The hammering was a brutal, percussive heart beating against the old oak door. Each blow sent a puff of ancient dust sifting down from the boathouse ceiling, sparkling in the faint city light reflecting off the water. BAM. BAM. BAM.

  “Security! Last chance to open up!” Eduardo’s voice, a gravelly lie, echoed down the stairwell.

  Saniz’s blood felt like ice slurry in his veins. The silver lighthouse key bit into his palm. The map was a fragile ghost in his other hand. They were cornered rats in a brick cage, and the terriers were at the door.

  Carmela didn’t freeze. Her mind was a sparking circuit board, options flashing and dying. She grabbed Saniz’s arm and dragged him deeper into the shadows, away from the open water and the staircase. They crouched behind the massive, tarpaulin-draped skeleton of an old wooden dinghy on a repair cradle.

  “The shutter’s too loud,” she breathed, her words barely audible over the next thunderous blow from above. A splintering crack sounded. The door was giving. “They’d be on us before it was half-open.”

  “The water?” Saniz whispered, eyeing the black, oily Thames.

  “In November? You’d last three minutes before hypothermia seized you. And they’d see you. Or shoot you.” Her eyes darted around the cluttered space, hunting for a weapon, a hiding place, a miracle.

  BAM-CRACK! The sound was final. The lock had shattered. They heard the door swing open and smash against the inner wall. Heavy footsteps pounded onto the wooden landing at the top of the stairs.

  “Lights!” Eduardo barked.

  A powerful torch beam, brutal and white, lanced down the staircase, sweeping across the boathouse floor. It illuminated the workbenches, the tools, the open wooden box on the coffee table. It paused there.

  “They’re here. Been here recently.” It was the weasel-faced man’s voice.

  The beam began to search, methodically, like a prison searchlight. It crawled over the stacked crates, slid across the sofa, probed the corners. Saniz pressed himself lower behind the dinghy’s hull. He could smell old tar, damp wood, and his own fear.

  Carmela’s hand tightened on his wrist. She pointed with her chin, a tiny gesture, towards the back wall. Among the clutter was an old, cast-iron stove, its pipe rusted and disconnected. Next to it, half-hidden by a faded sail, was a low, dark opening—a coal chute, perhaps, or an old utility hatch.

  The torch beam swept towards their hiding place. It climbed the draped tarpaulin, illuminating the fabric’s folds. In seconds, it would crest the hull and find them.

  Now.Saniz didn’t think.He moved. Scrambling on hands and knees, he and Carmela scuttled like crabs across the open floor towards the back wall. The torch beam passed over the space they’d vacated a heartbeat later.

  “Check behind the boat!” Eduardo commanded from the landing. Footsteps began to descend the stairs—cautious, heavy.

  Saniz reached the hatch first. It was a square of rusted iron set into the brick at floor level, about two feet across. A simple latch held it shut. He fumbled with it, his fingers numb. The latch was stiff, seized with age and river damp.

  Carmela crowded behind him, her back to him, watching the approaching light. “Hurry,” she hissed.

  The footsteps reached the bottom of the stairs. Two pairs. Eduardo and the weasel. The bald one was probably guarding the exit above.

  The torch beam fixed on the workbench, on the open box. “Boss ain’t gonna like this,” the weasel said. “They cracked it.”

  “Then they can’t be far. Find them.” Eduardo’s voice was a low growl. “I want that map.”

  Saniz put all his strength into the latch. With a shriek of protesting metal, it yielded. The hatch door sagged inwards an inch. A smell of dank earth and stagnant water wafted out.

  The torch beam left the workbench and began its methodical search again, coming closer. It lit up the sail covering the stove.

  Carmela turned, saw the open hatch, and her eyes widened. She nodded fiercely.

  Saniz pulled the hatch fully open. Beyond was not a tunnel, but a sheer drop into absolute blackness. The sound of dripping water echoed up from below. A rusted iron ladder was bolted to the side, descending into the pit.

  No time to weigh the unknown danger below against the certain danger behind.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  “Go!” Carmela whispered, shoving him.

  Saniz went feet first, gripping the cold, wet rungs of the ladder. The lighthouse key and the map were stuffed hastily into his inner pocket. He descended into the consuming dark. Above, he saw Carmela’s silhouette against the dim light of the boathouse as she followed, pulling the hatch closed behind her with a soft, final thud.

  The world became a symphony of drips, their own ragged breathing, and the scrape of their shoes on rusty iron. They climbed down maybe fifteen feet, the air growing colder, denser. Saniz’s foot finally touched not water, but a slimy, uneven stone floor.

  He stepped off the ladder. Carmela landed softly beside him. They stood in pitch darkness, listening.

  Muffled sounds came from above. Angry voices. The crash of something being overturned. Eduardo’s roar of frustration. “They’re gone! A hatch! Here!”

  A blade of white light stabbed down as the hatch was flung open above. It illuminated the top of the ladder and a circle of the wet floor, missing them by feet. They were pressed against a slimy wall, out of the direct line of sight.

  “You! Down there!” Eduardo shouted, his voice echoing in the chamber.

  Saniz held his breath. Carmela’s hand found his in the dark, her grip vicelike.

  They heard a grunt, the sound of a large man trying to fit his shoulders into the narrow opening. “It’s a tight squeeze, Ed.”

  “Then squeeze, you idiot! They can’t have gotten far!”

  There was a scrabbling sound. A boot appeared on the top rung of the ladder, silhouetted against the light. The weasel was coming down.

  This was it. The trap was sprung. They were in a hole with one exit, and it was being blocked.

  Carmela tugged Saniz’s hand. She began to move, pulling him along the wall, away from the ladder. He followed blindly, his free hand outstretched, feeling the cold, wet stone. The floor was treacherous, slick with God-knew-what, littered with loose stones.

  The weasel was halfway down the ladder now, his torch pointing down, starting to sweep the floor.

  Carmela stopped. Saniz felt her hand patting the wall frantically. Then he felt it too—a current of cooler air. A draft. Not from above, but from the side. His fingers found a gap in the masonry, a vertical crack that widened into a low, arched opening—a forgotten drainage culvert, perhaps, leading out under the wharf.

  The weasel’s torch beam swept across the floor towards their feet.

  Without a word, they dropped to their hands and knees and crawled into the opening. It was a tight fit, a tube of rough brick just wide enough to shimmy through. The smell was foul—centuries of tidal flush and decay. They crawled, the sound of their movement masked by the weasel’s clumsy descent and his shouted updates to Eduardo.

  The tunnel bent, then began to slope downwards. The brick gave way to crumbling mortar and earth. Then, ahead, a different light—not electric, but the faint, grey gloom of night reflecting on water. And the sound of the river grew louder.

  The tunnel ended, spilling out just above the waterline on the other side of the wharf building, hidden by a thicket of rusted pilings and rotting timbers. They were on a narrow, submerged ledge. The Thames lapped a few inches below their feet, cold and hungry.

  They crouched there, gasping, coated in slime and filth. They could hear the shouts from inside the boathouse, now muffled and distant. They had slipped the noose. For now.

  Carmela looked at Saniz, her face a pale smudge in the gloom. She started to laugh, a silent, hysterical shaking of her shoulders. He felt the same wild urge. They were alive. They had the clue. They were free.

  The laugh died in her throat as a new sound reached them. Not from the boathouse, but from the river itself. A low, smooth purr of a well-tuned marine engine.

  Around the bend of the wharf, a boat glided into view. It was a sleek, black rigid-hulled inflatable, the kind used by special forces and private security. It moved without running lights, a shadow on the water. Two figures were silhouetted in it. One was at the helm. The other stood at the bow, scanning the banks with night-vision goggles.

  The boat slowed, its nose pointing directly towards their hiding place among the pilings. The standing figure raised a hand, and the engine cut to a whisper. The boat drifted silently, a stone’s throw away.

  Saniz and Carmela pressed themselves back into the crumbling brick, trying to become part of the wall. The figure with the goggles slowly panned across the waterfront. The lenses stopped. They were pointed right at the thicket of timbers that concealed them.

  The figure lowered the goggles. Even in the poor light, Saniz could see the sharp, analytical profile, the calm posture.

  It was Carlos Mendez.

  He hadn’t been hammering at doors or chasing through tunnels. He had been waiting. Watching the only other exit with cold, technological patience. While Alonso’s thugs had provided the noise and the chaos, Carlos had been the silent net, laid downstream.

  Carlos raised a small walkie-talkie to his lips. His voice, calm and clear, carried over the still water.

  “The rabbits have bolted from the warren. East side, by the old pilings. They’re in the water.”

  He wasn’t talking to Eduardo. He was talking to someone else. A new player.

  From further down the river, another engine answered—a deeper, throatier growl. Another boat, larger, its outline blocky and official, swung into view, its spotlight flicking on, a blinding eye searching the darkness.

  The police. Or river patrol.

  Carlos had not come to kidnap or threaten. He had come to apply pressure of a different, more legal kind. To flush them into the open with one enemy, so they could be scooped up by another.

  Saniz looked at the cold, deep water. He looked at the crumbling ledge. He looked at Carmela, her eyes wide with the understanding of their new, more sophisticated trap.

  They were caught between the devil in the boat and the deep blue law.

  Carlos’s boat began to glide closer, its electric motor a sinister hum. The patrol boat’s spotlight swept closer, painting the pilings in stark white relief.

  Saniz’s hand went to his inner pocket, feeling the outline of the silver key and the brittle parchment. They had solved Alara’s first riddle. Now they were faced with a more immediate one:

  How do you disappear when you’re surrounded by water, light, and cold, calculating eyes?