Chapter 123 - The Shadow on the Avenue
Before Marcus could answer, the glass front of the diner vibrated.
A single, deliberate tap sounded against the glass of the front door. Not a frantic knock from a bystander seeking shelter from the blizzard, but the rhythmic, three-beat cadence of an iron ring against plate glass.
Marcus moved with terrifying speed. His pistol cleared his waistband before the sound had even died, his frame instantly shielding Booth Four where Mia slept.
I pressed my back against the wall beside the register and peered through the slat of the blinds.
Standing under the flickering yellow streetlight on Tenth Avenue was an elderly man in a salt-stained peacoat. He wore a brimmed wool cap pulled low, his hands buried deep inside his pockets. He wasn't looking at the door; he was looking directly at the booth where Mia lay.
"Who is it?" Marcus whispered, his thumb resting on the hammer of his weapon.
"It's Father Thomas," I said, my pulse stumbling. "From the parish down on 21st. But he hasn't walked this avenue at night in ten years."
"He's not alone," Marcus said coldly, gesturing with his chin toward the black Lincoln town car parked across the street, engine idling without headlights. "Look at the tailpipe exhaust. Government plates or private security."
I stepped out from behind the counter, keeping low. "He was my father's confessor. When my father vanished into the tunnels twenty years ago, Father Thomas was the one who brought the deed of this diner to my mother's kitchen table."
"Then he's part of the architecture," Marcus said. "Elena, don't open that door."
"If he wanted us dead, Marcus, the men in that town car wouldn't be sitting with their wipers on," I said. "He knows the layout of this basement better than I do. If there’s an entrance to South Street that doesn't go through the police barricades on West Street, he's the only living soul who has the key."
I reached the front door and unlocked the deadbolt. The icy wind howled through the three-inch gap, carrying with it the bitter smell of burning diesel and river salt.
Father Thomas didn't step inside. His eyes, milky with age but piercing as cold iron, drifted past my shoulder to Marcus Vance standing in the shadows with a drawn weapon.
"You have your father’s posture, Marcus," the old priest said, his voice like gravel grinding under water. "And his arrogance. You think an ocean can drown a woman who was raised in the catacombs of Dublin?"
"Where is she, Father?" Marcus demanded, not lowering the gun by a fraction of an inch.
"Not where Arthur Pendelton left her," Thomas replied, pulling a heavy brass pocket watch from his coat. "The men who funded Pendelton’s barge didn't abandon the city when his ship cracked against Pier 42. They pulled Anna out of the hull forty minutes before you breached the dock."
Marcus took two strides forward, his voice dropping into a dangerous, lethal register. "Who took her?"
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"The people who own the deed to your life, boy," Father Thomas said, looking directly at me. "And they're coming to Tenth Avenue to collect the girl before sunrise."
***
