Dangerous Games Read Free Page B

except for a few scribbled, shaky words that trailed off at the end.
                         
    Please help me I don’t want to die down there
     
    This time the money, twice the kidnapper’s initial demand, had been paid. Two million dollars was wire-transferred to a blind account in the Cayman Islands—a different account from the one specified in the first kidnapping, but equally untraceable. Authorities in the Caymans were cooperating, but by now the money had been moved elsewhere, vanishing in a maze of anonymous or pseudonymous accounts.
    Fifteen minutes after the deposit, as the rain began to fall, the mayor’s phone rang. Paula’s recorded voice stated that she was handcuffed to a railing in a side passageway beneath the intersection of Wilshire and Vermont. The tunnels were flooding when the rescue team entered. They got close enough to see the victim before surging water forced them back. When the storm cleared, Paula’s body was found, still manacled to the handrail.
    And today—Monday, January 10—Angela’s body had been found as well, washed out of the drainage lines by the same downpour. Perhaps out of the very passageway through which Tess was maneuvering now.
    She arrived at the junction of two pipelines and beamed her light along the wider, intersecting passageway. Faintly she heard the rumble of traffic overhead. People were commuting home from work, listening to the car radio, talking on their cells, oblivious to the labyrinth below.
    “It’s a whole other world down here,” she said.
    She took a step forward, intending to explore the larger passageway. Crandall grabbed her arm.
    “This really is not safe,” he said.
    “Afraid we’ll run into the mutant mole people?”
    “Who the fuck knows what we’ll run into?”
    “You’re shaking.” He didn’t answer. “Crandall, are you claustrophobic?”
    “Maybe a little.”
    “You should’ve said something.”
    “I was too busy panicking.” He forced a nervous laugh.
    “Retreat,” Tess said.
    “Look, I can handle it. I mean, it’s not that bad.”
    She smiled. All of a sudden he was being brave. “I’ve seen enough,” she said. “Anyway, we don’t want to be late.”
    “Right. We definitely don’t.”
    She was about to turn back when a prickling sense of dread stopped her. “Wait,” she said, her voice dropping to a whisper.
    She wasn’t sure what had signaled her attention. Then she heard a faint, solitary splash in the darkness of the intersecting tunnel.
    Instinctively she cupped her flashlight. Crandall covered his, as well.
    They listened. Another splash. Closer.
    Someone was in there, coming this way.
    Crandall unholstered his gun. It seemed like a good idea. Tess reached into her coat pocket and drew her 9mm. Before terrorism had become a chronic worry, she would have stowed it in her checked baggage. These days federal agents were encouraged to carry their weapons while flying.
    Another splash, closer than before.
    She tried to estimate the odds that the stranger was somebody genuinely dangerous, somebody like the man they were after. On the one hand, Crandall had been right in saying that the drainage system was huge. There was little chance of encountering the killer by accident. On the other hand, serial offenders were known to return to the scene of the crime. Hearing that Angela Morris had been recovered nearby, the killer might have come here to retrace the route her body had taken.
    Or it could be just a Department of Water and Power maintenance man. But she didn’t think so. A maintenance worker would have carried a flashlight. He wouldn’t be sloshing around in the dark.
    Tess raised her penlight, holding it away from herself and Crandall. If the beam drew fire, she wanted the shots to go wide.
    “FBI!” she called out. “Identify yourself.”
    No answer. No further splashing. Silence.
    “Identify yourself!” she shouted again, the command coming back to her in a flurry of echoes.
    “I’m