Page 47 of The Forbidden Secret
There was nothing that perceptively changed, but the roar seemed to slowly fade and give way to a feeling of defeat. A bone-deep feeling that I could not shake off. I recognized the feeling almost immediately.
Something was wrong.
I didn’t know how I knew or what had tipped me off, but I had been living a life of death and danger for long enough that I had become finely in tune with the potential of danger surrounding me. I stood, listening carefully to everything around me. I heard nothing from Evelina in the living room, but there were voices outside my window. Soft enough that I could tell they were on the ground level, lingering outside the apartment complex. It wasn’t unusual, but something felt like it didn’t belong, and while I couldn’t place the disturbance, I wasn’t foolish enough to think it was internal.
I slid open my blinds and found a small group of men, all wearing SWAT gear, lingering outside the building. They gestured inside with their hands as they spoke, and I glanced around the street for the tell-tale van that would mark them as law enforcement.
There was nothing.
I looked closer at their outfits and found nothing aside from a haphazardly stitched SWAT on the back of their shirts. I took notice of the weapons strung across their back and holstered at their sides.
The disguise would be enough to be allowed into the building, but theywere notSWAT.
They had found us.
I stormed out of my room and saw Evelina sitting where I had left her a half hour ago, staring solemnly at the wall across the room, likely lost in thought. When she saw me, she immediately rose to her feet.
“Zeke, I’m so—”
“Get your go-bag, now,” I said, grabbing my own as I pulled a knife and second gun from my bag, arming my body with them. She didn’t move. “Now, Evelina!”
She jumped and rushed across the house, gathering her bag in the time it took for me to finish arming myself and palming my metallic Glock.
“What’s happening?”
A distinct crash came from the level below, and dozens of steps began pounding up the staircase. I put all of my anger and disgust behind me. “Go to the closet in my bedroom,” I demanded as I went toward the window, opening it and pushing the curtains through it swiftly.
It was as much of a deterrence as I could manage in the seconds we had to get out of here.
I rushed to my room, then my closet, where Evelina had found the door and opened it. The maintenance shaft had been the reason the apartment was cheaper than most. A ladder went all the way to the basement, with much of the plumbing and electrical exposed for repairs. It was old and rusty, but it would do.
“Go,” I whisper-shouted as something banged on my door. I heard it splinter, but it didn’t open. Not yet. The reinforced locks did their job and bought us an extra second.
She didn’t argue as she tightened her backpack and pulled herself onto the ladder, moving downward quickly. She jumped as they pounded into the door again, and this time, it did crack. Feet pounding on my tile floors filled my apartment with just enough time for me to slide into the maintenance chute and close the door behind me.
“How did they find us?” she asked.
“I don’t know. It could have been anything.”
Silence fell as we continued our descent. I considered all the places we could go from the basement, as the street wouldn’t be an option. There were sewer tunnels that ran beneath the city, but the thought of trudging through feces and piss did not sound appealing.
I landed on the ground level and turned to Evelina.
I froze.
Two men rounded the corner, one bringing Evelina to his chest as the other man fired at me. I saw her thrash once before I rolled and reached for the gun I had been forced to tuck away on the ladder. The boom of gunfire undoubtedly marked our location, and as I rose, I fired twice into the man’s chest.
Voices rose from outside the basement, and heavy pounding from boots drew closer. How many men were there? It had to be no less than a dozen, but as I factored in the men upstairs, I knew there had to be more. More than I could take on by myself. More than I could hope of keeping away from Evelina, especially with only twenty-six total shots—twenty-four now that I had fired two.
Evelina struggled in the man’s grasp, her face reddening as he pulled out a gun.
She saw it from the corner of her eye, then saw me struggling to find a shot, and she moved quickly. She proved exactly how skilled she was as she lunged to the side, throwing the man off balance enough to duck and fling him over her body. Her legs strained as he flipped over her back, but the second she was out of the shot, I fired once at the man.
Twenty-three bullets.
“Where do we go?” she asked frantically.
I considered the reason I chose this building. There was a sewer grate, and I knew all the turns to get us out. There was also a secondary tunnel—one that led into various different buildings and places beneath the city. The danger of those tunnel systems—the unknowns of the entrance and exit points—was a risk that we couldn’t take.
