“Someone is coming.” Chang scans the alley in each direction. Tension serrates my belly as walkie-talkie audio fuzz approaches fast from down the adjacent road. I know the door leading to the brothel is unlocked before I touch the handle, and it swings open to the cubed foyer I crammed into with four men. As the last remaining brothel in the city, it serves a steady clientele twenty-four hours a day. Much like the crypts of Notre Dame, it’s connected to a network more vast than I can fathom.

Chang’s hand is sweaty when I pull her inside and shut the metal door. She looks down at the manhole cover and immediately withdraws a crowbar and workman’s gloves from her backpack. Donning the gloves, she angles the crowbar, wedging it against the rim, and works it at various points around the circumference like a lever. She pries practiced fingers beneath the heavy plate, and I do the same until together we manage to push it up and to the side. Blackness peers back at us, and cold, stale air that reeks of sewage rushes my nostrils.

Aggressive voices call from outside the door. The police. Chang dangles her small legs into the hole and withdraws from her backpack a flashlight that could double as a battering ram. She points the light down. Rocky ground and a large trough of broken concrete lie a few feet beneath the hole. Chang surveys the space with an approving nod. “Ready?”

Beyond the circle made by the flashlight, darkness stares back at us, unyielding. Hysteria rises in my chest and threatens to piss all over the clean rug of my fake confidence. I lift my eyes to Chang’s.

“After you.”

Chapter 30

Chapter 30

Day 7, Saturday

A moldy chill penetrates my shirt and jeans. The sweat on my back feels damp well after it would have dried aboveground. The coat of moisture in the air insulates and chokes like a wet sock shoved down my throat.

“You all right?” Chang shines her flashlight at my feet, where I’ve crouched down in a ball. We’ve been walking for five minutes, but I’ve been fighting the urge to run back to the manhole since we closed it. The halo of light exaggerates Chang’s contoured cheekbones, making her appear ghostly. Concern indents her face and creates shadowy wrinkles you’d think would be evident in the daylight. Panic rips at my chest, clawing to climb out of my mouth in a scream. Counting to ten quells the itch by a small margin.

All of the dangerous things that didn’t occur to me before fill my thoughts now. Like Mathieu saying, How you were there one second at the bordel . . . and gone the next? Angela scratched him—what if he knows about this entrance? What if it’s where he and Angela scuffled?