Chapter 15 - Under St. Agnes
St. Agnes had been empty for fifteen years, but it still looked ashamed of what it had become.
The orphanage stood behind a rusted fence on a forgotten street where weeds split the pavement and old rowhouses watched with boarded eyes. The chapel roof sagged. Vines climbed the brick. A statue of the Virgin Mary stood near the entrance with one hand broken off, her stone face streaked black from rain and time.
Vincent looked at it from the back seat of the unmarked van.
His mother had brought him here once when he was seven.
He remembered her hand in his hair. Her perfume. Her voice telling him that children deserved soft places.
Three years later, she was dead.
Ten years after that, his father turned her soft place into a tunnel for nightmares.
Harper sat beside him, wearing a black jacket over dark clothes. Her face was pale, but she had refused to stay behind after Lily was moved to a secure federal location with Mrs. Vale.
“I’m not going inside the tunnels,” she had said. “But I’m not leaving you to become an idiot unsupervised.”
Vincent had wanted to argue.
Then Lily had hugged Harper goodbye and whispered, “Make him bring Mom.”
So Harper was here.
Keene led the operation this time. Officially. Quietly. With a small team chosen from outside Baltimore and watched by Caleb’s people from a distance. Celeste had provided maps drawn from memory. The brass key lay in Vincent’s palm like a piece of judgment.
Caleb opened the van door. “Ready.”
Vincent stepped into the cold night.
Harper caught his sleeve before he moved away.
He looked down.
“Remember what I said,” she whispered.
“Which thing?”
“I say a lot of brilliant things under pressure, so that’s fair.” She swallowed. “Crane wants your father. Don’t give him that man.”
Vincent stared at her.
Then he reached into his coat and removed a folded paper.
“What is that?” Harper asked.
“Authorization transferring emergency guardianship authority for Lily to Elena, with financial support independent of Rourke holdings. My lawyers filed it an hour ago.”
Harper’s lips parted.
“If I do not come back,” he said, “Keene has a copy. So does Mrs. Vale.”
“Do not do that.”
“It is done.”
“No.” Her eyes filled suddenly. “Do not hand me paperwork like it’s a goodbye.”
Vincent’s control faltered.
Just once.
He stepped closer, lowering his voice so only she could hear.
“I have been careful with everything except you.”
Harper stopped breathing.
“That is not fair,” she whispered.
“I know.”
“You don’t get to say things like that before walking under a haunted orphanage.”
His mouth almost curved. “When would be better?”
“After.”
“After,” he agreed.
For a moment, they stood too close.
Then Keene called, “Rourke. Move.”
Vincent entered St. Agnes through the chapel crypt with Caleb, Keene, and three federal agents. Harper remained in the command van with the specialist, watching camera feeds through the bodycams.
The tunnels beneath St. Agnes were narrow, brick-lined, and wet. Old pipes ran along the ceiling. The air smelled of mold, rust, and something older.
Vincent moved through them with a gun lowered at his side.
Keene’s voice came over comms. “Left corridor clear.”
Caleb whispered, “Tripwire.”
They stopped.
A thin wire stretched ankle-high across the passage.
Caleb disarmed it.
Beyond the next turn, they found the first green lantern.
Not lit.
Beside it lay a child’s shoe.
Vincent’s face hardened.
Keene looked at him. “Bait.”
“I know.”
They continued.
In the van, Harper watched Vincent’s bodycam feed and tried not to dig her nails through her palms.
The specialist beside her murmured, “Signal interference increasing.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means the deeper they go, the more likely we lose video.”
“Of course it does,” Harper muttered. “Because basements full of crime ghosts also need technical difficulties.”
The feed flickered.
Vincent reached a chamber lined with old metal bedframes. Names had been scratched into the brick walls. Dates. Prayers. Initials.
Harper saw Vincent stop.
His breathing changed.
Keene saw it too. “You okay?”
“No.”
“Can you continue?”
“Yes.”
At the far end of the chamber, a speaker crackled.
Crane’s voice filled the tunnels.
“Welcome home, Vincent.”
Caleb aimed toward the sound.
Vincent did not.
Crane laughed. “Careful. The woman dies if your men get dramatic.”
A monitor flickered on against the wall.
Elena appeared, tied to a chair in what looked like the old chapel basement. Blood marked her hairline, but her eyes were furious.
“Elena,” Vincent said.
Her head lifted.
Through the speaker, Crane said, “Touching. Truly. The dead romance, the stolen child, the little designer with her brave mouth. You’ve become sentimental.”
Vincent’s voice was cold. “Show yourself.”
“In time.”
Keene signaled her team to split.
The feed flickered again.
Harper leaned toward the screen. “No, no, stay with them.”
Crane continued, “Your father understood that love was a leash. Your mother made him weak, so he buried softness where no one would find it. Elena made you weak, so he removed her. Now this Harper girl—”
Vincent fired once.
The speaker exploded.
Keene cursed. “So much for not dramatic.”
Vincent kept walking.
In the van, Harper’s comm crackled.
Then her phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
She looked down.
A message appeared.
He will choose Elena. Men always choose the woman who came first.
Harper went cold.
Another message followed.
Unless you come inside and give him a reason not to.
The command van door handle rattled.
The specialist looked up. “Did you lock—”
The side door ripped open.
A masked man lunged inside.
Harper grabbed the only weapon within reach: a metal thermos full of bad coffee.
She swung with everything she had.
The thermos cracked against his face. He staggered.
The specialist shouted into comms.
Harper scrambled out the opposite door into the cold, but another man grabbed her from behind.
She kicked, twisted, screamed.
Her panic button was gone. Her phone fell into the mud.
The last thing she saw before a cloth pressed over her mouth was the chapel’s broken stained-glass window glowing faintly green.
In the tunnels, Vincent’s earpiece exploded with Caleb’s voice.
“Harper’s van breached!”
Vincent stopped.
The whole tunnel stopped with him.
May you like
Crane’s voice returned through another hidden speaker, soft with victory.
“Now we can begin.”
