He turns and bolts.

Another tunnel. A level farther down. I drop off a ladder into floodwater up to my waist. Rats the size of small dogs dot the surface. The water is frigid. I see Manning ahead. Another muzzle flash.

We must be a hundred feet below the street now.

Ladder wells.

I climb two.

Tracks!

I see Manning, a hundred yards ahead. We’re in a subway tunnel. A working track. Back at the level we started from. My hair is soaked with grease, the toe-boxes of my clodhoppers slosh with what feels like half a gallon of industrial solvent. Snot and saliva drain in runnels down my chin.

Lights.

A subway station!

I’m thirty yards behind Manning now, on the track bed. Instancer is another seventy yards ahead of Manning.

I see Instancer enter the lighted area of the station and haul himself up onto the platform. He stops and looks back.

He pulls something from his shirt pocket.

Manning has drawn up on the track bed, weapon in hand.

Manning’s chest heaves. He gasps for air.

Instancer holds a phone.

He punches numbers.

I stagger up to Manning.

Manning’s phone rings.

People on the platform ahead are reacting to Instancer’s sudden appearance. I can see faces peering down the tracks toward me and Manning.

Manning hits ACCEPT.

I hear Instancer tell Manning an address.

Instancer takes the phone, a burner no doubt, and smashes it screen-first into one of the steel columns on the platform.

He slings the busted mess onto the tracks and bolts up the stairs and out.

MANNING

(to me)

Ellie Landau’s address. What is it?

My phone finds it. Manning’s look says it’s the same one Instancer just gave him. Four blocks from here. Three seconds later he’s calling for precinct backup and phoning ahead to Security at Ellie’s building.

We’re out on the sidewalk now, racing full-tilt.

Manning gets Ellie Landau on the line. He’s half running, half staggering from exhaustion. Manning tells Ellie what has happened. He orders her to lock down every entry to her apartment, interior and exterior, and to keep her driver and security man in front of her, weapons drawn, ready for anything. I can half hear Ellie from the earhole of Manning’s phone:

ELLIE LANDAU

My building is super-secure. I pay enough for the service, believe me.

Manning and I reach Ellie’s building. Manning highballs into the lobby, past doormen, security personnel, precinct officers.

No break-in reported.

No forced entry.

No intruders picked up on security cameras.

But when we hit Ellie Landau’s penthouse floor, the door to her apartment is wide open. Ellie’s driver sprawls facedown on the floor. A nine-millimeter automatic lies smoking beside him. Spent shell cases litter the entryway.