Chapter 15 - The Ghost of South Side
Gabriel didn’t take Maya to a safehouse or call the police. He drove her straight to the penthouse of Rowan Freight Tower, where Hannah and Lucy were waiting in the secure residential wing.
When Lucy saw Maya step out of the private elevator, she didn’t scream or run behind her mother. Instead, the two eight-year-old girls looked at each other with an uncanny, mirrored intensity—two children forged in the crossfire of corporate warfare.
“She has your keys,” Lucy observed quietly, pointing to the brass token hanging on a leather cord around Maya’s neck.
“She has a lot more than keys,” Gabriel said, tossing the encrypted thumb drive onto the glass coffee table. “Hannah, keep them both locked in the safe room. No one enters, no one leaves, and if the power cuts out, you use the secondary generator in sub-level three.”
“Gabriel, where are you going?” Hannah asked, her hands trembling slightly as she gripped the edge of the kitchen counter. “The police are looking into the lobby shooting. If you go back out there—'”
“I’m going to meet the ghost,” Gabriel interrupted, buttoning his black overcoat.
He didn’t take his car. He walked down the service stairs into the damp, concrete-lined tunnels beneath the financial district—the very tunnels his grandfather had used during Prohibition to move contraband across the city.
The air grew colder the deeper he went, smelling of stagnant river water and old rust.
Ahead of him, flickering fluorescent lights hummed with a low, irritating frequency.
And then, cutting through the hum—
Squeak.
May you like
Gabriel stopped. He rested his hand casually on the grip of his concealed firearm.
“You’ve been walking behind me for fourteen years, old friend,” Gabriel called out into the dark brick corridor. “Or should I call you by your real name, Arthur?”
