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beam placed next to it.
    “Do you guys see this?”
    “Those are brand new,” Johnson said. “Jesus Christ .”
    Nathan stepped over the broken jugs and rusted metal scattered over the dirt floor. The tunnel continued another fifty feet then sharply turned left. The confined space gradually widened into a circular room, its dimensions no larger than six by ten. The room was dug into the earth and had support beams scattered throughout. In the far corner, rickety old chairs stood around a corroded metal contraption covered with cobwebs and a few eight-legged residents.
    “Is that what I think it is?” Nathan pointed his light at the haggard-looking device.
    “Yep,” Johnson answered. “An old distilling apparatus. Probably from the 1920s or ’30s.”
    “Emilie said the bank was built over an original foundation,” Chris said. “Guess we know how the owners paid the bills.”
    “So where’s our guy?” Dust particles swam in the eerie glow of Nathan’s tactical light as he moved around the room.
    “There,” Johnson said. “Go back to the right.”
    Three tactical lights honed in on a smaller tunnel not much larger than a crawl space. The dirt around it had been disturbed. An impression roughly the size of a human body was visible.
    “Where do you think that goes?” Chris asked.
    Johnson pointed his light at him. “You’re the skinniest. Go. And be careful.”
    “Damn.” Chris edged inside. “You should see the size of the cockroaches in here.”
    He disappeared. “This thing goes twenty or thirty feet. Hold on.”
    “What do you see?” Johnson knelt down and peered into the hole.
    “Looks like an old sewer pipe. Not being used any more, thank God. Wait. There’s an old, homemade hatch on the pipe. And it’s open.”
    “You got a visual?” Nathan wished he could see into the tunnel.
    “Not very far, but there’s no one in sight.”
    “Are you telling me this bastard is running loose in the sewers?” Johnson said.
    “No.” Chris backed out of the hole wiping the grime off his fatigues. He stood up and pulled off his mask. His face was pale. “Pipe’s been refurbished. I could see the code on the side. It’s part of the drains.”
    “You’re kidding me. The tunnels?” Nathan knew of the storm drain horror stories. Sprawling hundreds of miles beneath the city, the tunnels housed addicts, criminals, and the downtrodden. Few cops dared to venture inside.
    “Yeah. He’s in the wind now. How did he find out about this?”
    Johnson was on the radio again. “Vice is going to head into the nearest drainage ditch and see what they can find. We’ll be joining them.”
    Nathan took a last look around the antechamber. The amount of research and planning that must have gone into the endeavor was staggering. A lot of time had to have been spent in the dugout tunnel securing the area. The path was a bank robber’s wet dream, but Nathan would bet a hundred bucks Joe had never known it existed.
    “The partner planned this with the intention of kidnapping Emilie,” Nathan said. “Joe never had a clue, or they would have left hours ago.”
    “Why didn’t the partner take Davis before we came in?” Johnson asked. “Why wait until we had a chance to catch him? And why leave her after all the effort?”
    “I don’t know,” Nathan answered. “Some part of his plan must have gone wrong. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
    “I’ll tell the captain. Let’s go.”
    Back inside the dim storage room, Nathan walked over to another SWAT officer. “Where’s Emilie?”
    “In the hallway with Detective Douche-bag.”
    “Avery. Christ. “ Nathan made his way over to where Emilie was sitting on the bottom stair. All of the bravado he’d heard over the phone was gone. Her head was down. Her scraped, shaking arms clutched her small frame. Her entire body was turned away from Avery.
    Nathan stepped forward and spoke softly. “Emilie?”
    Slowly, she raised her head. Most of her wavy hair had