THE GHOST AWAKENS

Elias stared at the cracked silver watch in his palm. The metal was ice cold.

The voice on the other side of the door belonged to Silas. Once Elias’s handler. Once his closest friend. Now, the syndicate’s chief cleaner.

“You have three minutes before I breach this door, Elias,” Silas’s voice echoed, muffled but eerily calm. “Send the girl out with the ledger. Walk away. I’ll let you crawl back into the hole you’ve been hiding in for five years.”

Elias didn’t answer. He turned to Elara. Her eyes were wide with panic.

He holstered his weapon, dropped to one knee, and grabbed her gently by the shoulders. “Do you trust me?”

She nodded quickly, a tear finally escaping and cutting a clean line through the soot on her cheek.

“There’s an old ventilation shaft behind that wardrobe,” Elias whispered. “I’m going to open it. You crawl through. It leads to the subway tunnels. Don’t stop moving until you hear the trains.”

“What about you?” she asked, her voice trembling.

“I’m going to make sure they don’t follow you.”

Elias stood and shoved the heavy wooden wardrobe aside with a grunt. He pried off the rusted iron grate. The tunnel was narrow, completely dark, and smelled of mold.

He handed her the ledger. “Go. Now.”

Elara hesitated, then scrambled into the darkness.

Elias replaced the grate just as the first explosive charge detonated against the steel door. The hinges screamed, the metal buckling inward.

He didn’t have a death wish, but he needed a distraction. He grabbed the desk lamp and threw it to the floor, shattering the bulb and plunging the room into darkness.

The door blew open in a cloud of smoke and splintered wood. Three men flooded in, their tactical flashlights cutting through the dust.

Elias moved like a shadow. He didn’t use his gun; gunfire would draw the police, and the police belonged to Nathan.

He used the darkness. He dropped the first man with a heavy strike to the temple, sweeping his legs out from under him. The second man swung a rifle wildly, but Elias sidestepped, grabbing the barrel and driving his elbow into the man’s jaw.

Silas stepped through the smoke, a suppressed pistol raised. “You’re getting slow, old friend.”

Elias threw a heavy wooden chair at Silas, forcing him to dodge, and used the split second to dive through a side window that led out into an adjacent service alley. Glass shattered as he rolled onto the wet pavement.

He sprinted toward the subway entrance two blocks away, his lungs burning. He had to reach Elara before she got lost in the catacombs.

He found her huddled behind a ticketing kiosk, shivering, the ledger clutched tight. When she saw him, she let out a small sob and ran to him. Elias scooped her up, holding her tight.

“I’ve got you,” he whispered. “You’re safe.”

But as he set her down, she pulled away slightly. She reached into the pocket of her muddy dress.

“When I was in the tunnel, I opened the book,” Elara said, her voice shaking. “I found this.”

She held out her small hand.

Resting on her palm was a heavy, ornate brass key. It looked antique, completely out of place in a modern financial ledger. The head of the key was engraved with a symbol Elias recognized instantly.