The Shadow Project

Chapter Sixty

Adam O’Connor was cackling like a lunatic as Pelham paced the vault with the radio in his fist.

‘What do you mean, he’s gone?’ The man’s composure had slipped away completely, and he was shouting in rage.

‘He isn’t here,’ said the woman’s voice through the spitting static.

‘How could he have got out?’

‘I don’t know,’ she replied.

Pelham yelled into the radio, ‘I want him found!’

‘Go for it, son,’ Adam giggled to himself. ‘We’ll show these bastards.’

Pelham threw the radio down and stormed over to him. ‘Oh, you think this is funny, do you, Adam?’

‘The look on your face,’ Adam laughed at him. ‘You should see yourself right now. Your little world is just falling down around you. How’re you going to explain this to your boss, asshole?’

‘Laugh at this,’ Pelham said. He reached his hand across his chest, pulled out the pistol that he wore under his jacket and cocked the action with a sound that rang around the stone walls. He aimed it in Adam’s face. His jaw tightened.

‘Shoot me then, jerkoff,’ Adam taunted him. ‘Let’s see you make the machine work after I’m dead.’

The gun wavered.

‘I’m all you’ve got,’ Adam went on, waving his arms like a wild man. ‘You’re not going to shoot me.’

‘Wrong,’ Pelham said. He dropped his arm eighteen inches and squeezed the trigger. The pistol flashed and boomed in his hand.

Adam felt his leg get kicked out from under him and collapsed to the concrete floor, clutching his thigh. The blood began to pump out through his fingers. He pressed hard, desperately trying to stem the flow. He felt no pain, not yet. But he knew it would come. ‘You shot me,’ he mumbled in shock.

Pelham stood over him with the smoking pistol dangling loose at his side. ‘I could have shattered the femur or split the artery and made you bleed to death,’ he said calmly over Adam’s screams. ‘Next time I will. Get on your feet. Let’s try this again.’

Rory twisted frantically away as Ivan’s mouth sought his. He felt the material of his sweater rip in the man’s fingers. Backed away against the wall, bewildered and hurt. He’d thought until this moment that Ivan was his friend. Suddenly he was alone again.

Ivan came at him, and Rory lashed blindly out with his foot. The kick caught Ivan squarely in the groin. Rory stood rooted in horror for a second as Ivan dropped the torch and fell to his knees with both hands clapped over his testicles and his eyes rolling back in agony. The boy grabbed up the fallen flashlight, turned and ran as hard as he could back up the winding staircase. He could hear Ivan’s cries of pain and rage echoing up the carved-out shaft. Rory kept running like the wind. After what seemed like just a few seconds he could hear Ivan giving chase. He burst out of the mouth of the stairway and out into the lamplit corridor. He was lost now, his breath rasping in his ears, his heart in his mouth, no idea where to turn. The sole was flapping off his right trainer from where the kick to Ivan’s groin had torn it half away from the shoe’s upper. He pulled the shoe off and tossed it aside.

He could hear Ivan’s running footsteps behind him, but a quick glance over his shoulder told him the man was out of sight down the twisty passages. Rory came to another junction in the corridor. Big signs on the wall that he couldn’t understand. He turned right and kept going, hobbling on just one shoe for a few more yards until he knew he had to lose that one, too, or risk stumbling and twisting his ankle. He bent down and gripped the toe and heel of the shoe and yanked it off. The floor was cold and hard through his thin socks.

Rory stopped. Backed up a few steps to where he’d passed a round hole in the wall to his right. It was some kind of shaft, big enough for him to crawl into and hide. He shone the torch into the curving tunnel, put his hand to it and felt a breath of air caress his fingers. Maybe it led somewhere, and anywhere was better than here. He quickly climbed into it and started crawling as fast as he could down its length. Rusty metal under his hands and knees, not rock. It was a pipe of some kind, like an air vent, he thought.

And now he could really feel the breeze on his face. Cool, fresh, sweet air.

Air coming in from the outside.