Thurman bit his lip nervously.

I’d seen this tactic before—an offender gets a guy’s wallet, which has his home address in it, then he threatens the man’s family to procure his help.

“Are you married?” I asked. “Do you have kids?”

“Yeah.” The man was shaking. “I—”

“Did Mannie threaten your family?”

A tear formed in his eye. “I didn’t want to—”

“Where did he go?” I demanded. “Tell me the truth.”

Thurman pointed down the other hallway.

I cursed under my breath.

I gave him the phone I’d just acquired. “Call your family. Get them someplace safe.”

Then I ran down the hall Mannie had actually used, thought through the routes he might have chosen to get out of the building, and remembered that there was a little-used tunnel that ran from the federal building on this side of Duane Street to the Ted Weiss Federal Building on the other.

I couldn’t come up with any other scenarios that saw Mannie escaping this building.

In the past, Blake and his team had been able to access the Federal Digital Database, so they might have obtained the building’s blueprints.

Is this part of their plan? Did Mannie want to get caught?

I descended the stairs and made my way to the tunnel that led under the street. Taking a deep breath, I opened the door.

The cramped corridor was less than two meters wide and had only sporadic fluorescent lights, leaving plenty of shadowy recesses. A network of pipes leading from one building to the other obstructed the view even more.

“Mannie!” My voice echoed thinly and sharply through the corridor.

No reply.

Alright, let’s do this.

Quickly, but cautiously, and with the gun in the high ready position, I proceeded into the tunnel.

21

Shadow to light.

I moved forward.

The pulsing emergency lights and the glaring alarm weren’t in sync with each other and it created a disorienting, vertiginous effect.

I’d never been in this corridor before, and I didn’t know exactly where it opened up in the other building.

However, the farther I went into the tunnel, the more convinced I became that Mannie would not have holed up in here but would have bolted through to the other side.

Ten more meters.

The alarm kept cycling.

Then five.

Then two.

And then I was there.

Bracing myself, I threw open the door and entered a small, empty room that had a freight elevator on the right, a stairwell on the left.

I punched the elevator’s up button, then opened the stairwell door while I waited for the elevator doors to open.

Gun raised, I studied the steps above me but saw no one, heard no one.

Back in front of the elevator, I leveled my SIG as the doors parted.

Empty.