Never Go Alone Read online

  “Get me in on Rory’s next big thing. Whatever he’s planning.”

  “How am I supposed to do that?”

  “Give him the sell. He listens to you.”

  Mona shrugged without commitment. She stood up and walked to the edge of the container, where she kneeled down and swung off the edge, rolling into a controlled fall on top of the container below.

  “Mona!” Jake yelled after her.

  Mona wouldn’t turn to face him. She had tears in her eyes. As she continued to descend off the pile of shipping containers, the world around her was a blur. Still processing what she had just learned, the cross currents were tremendous. She hated him now. It was easier to hate him once she’d started caring for him. She should do what he said—cooperate. But . . . But no. That wasn’t her. It was the opposite of what she stood for. Her interactions with the government had always turned out poorly, and she was positive this time would be no different. Even if he did have a cute face and blond hair and she’d enjoyed sleeping next to him. Even if . . . she loved him.

  “Mona!” Jake screamed from above. She was gaining distance, only a few seconds from reaching the surface of the barren oil depot below.

  “What?” she yelled without turning.

  “Let me help you!”

  She finally stopped. “Let’s say I get Rory to take you on the heist. Then what? What happens after that?”

  “We bust him.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You just said you hate the man.”

  “Nothing’s black and white, Jake. He might not be good. But he stands for something good. Can you dig it?”

  Jake very much did understand that concept. In fact, if there was one criticism leveled at him, it was the same exact one. He tried another tact. “Even if you go down with the ship?” Jake asked.

  She shrugged him off, rotating and walking along the piping.

  ▪

  Mona stepped onto the street and began to jog away from Jake, speeding up significantly. She took her first left into a tight alleyway—industrial brick walls on both sides. Her pace had forced them both into a dead sprint at this point.

  As Mona raced down the alleyway, a large black blur materialized in front of her. An SUV appeared at the end of the alleyway and stopped. Unsure of the driver’s intentions, Mona slowed. The car’s backseat window rolled down, and the distinctive features of Stian Ziros glared out. The door opened. Ziros stepped out of the vehicle.

  Jake sprinted towards Mona, locking eyes with Stian—who began to raise a pistol into the air. Jake dove forward and pulled Mona out of the way. They fell headfirst onto the cement, protected by a small stoop.

  “Who’s that?” Mona asked.

  “Bad news,” Jake replied. Jake glanced back where they’d come from. Another black car was slowly creeping down the alleyway. Cornered.

  “Hey, Jake! Let her out and I might allow her to live!” Ziros yelled out, his sinister words echoing through the alleyway. “But do know this, sir. If you go to your people? She’s dead, man.”

  Just a few feet from Jake was a sewer cover. He glanced at it. “Can we go in there?” he asked Mona. She nodded nervously, scrambling for a tool in her backpack. She pulled out a manhole cover key and handed it to Jake.

  “Elite status,” Jake grinned. He inserted the tool into the lid and pulled. The steel manhole cover slowly rose from the ground. The two of them piled in.

  Just a moment later, the rapid staccato of semi-automatic gunfire rang out all around the stoop. Two of Ziros' men approached the dumpster in tactical formation, pulling up when they saw that Jake and Mona were no longer there.

  “Not here,” they yelled. “The sewers!”

  Back at the SUV, Ziros opened the back door to his car and barked an order. Within seconds, Emanuel Vipa hopped out of the car—holding his own sewer key.

  ▪

  Mona and Jake pushed through the sewer. It wasn’t a main. It was the smaller variety, and they both had to duck and crouch to proceed through the maze. Every once in a while, the loud vibration of a subway car passing made them feel like an earthquake was erupting. They eventually came to the end of the sewer pipe—where it deposited into the main. A small stream of water spilled from a drain at the top of the main, and a ladder led upwards. Jake climbed it. He found the drain’s grate could be easily pushed out. He and Mona climbed through the eight feet of bedrock that separated the drain from the subway line and into the dark subway tunnel itself. They began to walk towards the glow of a station entrance, a few hundred yards away.

  “I’ve seen that guy before,” Mona said.

  “The Nordic one?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where?”

  “Rory had pictures of him.”

  “His name’s Ziros. He works for Metropolis.”

  “Can you get him arrested?”

  “What does he want with you?”

  “I don’t know . . .” Mona said as she splashed through another puddle on their way to safety.

  “They want you. Not me. They’re not stupid. With me they have no leverage. Just trouble. With you? They got a hook into me . . . and Rory.”

  Just then—a rustling behind them. Jake rotated to find Emanuel staring at him with seething eyes, a pistol in his hand.

  “The girl’s comin’ with me,” Emanuel said.

  Jake knew that in a situation like this, the first strike was critical. It was all about violence of action. Do what the person isn’t expecting, faster than they expect it. And what Emanuel wasn’t expecting, apparently, was to hold a gun and still become the target of a human torpedo.

  Jake launched his body directly at Vipa. He smashed into Emanuel, and the two of them fell against the tracks. The gun instantly dislodged from Emanuel’s grip and clattered into the darkness. The third rail of the subway, flowing with electrical juice, sparked behind Emanuel’s head. Jake held him down, inches from the current, as he turned to Mona.

  “Get outta here!” he yelled.

  Mona sprinted down the subway tunnel.

  Watching Jake track Mona, Emanuel took advantage of the micro-opening. He kicked Jake directly in the crotch. Once. Again. Jake keeled over, losing his balance and falling on top of Emanuel. Having lost his facilities for a moment, Emanuel wrestled with Jake on the ground. That’s when three more men careened through the tunnel. Ziros' goons. They surrounded Jake with rifles at the ready. Emanuel flipped himself on top of Jake, then stood up, keeping his foot positioned directly on Jake’s windpipe.

  “Where is she?” the goon yelled.

  “That way,” Emanuel pointed down the tunnel and Mona’s shadow.

  Jake felt it before he saw it. The vibration. It was another subway train, about to bear down upon them from around the curve. He waited until the lights blew out everyone’s irises, then rolled. He placed one hand to the side of the third rail and rotated over it without pause.

  Emanuel chased after Jake, but wasn’t so cautious. The electricity briefly snagged Emanuel like a thousand stapler shots at once. He was frozen as he mercifully toppled to the ground—still alive, but suffering.

  Two of Ziros' men raced towards the station and Mona. The third had his gun trained on Jake rising off the ground. The man slowly squeezed the trigger while Jake stared deeply into the oblivion of the dark barrel.

  But in that moment, the train finally swooshed between them. Jake ducked, attempting to locate Ziros' man, or Emanuel, but he couldn’t distinguish anything in the dark. The train kept coming—car after car—and there was zero that Rivett could do about it.

  And once the train had passed completely, there was no one standing on the other side of the track. Not even Mona. He thought he heard screaming, but maybe it was just the screeching of brakes. He couldn’t be sure. All he knew was that the world was falling down around him.

  TWENTY-TWO

  IT TOOK RIVETT LESS THAN a minute to spot the signals boys. It was just a DHL delivery van parked down the street from Rory’s loft,
right? Of course not. What Jake knew—which perhaps the average citizen did not—was that DHL vans do not sit unprotected on the sides of streets overnight. That is, unless they are an undercover listening post run by the New York Police Department. There was even a solid chance that Tony himself was sitting in that van—which meant that Jake had to be doubly careful. Jake didn’t love double dipping, but Stian Ziros had crossed a line that nobody was coming back from. There was no way for Jake to know how deep Metropolis had dug his fingers into the department. And with the mayor sitting on Arthur’s lap, Jake didn’t actually want to know.

  Rivett crossed the street two blocks down from Rory’s place then doubled back into an alley. He glanced up, spotting a channel where Rory’s building met its neighbor. About two feet apart, it would make a difficult-but-possible shimmy. Jake pressed his body into the crevice. He extended his arms and legs out at ninety-degree angles and slowly began to climb vertically. Luckily, the two buildings were only about three stories high. Jake rose from the ground level and carefully pushed higher, using the tension of his body as abrasion. He finally reached the roof. It was a straight shot to Rory’s balcony. Jake strode towards the back of Rory’s residence. He quietly slid over the edge of the steel roof panels. A ladder connected the roof to the balcony. Jake was about to head down when the glass door to the balcony opened. He stopped in his tracks—just a few feet above Rory Visco’s head.

  Rory was on the phone, leaving a message. “Mona, we have a huge problem. Where are you?” Rory steamed.

  Above Rory, Jake felt his hold on the angled roof slipping. He adjusted his position on the slope in an attempt to maintain inertia, but the inevitable occurred. Jake toppled over and slid down the roof. He crashed into the balcony at Rory’s feet.

  Rory didn’t immediately flee. Instead, he grabbed the patio balcony with both hands and simply jumped off. He fell two stories into a garden below. He sprinted towards the other end of the alley.

  Jake couldn’t quite bring himself to fling himself over the balcony like Rory. Instead, he carefully hung from the balcony. Then he dropped down ever so slightly, pivoted, and continued the chase.

  ▪

  The apprentice charged his master down the back streets of Williamsburg before turning south. When Rory hit a dead end in front of an MTA fence, he began climbing. Jake sprinted directly at Rory, watching as he rose.

  Something tugged at Rory’s foot. He glanced down. A piece of chain-link had impaled the sole of his shoe. Rory had to retreat a few feet in order to disengage his shoe.

  That’s when Jake arrived. Impacting the fence like a meteor, the vibration trampolined Rory backward and to the ground. Jake jumped on top of him, extending his elbows to stop the rain of upward blows emanating from Rory.

  It took Rory a few moments before he realized that Jake wasn’t going for the kill. No gun. No badge. No threats. When Rory let up for just a moment, Jake furthered his submission hold.

  “Will you just listen?” Jake muttered through gritted teeth. “You gonna let up? Or do I have to keep you this way?”

  “You’re not taking me in,” Rory seethed.

  Slightly dumbfounded, Jake pulled back. “How’d you know?” Jake asked.

  “Why should I tell you anything? Use anything that I say against me, right? Isn’t that your rule?” Rory said.

  “No,” Jake said. He stepped off Rory. Rory scrambled up and stared—quite perturbed. “Would I let you go if I was gonna arrest you?” Jake asked.

  “So after all that, you’re a blue . . .”

  “Tell me how you know.”

  “Hey dude, she’s a fox,” Rory said. “You did what every man would. But this one bit you.”

  “Mona?”

  Rory shook his head, “No, of course not. Some other chick. Nikki, I think.”

  “Nikki?” Jake said, incredulous.

  “Is this your way of breaking up with me, too? One more nail for old time’s sake, and then the cavalry arrives?”

  “No. But they’re outside your loft. I guarantee you they’ve already wrapped up a tailored-access operation and bugged your place. And the five locations you were prepping? They’re on those too.”

  “Why are you telling me all of this?” Rory asked.

  “Mona,” Jake said. “Metropolis took her.”

  “So what do you think I can do?” Rory expelled.

  “They’re gonna use her—to get you to stop. You’re the prize, Rory. And I know why. Because you’re a nail in that guy’s foot, and you’ve been burrowing for way too long.”

  Rory didn’t say anything.

  “But what I don’t know . . . is you. What’s in your head, man? Why Metropolis? Riskin’ it all for that prick?” Jake noticed Rory’s mouth opening to rebut. “Don’t deny it. Seven hits in a couple months. What’s the point? You can annoy him, but you can’t actually hurt him that way. And there’s a million other people in the city to rob if it’s just money . . .”

  “He’s evil,” Rory said.

  “So what?”

  “He’s a murderer.”

  “Murderer . . . Who’d he murder?” Jake asked.

  “My brother.”

  “I thought he died in the hydra . . .”

  “Will didn’t break his own rules. Go by himself? Drainsled a route he hadn’t spotted? No way.”

  “You don’t have proof . . .” Jake attempted to confirm.

  “A few days before Will disappeared, he told me he’d been approached by some of Arthur’s thugs on the street. The blond one.”

  “Ziros.”

  “They found his body a month later—and now that Will was out of the way? Arthur Metropolis gets his way. Permits start gettin’ approved again with no resistance from the community. Clear as day who benefited from my brother’s death. Every single dollar that I stole . . .” Rory’s voice became heightened as he spoke with passion, “goes to nailing Metropolis.”

  “Yeah. But how, exactly?” Jake asked.

  “The video.”

  “What video?”

  “From Will’s GoPro. When they turned his body and belongings over, the GoPro was there. But the card wasn’t. Whatever’s on that card? It’s the smoking gun.”

  “So the jewels and all that stuff? It was a front.”

  Rory nodded confirmation.

  “But a video? Even if that existed, why would Metropolis keep it?”

  “Look, dude. I don’t know. I just had to look. Don’t even know if it exists. But a guy like that . . . Rumor has it he’s got sex tapes. He’s a voyeur. Maybe he likes to keep his trophies, not destroy them,” Rory said. “What I did find told me more. The city worships Metropolis, but he’s actually the devil. The laptop. You saw it, from the yacht . . . You wouldn’t believe what we found on there. Nik cracked the encryption and we got the mother lode. Wanna know how Metropolis gets his permits approved so quickly? How he can buy up residential zoned row houses and turn ’em into multi-use in six months?”

  “Sure. I’m game.”

  “This guy is bribing people up and down the East Coast. I’m sure he’s been doing it all along, but now it’s his full-on business plan. And all the flashy stuff in the news? Like Whale Square and the Modern? He loses money on those. Yet he’s got abandoned warehouses up in the Bronx that he’s running thirty to forty thousand dollars of profit through a month. If those things are getting rented out for forty thousand dollars a month? Then I’m the Pope almighty. I’ll tell you what’s happening. He and his buddy Ziros are running a straight-up criminal enterprise,” Rory said.

  “Leviathan . . .” Rivett muttered to himself.

  The loud squeal of rubber burning pavement erupted behind them. Rivett rotated to find Castle driving like a maniac down the street in a Sprinter. The van’s window was down—Castle aimed a sawed-off shotgun directly at Jake.

  “I knew you were a problem, noob!” Castle screamed.

  Jake jacked his hands in the air.

  “I gotta go,” Rory said.


  Castle kept his gun trained on Jake as Rory scrambled away from the fence.

  “Please,” Jake begged. “Mona’s in trouble. I need your help, Rory.”

  “If a chick’s AWOL, probably best to call the police, right?”

  At that very moment, Rory’s phone began to vibrate. He pulled it out of his pocket and caller ID lit up: “Mona.” He answered on speaker. “Mona?”

  A filtered voice responded. It certainly wasn’t female. “Rory Visco—you step on another Metropolis property in the next forty-eight hours, and we kill the girl. We’ll contact you in two days.”

  “Where is she?” Jake jumped in unrestrained.

  A long pause greeted them, then . . . “Do what we say and maybe she’ll still be alive.”

  “Put her on. I need to know you have her,” Jake said.

  Click. The anonymous caller hung up.

  “Holy lord,” Rory said to Jake.

  “I told you. But . . . I don’t understand the demand. They just want you to ‘not’ do anything?”

  “Makes perfect sense. They know I have the laptop. That means they know I know about the handoff.”

  “The handoff?”

  “If my place is off limits, where can we keep talking?” Rory asked.

  “I was evicted. Me and my superiors aren’t on the best terms right now. But I got another spot,” Jake replied. “As long as you tell your number one fan to put down the fire stick.”

  Rory nodded at Castle, who exhaled angrily through his nose but tucked the shotgun into his jacket.

  ▪

  Say what you will about Susan Herlihy, she was true to her word. The safe house had been cleared out. At least she hadn’t changed the locks yet. Jake didn’t worry about surveillance. He knew Tony was running thin already, so the chances were low. But he’d still had Rory and Castle park a quarter mile away.

  The inside of the apartment where he’d spent the last year was bare and tragic—just wooden floors, white walls, and memories. And it was covered in orange spraypaint. Unsure what to make of the paint job, Rivett held his breath when he approached the area where his desk used to stand. He kneeled down and pulled out the fake wooden panel. The safe he’d installed was still there. He breathed a sigh of relief.