Gridlock
Manhattan at 10:15 a.m. was a labyrinth of steel and frustration.
The rain had turned from a mist into a steady, gray downpour. Andrew drove with a cold, frantic precision, weaving the battered SUV through the dense pack of yellow cabs and delivery trucks on 5th Avenue.
"They'll have the traffic cameras," Julie said, looking up at the lenses perched on every lamppost. "They'll track the plates."
"I'm counting on it," Andrew replied.
He took a sharp right, nearly clipping a pedestrian, and dove into a crowded parking garage beneath a shopping mall. He didn't park. He drove through to the exit on the opposite street, but before leaving, he pulled over next to a row of identical silver SUVs.
He jumped out, swapped the plates with a parked car in less than forty seconds, and climbed back in.
"Misdirection," he muttered, pulling back out into the rain. "It buys us twenty minutes, maybe thirty."
"Where are we going? We can't stay in the city."
"We're going to the one place Victor thinks I'm too arrogant to visit," Andrew said. He reached into the duffel bag and handed her a burner phone. "Check the news."
Julie's fingers trembled as she swiped.
The headlines were a bloodbath.
SCOTT ENTERPRISES COLLAPSES: CEO MISSING AMID FRAUD ALLEGATIONS.
MARKET CRASH: ORIGIN FILES LEAKED.
"They're framing you," she whispered. "The news says you leaked the files to cover up your own embezzlement."
"Of course they are," Andrew said, his voice grim. "Victor owns the narrative until the FBI finishes de-crypting the server I left them. But that takes time. Time we don't have."
He glanced at her, his expression softening for a fraction of a second. "Are you okay?"
Julie looked at her hands. They were shaking. She looked at the shattered glass in her lap. She thought about the life she had a month ago—the quiet grief, the modest apartment. Now, she was a fugitive with a man who was either her savior or the architect of her ruin.
"I'm alive," she said, her voice stronger than she expected.
Andrew nodded. "Good. Because the next part is the hardest."
He pulled the car over in a sea of traffic near the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel. He looked at the line of cars being screened by police. Victor's influence reached deep; the Port Authority would be looking for them.
"We're ditching the car," Andrew said.
"And do what? Walk?"
"No," Andrew said, looking toward the dark, churning waters of the Hudson River. "We're going underground. The old transit tunnels. My father helped design the structural reinforcements for them thirty years ago. He kept the blueprints in a private safe."
Julie felt a jolt of recognition. "The blueprints... he used to talk about the 'hidden veins' of the city."
"Exactly," Andrew said. "If we can reach the ventilation shaft in the basement of the old garment factory, we can disappear under the river and come out in Jersey. From there, we disappear."
As they stepped out of the SUV and into the freezing rain, abandoning the vehicle in the middle of a gridlocked lane, Julie looked back at the skyline.
The Scott Enterprises building rose above the clouds, a monument of glass and gravity. It looked different now. It didn't look like power.
It looked like a tomb.
"Julie," Andrew called out, his hand outstretched.
She took it. And together, they disappeared into the crowd.