Wyatt quit chewing when a message pinged on the screen behind the video. He minimized Raven talking with the little man and opened up the message. No one ever gave their real identity on the black market sites, and new members often used a string of numbers, which was the default. Wyatt always used the same nickname so he could establish a rapport with others.
One fry stuck out of his mouth and fell onto the keyboard when he read the message and bit down.
User 24267: Use it wisely.
What the immortal hell is this?Wyatt ran a quick virus scan on the attached file before opening it. When he did, he nearly choked on his food.
“Wyatt’s got something,” Niko said. “His light looks like an atomic bomb.”
Wyatt swallowed his fries while zooming in on the blueprints. “Start up the van.”
Without delay, Shepherd fired up the engine. “Auction house?” he asked, his hand on the gearshift.
“No.” Wyatt followed the path of the door near the short stairwell. The tunnel led to another building just behind it. After a quick internet search, he identified the building. “We’re going to the animal shelter. It’s on the street just behind it. Hold on a sec or you’ll break my connection.”
“I don’t want to hurt any puppies,” Gem whimpered.
The user who had given him the file disappeared. Wyatt scanned the list of active members but didn’t find him. Then he did a search in the member database and found no such user. They’d created an account, dropped off the file, and erased their fingerprints. Who the immortal hell would do that without wanting payment?
Dressed in the change of clothes Gem had brought her, Blue got up and sat to Wyatt’s right, forcing him to scoot over. “Why not break into the auction house?”
“They have a steel shutter inside. It’ll take longer to get in, and we don’t know if they’ve got any alarms installed on the doors or upstairs windows. There’s at least one security guard on duty in the daytime and possibly at night. They expect intruders to bust in through the front or back since those are in the blueprints on file. No staircase leads to the basement, just the elevator. Andonlythat one elevator. I bet the animal shelter is how they’re leading in the visitors.”
“Sounds about right,” Shepherd said.
Gem leaned over him. “What’s all that other stuff?”
Wyatt flipped through another blueprint and the attached data. The second mystery door had an arrow pointing down and led to a chamber even farther underground. Lots of old structures like that existed, and most were sealed off. “I don’t want to get sidetracked. I need everyone to brainstorm a way to keep those dogs from barking.”
“They’re probably barking right now,” Shepherd said. “That’s what dogs do. They bark.”
Blue tucked her hair back. “Can you find out if the shelter has a security system? I’ve never seen a shelter or pet store owned by Breed.”
Shepherd cursed under his breath while revving the engine. “I don’t think our suspects own it. That would look suspicious. It’s probably a human who doesn’t know what the hell goes on at night. Betcha they don’t have anything wired up.”
“Hold your ponies.” Something on the video caught Wyatt’s eye. When he maximized the screen, he saw Raven entering a small room no bigger than a coat closet. She turned to face the small man, and he reached for something by the door. Suddenly everything went black.
Gem gasped. “What happened? Is the video broken?”
Wyatt wished he’d equipped her with an audio device, but those weren’t reliable. According to the tracker in her boot, she hadn’t gone anywhere, but her signal was moving in peculiar circles.
Yeah, she’d gone somewhere.
Down.
Blast!He looked at the down arrow on the blueprints. That wasn’t an elevator; it was a slide. Some immortals created them as a quick escape route to the underground sections of the Bricks. Whatever was happening to Raven was now leading them farther underground.
On his document, he looked at the diagram of an oval-shaped room. A tunnel just outside it wound around to a small room, and walls divided the space. If he had to guess, they were cages or cells. Nothing was labeled. He followed the longest tunnel, which led to an unmarked building. The distance was noted, so he compared it to a city map and located the entry point.
“Change of plans,” he announced. “Pay attention. There’s an underground chamber below the basement level. The equivalent of maybe fifteen stories. Shep, take us to the Green Door.”
Shepherd flicked his cigarette butt out the window. “What the hell for?”
“Raven’s not in the basement.” He kept his eyes on the blueprint, memorizing the layout and zooming in to see where it all led. “She’s way underground. Deeper than the specters like to go. And if you’d prefer to take the same route she did, I might as well write up your obituary now.”
He braced his feet when Shepherd hit the gas. Wyatt spun the laptop around so everyone could see. “There’s a secret entrance. See this long tunnel? It leads to the Green Door. It looks like someone built it back in the twenties. There was a period when Breed went underground and they built elaborate tunnels and structures. The earth is stable down there. Lots of caverns and streams.”
“Enough with the geology,” Viktor said. “What is your plan?”
