Page 63 of Sinner's Secret

“Is there anyway to lock this?” Then she spied an old-fashioned slide bolt. “Never mind.” She slid it into place, then followed Baz and the circle of light he carried down the stairs.

It went down further than she expected, past the level of the parking lot for sure. Where were they going to end up, in the sewer?

Above her, an explosion rocked the narrow stairway, raining dust and debris down. She looked up and didn’t see any light, so the tub hadn’t been damaged. Yet.

“Shit,” she said softly.

“Found the bottom,” Baz said in an equally quiet voice. “Looks like we’re in a storm drain.”

The stairs came to a stop and turned into metal rungs sunk into a concrete wall. It looked like an access tunnel underneath a manhole. Whoever built this motel had built this end of the building right over a manhole cover and constructed the secret exit while the building was going up.

That was interesting planning. She’d have to look up the construction date when she was back to work, and she had a free minute or three.

Below her, Baz had moved out of sight, though she could still see the light and shadows created by the flashlight. She reached the bottom and found herself standing in a concrete tunnel with a narrow trickle of water flowing through it. It was about eight feet wide, and along with the water, there was an assortment of trash strewn about, mostly plastic wrappers. The air smelled stale and mildewy, but no worse than that.

Baz shone his flashlight off to the right, then the left, but neither direction looked better than the other.

“Which way?” she asked.

Baz shone the light on the ceiling of the tunnel and seemed to be looking for something. Cyrillic letters were written in spray paint as part of some graffiti. Baz studied it for a moment before announcing, “We go this way.” He pointed the flashlight to the right.

“What does that say?”

“It says: “What are you doing just standing here, idiot?” With an arrow pointing in this direction.”

“It does not.”

“Yeah, it does.”

These two guys were something else. She laughed. “How did he know you would be looking at that message?”

Baz turned to frown at her. “He didn’t, but anyone who had to use that escape tunnel was probably in a lot of trouble and shouldn’t just be standing here.”

“And deserved to be called an idiot?” she asked trying to smother her laughter, but it came snorting out of her nose instead.

“Nika,” Baz said in a carefully even tone. “Were you injured upstairs?”

She wiped her face. “No, just had the bejesus scared out of me. Why?”

“You’re acting a bit drunk, or maybe hysterical.”

Now he acts reasonable? “I told you before. I’m tired and I have a headache. It’s laugh or I shoot someone.”

“Given those two alternatives, I guess I’ll take the laughing.”

They walked silently for several hundred yards until they reached an intersection. Baz looked for more writing on the ceiling and found another piece of graffiti that also didn’t look like anything intelligible to her.

This time he turned left. Up ahead, a weak circle of light cast part of the tunnel into shadows. They reached it and found a recessed half-circle of concrete leading upward. Above it, was a manhole cover and the sounds of a busy street. Baz scanned the walls leading up to the cover, but no art here. They kept going, passing two more possible exits before finding one that had another graffiti tag half-way up to the manhole over above it.

“This is it,” Baz said. He stooped to slide Yvgeny off his shoulder and onto the damp floor of the tunnel.

“What does this one say?” she asked.

Baz sighed. “It says: “Are you still just standing around? Get out.”

Baz put the flashlight on the ground near her feet, pointing up so it illuminated the entire shaft.

Baz began climbing the metal rungs up to the manhole cover.

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