Detective Danny Cavanaugh 01 - The Brink

after them , Danny thought. Not only was he outnumbered, but whoever was down here, they knew their route where he would be flying blind.
    Danny hiked back to the main sewer tunnel and then sprinted through the soggy mess until he came to the L’Enfant station access ladder. He climbed up it and pulled himself out into the station, where Luther was waiting for him.
    “I heard gunshots. Are you okay?”
    Danny nodded while he caught his breath. “Yeah, I’m fine. Listen, can you contact the agents who investigated the gas attack?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Call them and tell them you have a security situation.”
    “What do I do once they’re here?”
    Danny pointed to the sewer grate. “Tell them to investigate the sewers. The first utility corridor access pipe north of Independence Avenue; someone punched a hole in the corridor’s wall and gained access to the Capitol escape tunnels.”
    “How’d you know about the escape tunnels?”
    “Who do you think sent me down here, Luther?” Danny paused as the revelation nearly knocked the wind out of him. The president was the only one who knew he was coming here.
    “Sergeant, you okay?” Luther asked.
    “Yeah. You got a cell phone?”
    “Do dogs have fleas? ’Course I do.”
    “Let’s exchange numbers.” They did, Luther writing Danny’s down, and Danny only needing to hear Luther’s once.
    “Who shot at you?” Luther asked.
    “Don’t know. Hopefully, we’ll find out once the agents do their thing.” Danny stared into Luther’s eyes. “Luther, whatever you do, don’t give the agents details over the phone. Keep them in the dark until they get down here. Just tell them it’s a security situation, that’s all.”
    “Why?”
    “Because I need some time.”
    “Time for what?”
    Danny thought about the timing of the next events. He should be arriving at the White House just as FBI and TSA agents swarmed L’Enfant Plaza. “Time to question my only suspect.”

Chapter 86
    Someone must have seen us. Someone must be coming.
    The calm look on Speakes’s face gave Sydney her answer. He had been waiting for her with a gun. A Secret Service agent was also hiding inside his office, ready to subdue her. Speakes had tied up all the loose ends.
    They had proceeded past a thick steel door and had been walking down a darkened concrete hallway for a full minute now. A little more than a hundred feet in front of her, the hallway split into five different directions.
    Wherever they were going, Sydney knew it might be the last place she would ever see. She had to think fast. If it was just she and Speakes, she might have been able to overpower him. But it wasn’t. Her hands had been bound together with a plastic zip-tie, and she was sandwiched between Speakes and the muscled Secret Service agent.
    They were now fifty feet from the intersection. Sydney figured they were moving away from the White House. She pictured the park across Pennsylvania Avenue, where the green pup tents were. Could they be underneath it? The memory of Danny exploding from the tent in his underwear and grabbing onto her stung Sydney. Danny has to find me . She concentrated on the five smaller hallways in front of her. The most important question dawned on her.
    How can I let Danny know where they’ve taken me?
    Sydney looked down at her hands. She felt useless with them bound together. She balled them up in tight fists and applied as much pressure to the bands around her wrists as she could. It was no use. Then, looking at her bandaged palms, Sydney had an idea. Leave Danny a trail of breadcrumbs.
    She could stain the pathway through the hallways with her blood. But how would she get the blood flowing? She thought about the acting that she had performed so far. She could act once more, couldn’t she? Speakes and the agent wouldn’t blame her if she started crying. They probably expected her to. She’s just a poor, scared girl after all, they would think. So, Sydney gave it to them. She began to sniffle and then she put her palms to her face. To make herself cry, Sydney recalled Knobby’s details about her parents’ death.
    “Speakes rammed their car and pushed it off the bridge into the river. The impact crushed the car around your parents. There was no way they could escape.”
    In trying to make herself a better swimmer, Sydney would hold her breath under the water, breaking her previous records again and again. She would stay down, her lungs nibbling on the last bits of air