Page 69 of Alex Cross Must Die

“The next morning, I think. I was”—she nodded toward the hatch—“down there. I screamed and yelled at first. But I think they put something in the water. I think we were all drugged. After a while, everybody just got weak and quiet. Numb. They fed us just enough to keep us alive.”

Holmes leaned forward. He held up his cell phone with an image of the Sigliks. “Are these the men?”

Davina twisted away. “Oh, Jesus!Yes!”

“Enough!” said Grey, pushing the phone down. She touched Davina’s arm gently. “And what did they do when they came? These two men.”

Davina took another deep breath. She looked up at the ceiling, then back down to meet Grey’s eyes. “They came down together. They looked us over. Poked us. Groped us. Like we were animals. Sometimes they brought down somebody new. Sometimes they took somebody away. Out the door and through the tunnel. The way you came in.”

“Davina,” asked Marple, “did any of the people who left with the men ever come back?”

Davina started sobbing softly. She wiped her nose on the blanket. “No,” she said. “Never. Nobody came back.”

A paramedic rolled a gurney up. “I need to take her now,” he said.

“Right. Of course,” said Grey. She stood up and rested her handlightly on the young woman’s bony shoulder. “Thank you, Davina. We’ll find these men. I promise.”

Poe looked at Grey as the gurney rolled away. This was darker than anything he had imagined.

“Hey! Detective!”

One of the SWAT cops was standing on the ladder, his upper body poking out of the hatch.

“What’s up?” asked Grey.

“If you’ve got the belly for it, you need to follow me.”

“Where?”

“There’s another room.”

CHAPTER 76

THE BRANCH OFFthe main tunnel had been invisible in the dark. But now the whole underground was lit up by NYPD scene lights. Bright as day. The cop led the way to the hidden chamber, about ten yards off to the side.

As they approached the doorway, Poe could hear the low hum of powerful electric motors. The cop went in first. Grey followed. When she gave the all clear, Poe stepped over the steel threshold, with Holmes and Marple right behind him.

“Jesus,” he muttered. The room was smaller than the space that had held the prisoners. Everything here was clean, precise, pristine. Unlike the steel lining of the pit, the walls and floor here were covered in gleaming white tile. Huge vents passed through the walls at the back of the room, and a powerful hum came from the outside.

“There’s your heavy-duty air cleaning,” said Grey.

“And that’s the reason,” said Poe, pointing at two large steel bins against the wall. They were about the size of oil drums, coated in plastic. Flexible orange ducts led from the tight-fitting bin lids to the wall vents.

Holmes sniffed. “Acid baths.”

“Just big enough for a body,” said Marple.

“Bodyparts,” said Grey.

Poe looked around to take in the whole room. “This is the skeleton factory.”

Two stainless-steel tables rested on pedestals in the center of the room. Openings at the base of each table were connected to drains in the floor. Rolling hospital carts alongside each table held an assortment of surgical instruments. Pliers. Clamps. Saws.

Holmes walked to the corner of the room and opened the door to a large stall shower. “They cleaned up down here, before transferring the bones to the subway tunnel.”

“But why?” asked Grey.

“They were following a pattern,” said Poe. “A protocol somebody else set.”

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