Chapter 8
The entrance to the old municipal drainage culvert lay hidden behind a tangle of dry tumbleweeds and concrete debris at the base of the quarry embankment. Jax used a heavy-duty tactical flashlight pulled from his saddlebag to cut a sharp beam of white light into the rusted corrugated pipe that descended at a steep thirty-degree angle into the earth. The air pouring out of the opening smelled of damp concrete, stagnant water, and ancient rust.
Jax paused at the threshold, pulling a thick pair of leather work gloves from his belt and sliding them over his scarred knuckles. He looked down at Leo, whose teeth were now clicking together softly from the chill.
“Take my hand,” Jax said, extending a massive, calloused palm. “And whatever you do, don't let go. If you slip in the sludge down there, we’ll spend half the night fishing you out of a septic main.”
Leo didn't hesitate. He slipped his small, freezing hand into Jax’s grip, feeling the rough leather and the hard bone beneath. Together, they ducked their heads and stepped out of the desert wind into the suffocating darkness of the underground pipe.
The descent was steep and slick with decades of fine silt washed down by rare desert flash floods. Their boots crunched on fragments of broken glass and rusted bottle caps left behind by transients who had used the culvert as shelter during the winter months. The beam of Jax’s flashlight bounced wildly off the corrugated metal walls, casting long, writhing shadows that stretched out ahead of them like grasping fingers.
After ten minutes of careful, sliding descent, the metal pipe opened up into a massive rectangular brick junction box where two secondary feeder lines converged beneath the foundations of the county courthouse. The sound of water dripping from overhead pipes echoed off the masonry, mixing with the dull, rhythmic thrum of industrial air-conditioning units vibrating through the concrete ceiling above.
Jax stopped, shining his light upward toward a heavy iron maintenance hatch set into the brickwork ceiling. A thick steel chain and a padlock secured the hatch shut, but the mortar around the frame was crumbling and soft from decades of dampness.
“This is it,” Jax whispered, keeping his voice low as the muffled sound of footsteps echoed from somewhere far above them in the courthouse hallways. “The old boiler room auxiliary access. From here, we crawl through the steam pipe chase straight into the sub-basement holding cells.”
Leo looked up at the rusted iron hatch, his small chest rising and fell with a steady, determined rhythm. “Is Momma right above us?”
“Just past the boiler room,” Jax replied, lifting his heavy frame to inspect the crumbling mortar with the edge of a flathead screwdriver he had pulled from his pocket. “Keep quiet, stay behind my shoulder, and if anyone asks you what you're doing, you tell 'em you're looking for your lost dog. Understand?”
Leo nodded tightly, his hazel eyes reflecting the white beam of the flashlight.
Jax wedged the flathead screwdriver into the soft mortar alongside the iron frame of the hatch. With a slow, steady application of leverage and body weight, he began to chip away the crumbling brick without making a metallic ring that could carry up into the building above. Chunks of gray dust and dry clay rained down onto his shoulders, but he didn't pause. His muscles strained beneath the heavy leather vest as he forced the tool deeper into the joint, working the iron frame back and forth until the entire assembly shifted with a dull, subterranean groan.
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With one final, heavy heave, the rusted anchor bolts snapped free from the masonry. The hatch dropped inward three inches, hanging sideways by a single bent hinge. A wave of warm, stale air smelling of floor wax, chlorine, and institutional laundry rushed down into the dark tunnel.
They had made it inside.
