Three of them, stacked behind his garment bags, labeled in his handwriting.
F. Lawrence.
Frederick.
My hands are moving before my brain catches up. I pull the lid off the first box and find tax returns, old leases, receipts from the tavern’s renovation. The second box has photos—Frederick with Art’s father at some gala, Frederick behind the bar in what must have been the tavern’s early days, Frederick with Craig Calloway, both of them grinning like the world owed them something.
The third box has blueprints.
I almost miss them. They’re rolled up beneath a stack of old permits, the paper yellowed and soft at the edges. I pull themout and spread them across the floor, using my phone flashlight to read the faded ink.
It’s the tavern. I recognize the footprint immediately. The main floor layout, the bar, the kitchen, the storage rooms I walk past every shift. But beneath the main floor, drawn in thinner lines like an afterthought, there’s a second level. And beneath that, a third.
Tunnels.A whole network of them, branching out from the basement like veins. One runs west toward the train tracks. One runs north, and I trace it with my finger, my pulse picking up, because it terminates at a small square marked with initials I can’t quite make out, near what I think is the tree line behind Montgomery Manor.
I’ve driven past that manor a hundred times. Juliette and Roman live there now.
And it’s only a few minutes from the tavern.
My heart races as my mind slots together a half-baked plan, and I take a photo of the blueprint with my phone. Then another. Then I photograph every page, my hands shaking so badly the first few come out blurred and I have to retake them. I put everything back exactly the way I found it. Boxes stacked. Closet closed. Bedroom door shut. And then I stand in the hallway with the blueprint glowing on my phone screen, a secret tunnel entrance marked minutes from the tavern, and the knowledge that I don’t have to walk through the front door.
I don’t have to sit here and wait.
Tomorrow night, Paxton gets us out.One more day.That’s all Lance asked for.
But it’s the one thing I can’t give.
Chapter 38
Lance
It takes everything in me to go to the Lye.
Percy is on the table when I get there.
He’s curled on his side, one arm tucked against his ribs, the other hanging off the edge like he doesn’t have the strength to pull it back up. His eye is swollen on the left side. His breathing is wet and shallow. The kind of breathing that means something inside isn’t working right.
I crouch beside him, and his good eye finds me.
“Excalibur,” he rasps.
“Don’t talk.”
“He was big.”
“I said don’t talk.”
His mouth twitches, and there’s blood on his teeth. “You should see the other guy.”
“Percy.”
“He does look worse. Promise.”
He’s trying to grin. Eighteen years old with a face that looks like raw meat and he’s trying togrinat me, because that’s whatI taught him to do. Shake it off. Get back up. Pretend the pain is temporary.
I’m a hell of a teacher.
My hand hovers over his shoulder, wanting to grip it, wanting to tell him something that matters. The medic, if you can call him that, a guy Benny pays to stitch wounds and keep his mouth shut, shoulders past me with gauze and a penlight, and I step back.
