Chapter 5 - Ash and Alibis
"Tear gas," Victoria coughed, ripping a strip of silk from the hem of her gown and pressing it against Clara’s nose and mouth. "Breathe through this. Only through this!"
The elevator was turning into a gas chamber. Julian wasn’t trying to retrieve the child anymore; he was trying to flush them out like vermin into the basement staging area where his men were waiting.
Victoria kicked the manual override latch on the lower side hatch—an old fire exit leading into the maintenance tunnels that connected the hotel to the city subway system. The latch resisted, rusted solid by decades of neglect. She struck it with the butt of the revolver once, twice, until the iron bar gave way with a sharp screech.
Tumbling through the narrow opening, Victoria pulled Clara down onto the damp gravel of the drainage trench. Her evening gown was ruined, soaked in filthy runoff, the brilliant beads tearing loose and scattering into the dark like dropped pearls.
Above them, the elevator floor erupted in flames as an incendiary canister detonated inside the cabin.
"Keep moving," Victoria wheezed, her lungs burning from the caustic fumes. She grabbed Clara’s hand, pulling her through the narrow, arched brick tunnel.
They ran until the roar of the hotel’s generators faded, replaced by the low, rhythmic hum of subway lines vibrating through the wet earth. When they finally reached an iron ladder leading up to street level, Victoria stopped under a dim ventilation grating.
She checked the cylinder of the revolver: three rounds left.
Clara looked up at her through the gloom, her face smudged with soot, but her hazel eyes remained terrifyingly lucid. She held up the brass key numbered 404.
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"The man said this key belongs to the locker at the old harbor station," Clara said. "He said Mama left the real ledger there. The one that proves what you and your husband did twelve years ago."
Victoria froze on the rung of the ladder, looking down at the child whose very existence was a death sentence for them both.
