Chapter 253

He didn’t wait. He stepped back and drove his foot into the wood beside the lock. It splintered. The door swung open.

The bathroom was empty.

He stood in the doorway, staring. The window was painted shut. There was no other visible exit.

Then he saw it — the wall panel, designed to sit flush with the wallpaper, slightly ajar. A thin dark line where there should have been none. It wasn’t a vent.

It was a door.

“No,” he whispered.

He ripped the panel open. The empty service corridor stretched away into darkness, mocking him.

She was gone.

A sound tore out of him — raw, animal, somewhere between rage and grief. He drove his fist into the tiled wall. His knuckles split open.

“Gavin!” he roared into his headset. “Lock it down. Lock down the entire city.”

The service elevator descended with a quiet hum, smelling of bleach and industrial grease.

Cailin slid out into the basement loading dock and landed near a cart of dirty linens. Kegan was already there, wearing a mechanic’s jumpsuit.

“You’re late,” he said, helping her up.

“He talked a lot,” Cailin said, brushing lint from her black dress. “Where are they?”

“In the van. Loading dock.”

They ran.

They burst out into the cool night air. A nondescript white van idled nearby, Ashley in the driver’s seat. The children were in the back.

“Go!” Cailin called, diving into the passenger seat.

The van screamed out of the alley.

“Hilliard has the airport locked down,” Kegan said from the back, studying a tablet. “Plan A is gone. We’re on Plan B — the water. Private dock at Chelsea Piers.”

Ashley took a sharp left toward the West Side Highway. “Are you sure he won’t be there?”

“He’ll be watching the main marinas, the public slips. This dock is off-book. We should—” Kegan stopped.

He slammed his hand on the seat. The satellite image on his screen showed two of Hilliard’s black SUVs sitting squarely across the entrance to the private pier.

“He’s faster than I thought,” Kegan said. “Plan B is gone. He’s cut off the water.”

“What’s left?” Cailin asked, her stomach dropping.

“Plan C,” Kegan said grimly. “The airport. Hilliard locked down the major fields, but my pilot found a loophole — a twenty-minute window at a private strip in Teterboro before Hilliard’s new FAA restrictions take full effect. It’s a suicide run, but it’s all we have.”

Ashley floored it.

They hit 10th Avenue.

Without warning, a series of black, plate-less SUVs pulled out of side streets ahead, forming a rolling barricade across the road. Cars hit their brakes. Horns erupted.

“What the hell?” Ashley slammed the brakes to avoid plowing into a taxi.

Cailin looked at the intersection. The SUVs were methodically boxing them in, manufacturing gridlock from the outside in.

“It’s Hilliard,” she said. “He’s using his own men to shut down the street.”

“He’s shutting down a section of New York City to catch us?” Ashley said, incredulous. “That’s supervillain territory.”

“The van can’t get through,” Kegan said. He kicked the back doors open. “Plan D. Bikes.”