Chapter 4 - The Sixty-Second Escape
The high-pitched electronic chime bounced off the damp brick walls of the tunnel with rhythmic, sickening precision.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Dean’s tactical flashlight snapped toward the heavy iron fire door sixty feet away.
Mounted directly over the industrial magnetic lock was a rectangular steel box with two blinking red LEDs and a digital LED countdown glowing in toxic crimson:
00:58.
"Thermite breach charge," Dean barked, his military training taking over as he grabbed the back of Marcus’s collar.
"They didn't just kidnap Dante. They’re collapsing the hotel’s primary foundation support columns to bury the evidence and take out the entire ballroom above us!"
"There are still four hundred people evacuating that lobby!" Ava screamed, her instincts as a performer instantly warring with raw survival.
"If that blast triggers the high-pressure steam main right above our heads, the entire east wing of the Palmer House collapses into the street!"
"We run!" Marcus yelled, pointing back toward the vertical access ladder leading up to the stage trapdoor.
"Back to the stage! Go!"
"No!" Ava yelled, grabbing Marcus’s wrist and halting him in his tracks.
"Look at the ceiling conduits! The blast radius of an industrial thermite pack will ignite the gas lines running directly beneath the orchestra pit. If you climb that ladder, you’re climbing into an incinerator!"
Dean racked the slide of his pistol again, his jaw set in stone.
"Then we breach the iron door! I’ll shoot the locking mechanism!"
"Are you completely insane?" Ava shouted, stepping right into Dean’s path and shoving his chest with both hands.
"A nine-millimeter bullet into an electronic thermite casing will instantly detonate the magnesium core! You’ll vaporize us before the timer even hits thirty!"
00:44.
The digital numbers flickered, indifferent to their panic.
"Then what’s your brilliant magician plan, Brooks?" Dean roared, veins bulging along his neck.
"Pull a fire extinguisher out of your silk hat?"
"Shut up and let me think!" Ava snapped, her eyes scanning the ceiling, the floor, and the surrounding utility pipes with frantic, hyper-focused speed.
Ava had spent years building escape boxes.
She knew pressure valves.
She knew structural load points.
She knew how to exploit the absolute weakest link in any mechanical enclosure.
Her eyes locked onto an antique cast-iron steam bypass valve painted in chipped industrial yellow, hovering four feet above the concrete floor.
Running parallel to it was a four-inch copper cold-water main that fed the luxury hotel’s decorative fountain in the grand lobby.
00:31.
"Marcus!" Ava commanded, her voice cutting through the rising tide of fear like an executioner’s blade.
"The lock pick set in my boot! The hardened carbon-steel tension wrench! Get it now!"
Marcus dropped to his knees, ripping open the hidden leather sheath sewn into the tongue of Ava’s left riding boot.
He handed her the slender, two-pronged tool.
"Briggs!" Ava shouted, pointing toward the heavy cast-iron wheel of the yellow steam bypass valve.
"You want to save Dante Bellini? You turn that wheel counterclockwise until the pressure needle hits the red zone! Now!"
Dean didn't question her.
He slung his weapon onto its tactical shoulder harness, lunged forward, and seized the iron wheel with both massive, scarred hands.
His muscles tore against his tuxedo jacket as he threw all two hundred and forty pounds of his weight into the frozen, rusted mechanism.
With a horrific, metallic shriek of screaming iron, the valve broke free, spinning counterclockwise.
A deafening roar erupted as superheated steam blasted into the auxiliary pressure chamber.
00:21.
Ava didn't run toward the door.
She sprinted toward the antique freight dumbwaiter shaft set into the brick wall twenty feet behind them—an ancient Victorian brass-caged lift used in the 1920s to transport prohibition liquor between the speakeasy basement and the penthouse suites.
The steel security gate was padlocked with a heavy, rusted master tumbler from 1954.
Ava shoved the tension wrench into the keyway, sliding a diamond-tipped rake pick right alongside it.
Her fingers moved with the blinding, delicate speed of a concert pianist.
Click. Click. Rake. Turn.
The sixty-year-old brass pins inside the cylinder surrendered beneath her touch.
The padlock snapped open.
Ava kicked the brass cage door open with her boot.
"Get in!" she ordered Marcus, shoving him bodily into the tight, two-person elevator carriage.
00:12.
Dean was still wrenching the steam valve, the dial trembling violently at five hundred pounds per square inch.
"Brooks! The pipe is going to rupture!" Dean yelled over the screaming hiss of boiling vapor.
"That’s the point!" Ava screamed back, leaping onto the edge of the dumbwaiter cage.
"The cold water main runs right over the thermite pack! When the steam line blows, the thermal shock will fracture the copper water conduit directly onto the electronic detonator! The water will short the circuitry before the magnesium sparks!"
Dean released the wheel and sprinted toward them.
00:06.
Dean dove through the air, his massive frame crashing into the tiny brass carriage just as Ava grabbed the manual steel counterweight cable.
She slid her carbon-steel tension wrench through the emergency brake clamp, severing the manual governor.
The dumbwaiter instantly dropped like a stone down the secondary vertical service chute just as the clock ran out.
00:00.
Above them, the universe exploded into a blinding flash of white and orange hellfire.
The over-pressurized steam main blew its cast-iron seams with the force of an artillery shell.
Simultaneously, the fractured four-inch copper cold-water pipe unleashed three thousand gallons of pressurized water directly across the face of the thermite pack.
The detonator let out an agonizing, electric screech as the water flooded its primary motherboards, extinguishing the magnesium fuse before it could reach the secondary plastic explosives.
The shockwave still slammed down the elevator shaft like a tidal wave of scorching air, soot, and pulverized brick dust.
The tiny dumbwaiter cage rattled violently against its steel guide rails, careening down into the secondary sub-basement before grinding to a bone-jarring halt against the rusted emergency spring bumpers.
Silence descended upon the underground cavern.
The only sound left was the steady, echoing drip of ruptured water pipes falling onto the shattered concrete twenty feet above them.
Ava coughed violently, wiping black soot and plaster dust from her cheek with the back of her trembling hand.
She sat up, untangling her legs from Dean’s heavy combat boots.
Dean lay on his back on the floor of the cage, staring up through the steel mesh ceiling into the dark, ruined shaft above.
For three seconds, neither of them spoke.
Then Dean slowly turned his head toward Ava, his dark eyes wide with something dangerously close to awe.
"You used thermodynamic shock to disable a military-grade electronic explosive," Dean whispered, his voice hoarse from inhaling plaster dust.
Ava brushed a strand of dark hair out of her eyes, her lips curling into that same defiant, razor-sharp smirk she had worn on stage.
"I told you, Briggs," Ava murmured, climbing steadily to her feet.
"Magic is just physics with better lighting."
Marcus groaned from the corner of the cage, clutching his bruised shoulder.
"Are we dead?"
"Not yet," Ava said, reaching down and offering her hand to pull Marcus up.
"But Dante Bellini is currently in the hands of a mercenary with an anchor tattooed on his neck, and we have approximately zero police officers who can know about this without starting a city-wide gang war."
Dean stood up, dusting off his ruined tuxedo trousers and retrieving his fallen semi-automatic pistol.
He checked the magazine, snapped it back into the grip with a sharp, professional slap, and looked directly into Ava’s eyes.
"The police don't get called for this," Dean said, his voice returning to its terrifying, quiet authority.
"If the Chicago Police Department finds out Dante has been taken, the Moretti family moves on our northern ports by sunrise, and the streets will run with blood before breakfast."
Ava folded her arms over her black silk waistcoat.
"Then you have a very large problem, Mr. Briggs."
Dean shook his head slowly, his eyes locking onto Ava’s with deadly seriousness.
May you like
"No, Miss Brooks," Dean corrected her softly.
"We have a problem. Because you are the only person alive who mapped out the structural blueprints of this entire block. And right now, you’re the only one who can help me hunt down the man who took my boss."
