Chris Mooney - The Secret Friend

The cold darkness pressing against her, she made her way down the main corridor, the ice slippery beneath her boots. She remembered a line from Dante, how hell wasn't burning with fire but rather a place where Satan was frozen in a lake of ice.

Darby turned left into another maze of corridors. On a wall of chipped white and blue paint was faded lettering with arrows pointing to the different locations inside the hospital. The frigid air smelled of dank pipes and mildew. She moved into the corridor, listening for sound and watching for movement.

Ten minutes later, she found the door marked 'MAINTENANCE'.

'I found the door,' Darby said.

Malcolm Fletcher didn't answer.

'Hello?'

No answer.

Darby checked the phone. The signal had dropped. She was too far underground.

She placed the phone on the floor. Leaning against the door, she pressed down on the handle with her elbow and pushed it open.

The maintenance room was empty.

Darby tucked the phone in her pocket. The room was a closet and held nothing but rusted shelves. The middle and bottom shelves were empty, but the top shelf held rusted tools, metal pails and old bags of cement. Under the centre bottom shelf and lying against the wall was a large metal ventilation grille, the kind used to heat and cool large buildings.

Darby got down on one knee and shined the thin beam of light against the grate. Beyond it was a vent about thirty feet long; it curved off to the left. Standing at the end of the vent was a small statue of the Virgin Mary.

There was no way Malcolm Fletcher had crawled through the vent. The man was too big, too wide to fit through this narrow space.

Are you claustrophobic? Fletcher had asked.

Was Fletcher waiting for her on the other side? Or had he led her here to find something?

Darby checked her phone. No signal. She could backtrack, locate a signal and call Bryson; or she could crawl through the vent now.

She saw the Blessed Mother's sorrowful expression in the beam of her flashlight. Darby removed the tactical light and holstered her SIG. She rolled her flashlight across the vent, then got down on her stomach and crawled inside. Malcolm Fletcher waded through the knee-deep snow on the western part of Sinclair's campus. His Jaguar was strategically parked behind a grouping of dumpsters, safely out of view – at least for the moment.

His years of living on the run had taught him the importance of carrying only minimal possessions. A small suitcase held his clothes. His briefcase held the more important items – surveillance gear, listening devices, and GPS units. The false passports were practically worthless. Since 9-11, Interpol had stepped up its restrictions at airports.

Fletcher popped the trunk. He tucked his FBI badge and supporting credentials in his suit jacket pocket. He had already procured a new sidearm, a 9mm Glock, courtesy of a Roxbury gang-banger who suddenly became very eager to unload his illegal firearm after his wrist and nose were broken. Fletcher took the other items he needed and shut the trunk.

A laptop sat on the front seat. The padded cone of the headphone pressed against one ear, he typed on the laptop to activate the remote transmitters he had strategically placed inside the lower level. He heard the sound of a young woman's laboured breathing and the clang of metal. Darby McCormick was crawling through the heating vent.

So close, he thought, grinning.

Malcolm Fletcher started the car. Cecil's soft, haunting piano music played over the speakers as he drove away. Tim Bryson sat in the cramped passenger seat of a Honda Civic parked at a Mobil gas station on Route One. His partner, Cliff Watts, stood outside, smoking.

Bryson had picked the location in case he needed to move to the hospital. If there was a problem, he could be at the front doors in less than three minutes.

For the past hour he had talked to Bill Jordan. His men had reported that Fletcher had left a cell phone inside the patient rooms. He had called Darby on this phone, so there was no way to listen in on the conversation.

The two undercover detectives watched Darby descend the stairs. Several minutes later they followed and found the sawed-off padlock on the floor.

Beyond the door was a maze of corridors. The last report was that they still hadn't found her.

Another troubling note: the panic button with its GPS unit was no longer transmitting. Jordan had lost her signal.

Darby was too far underground, Jordan said. He had sent her a text message asking her to check in but she still hadn't responded. Given her location, it was possible that she hadn't received the message. Jordan still couldn't hail either of his men.

Bryson's phone rang.

'Still no word from Darby,' Jordan said.

'Give her some time.'

'I don't like her wandering down there alone without knowing what's going on. We should move some more people inside.'

'And if Fletcher is watching, he'll see them and bolt.'

'Or he could be inside the basement with her,' Jordan said. 'We've already mapped out the terrain. The building plans are shit – half the passages are either sealed off with rubble or locked. The place is a goddamn maze, but we managed to find a way to the basement level. I can have them there in half an hour – Wait, hold on.'

Bryson heard mumbling. Then Jordan was back on the line: 'A black Jaguar just pulled out of the western part of the campus and it's moving fast. It was parked behind some dumpsters. The driver will be at your location in under a minute.'

'You just discovered this now?'

'We had to do this on the fly, Tim. This place is massive – we couldn't see that part of the campus from our location. You think it's your boy?'

'Last time he was here, he was driving a Jag. Who else could it be?' Bryson leaned forward in his seat, thinking fast. 'I won't be able to block off the main road by myself. How soon can you get someone here?'

'Lang's on his way. He should be there -'

'Shit, he's here.' Bryson watched the black Jag pull onto the highway. He banged on the window, got Watts' attention and motioned him inside the car. 'I'm going to follow. How many men can you spare?'

'The second van's already on its way. Call Lang, coordinate everything through him. He's got you on his GPS so he won't lose you.'

Watts started the car.

'Move inside the hospital,' Bryson said to Jordan. 'Pull Darby out of there.'

The heating vent was narrow and smelled of rust and decay. Darby crawled forward on her stomach. She reached the flashlight and rolled it ahead of her, feeling like the John McClane character Bruce Willis had played in the first Die Hard movie.

When she reached the statue, she placed it into an evidence bag and tucked it into her coat pocket. She picked up the flashlight.

The vent curved to the left. The second part was only ten feet long and led out to a floor covered in dust and rubble.

Turning onto her side, Darby edged her way around the corner, boots banging against the metal, and got stuck. Panic gripped her as she imagined being trapped here. Why in the name of God am I doing this?

Darby took in deep breaths, forcing herself to relax. She got her footing and pushed herself into the second vent, hearing her coat rip. Turning back onto her stomach, she crawled forward and pushed herself onto a floor covered with rubble.

A hole was in the ceiling and, beyond it, walls stretching up into the darkness. Sections of the floors above her were missing. She wondered what had caused such a massive amount of damage.

The door to the room was closed. Moving the beam of her light around the wooden shelves, most of which were still intact, she saw clear plastic vials full of water and cardboard boxes full of rosary beads and stacks of books. Darby wiped away the dust from the spines; bibles and hymn books.