Chapter 6 - Hunted in the Concrete Labyrinth
The afternoon sky was the color of bruised tin. Snow began to fall again, heavy, wet flakes that stuck to Lily’s eyelashes and turned the cuffs of her sweatpants into freezing sodden rings around her ankles.
She had four dollars in her pocket—change she had found tucked into the lining of an old sofa in the service hall. It was enough for one slice of cheap pizza and a single subway fare. But she couldn't take the subway. The subway was where Marcus would look.
She walked toward the meatpacking district, where the vents from the industrial kitchens pumped warm, grease-scented air into the gutters. Her teeth were chattering so hard her jaw ached. Her bare hands had turned the mottled purple-white of raw chicken.
"Well, well. Look what crawled out of the penthouse."
The voice came from the recessed doorway of an abandoned warehouse on 14th Street.
Lily spun around, her heart seizing.
Two men stepped out of the shadow. Neither was Marcus, but she recognized one of them—a wiry, hollow-cheeked man named Doyle who hung around Marcus’s house in Queens, running numbers and smoking cheap cigars on the porch. Beside him was a larger man in a greasy leather jacket, holding a burning cigarette in yellowed fingers.
"Marcus said you'd bolt," Doyle sneered, taking a slow step toward her, his hands tucked deep into his pockets. "Said a stray mutt can't stay in a warm house for more than twenty-four hours without getting scared of the rug. You cost us a lot of money today, Lillian."
Lily backed away, but her heel hit the curb. "Stay away from me, Doyle."
"We got a car around the corner," the big man said, his voice like gravel grinding under a boot. "The lawyer says Marcus can't get the billionaire’s settlement unless he has physical custody of the runaway. The state needs to see you in the house when the inspectors come to verify the 'family unit.' Then, once the billionaire pays the two million to get rid of the headache... well, Marcus says you can have an unfortunate accident in the river. No more checks needed after that."
Lily didn't scream. Screaming in Manhattan was useless—people simply put on their headphones and walked faster.
She grabbed a rusted iron pipe section leaning against a construction barrier and swung it with all the leverage in her ninety-pound frame.
The pipe struck Doyle’s shin with a hollow *thunk*.
Doyle screamed in pain, dropping to one knee on the icy pavement. "Get the little bitch!" he howled.
The big man lunged. Lily ducked under his reach, her small size saving her, and scrambled into the dark, narrow slit between two brick tenements—a gap no wider than two feet, choked with garbage bags and discarded pallets.
"Lily!" the big man roared, his broad shoulders jamming between the brick walls. "You can't hide in there forever! There's no way out at the end, kid!"
Lily crawled through the frozen slime, her fingernails tearing against rough brick. He was right. Thirty yards ahead, the alley ended in a twelve-foot concrete retaining wall topped with rusted security wire.
She was trapped.
She backed into the deepest corner, behind three stacked wooden pallets, pulled her knees to her chest, and covered her head. The cold was moving into her chest now, dulling the terror, replacing it with a heavy, sweet numbness.
May you like
*Ethan,* she thought, her vision blurring as the sleet fell through the gap between the buildings. *At least Ethan is warm.*
***
