made his hands clumsy, but he couldn’t risk contact. He’d die stuck in this shaft, wedged in above the vent, stinking and rotting until someone finally sought the source of the smell.
No one would think to look for him if he were to go missing.
He had no one. He was alone.
He double-checked his mask, made sure he was breathing clean. All systems go.
The clock in his head ticked away, closing down to the final moments.
Five. Four. Three. Two. One.
Time.
With sure hands, he opened the cylinder and depressed the button. The can discharged, spraying silently into the vent.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
Empty.
He shook it lightly, but there was nothing else to release. It was done.
He tucked the cylinder back into his shirt and started to move away. He needed to get out of the shaft and back onto the platform, all while avoiding the cameras.
He could do it. He had faith. He’d done three dry runs, and all went according to plan.
He moved out, reversing the slither, arms bunching, forcing his body backward until the resistance ended and he could move his shoulders and hips without constriction. The pipe grew larger, big enough that he crawled onto his knees, turned and faced the exit. He fed a mirror mount down the shaft. No one was around.
Clear.
He dropped lightly to the ground, took three steps to the right to make sure he didn’t accidentally get caught on film, found the metal ladder and began to climb. Higher and higher, his heart lighter and lighter. Success was his.
Below, he felt the first blast of air that indicated a train was coming. The rumbling grew louder, the ladder began to shake. He could have sworn he heard a cough. He paused his climb, held on and breathed into his mask.
This was a better high than you could pay for.
The train passed below him, streaking silver in the dark, rushing the air from the vent toward the platform. He let the rumbling shake his body for a few moments, counting off again, then continued to climb. The exit would be deserted, he’d made sure of that. He had a two-minute window during the shift change to get out.
He set the stopwatch in his head. Two minutes. Mark.
He opened the hatch and climbed onto the deserted platform. Three steps to the right, two steps forward. He’d left his backpack in the trash receptacle. He worked quickly. The mask, canister and gloves went into a sealable plastic bag. His clothes were next: he exchanged the black running suit for jeans and a white cotton T-shirt, pulled on yellow Timberlands. He used hand sanitizer on his arms to eliminate any traces that might have been left behind.
He zippered the bag, tossed it on his shoulder and started walking.
One minute.
The giant disposal catchall was nearly full. As he passed it, he tossed the bag into the depths. He knew they’d be around to empty it in two hours, and all tangible evidence of the crime would disappear into the vast chaos that was the dump.
Now unencumbered, he made better time.
Thirty seconds.
He could hear voices, ahead in the gloom.
Twenty seconds.
He stretched his stride, long legs eating up the pathway.
The elongated shaft of the tunnel appeared before him. His senses were overloaded—orange and blue and white lights, people milling about, yellow hard hats obscuring peripheral vision, getting ready to go back into the tunnels and hammer for the next several hours. He ducked around a column, reversing direction, and slid into the last of the line with the rest of the workers.
Ten seconds.
The first shift ended with a shrieking whistle, and a subway train arrived, rumbling to a stop on the platform. He followed the crowd into the metal tube, took a seat. The rest of the workers filed in behind him, exhausted after their long overnight.
Time.
The train pulled away, building speed, taking him farther and farther from the scene, away, in the other direction, from the canister’s contents.
He was safe.
He risked a small smile. Around him, men’s heads nodded in time as the train rushed along the tracks. He started counting forward, and at ninety-eight, the train began to lurch to a stop.
At exactly one hundred, the doors opened, and he stepped out into the brilliant early-morning sunshine.
Only one thing left to do, then he could depart. Leave this cesspool of a city behind.
Glory was his. Glory be. Glory be.
Copyright © 2012 by J. T. Ellison
ISBN-13: 9781460327029
WHEN SHADOWS FALL
Copyright © 2014 by J.T. Ellison
All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
® and ™ are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.