to dealing with all of the shit that would no doubt soon hit the fan spinning wildly between them.
He had to admit that he was already cheating on that front. Annabelle had a few weaknesses that, as an all around general rogue, he was fairly shameless in exploiting. Most likely her strongest was motorcycles. To her, a motorcycle was like a giant Wonka chocolate bar being slowly unwrapped in front of Charlie Bucket after ten straight meals of cabbage soup. It was distracting, to say the least, and tonight, that was the point.
He could tell she was about ready go head to head with him on a few very important issues. He wasn’t at all certain he wanted to open all of those cans of worms right before having to also get her on a plane to England.
So, stalling was fine with him.
She had other weaknesses – pleasant ones – too, and knowing what some of them were, he’d searched most of the afternoon for the perfect peace offering for her. He was pretty sure he’d found it, and it was waiting in a rented condo a few miles away from here. He hoped it brought her enough comfort and happiness that she would be able to forgive him.
For everything.
Because, after she met the
These were the things he sorted through his mind as he simultaneously followed the route that Virginia had mapped out for them. He had been memorizing the drawing as she was making it, and he’d grown more uneasy with every scratch of the pen.
They were headed right back to Columbia University, and this time, in a rather cruel and ironic twist, straight into it’s rather infamous underground.
It would be the second time in the past few hours that he’d been plunged into the damp, dark depths of New York’s subterranean world. It was not at all a landscape he was comfortable with, even if it
But, that was where the vial had been hidden, because that was where Craig Brandt and a close-knit band of friends had been tunneling late one night and discovered a secret passageway, thus far undetected by the University’s officials. Brandt was a member of what he called the Reticent Academia Tunneling Society, or RATS. In his spare time, he and about two dozen other members, nation wide, would venture into the lost, forgotten or forbidden undergrounds of America’s various universities. Brandt was its founder and leader. He’d introduced Virginia to the faction during their second year at Columbia and she represented RATS’s eleventh official member.
By that time, a very tiny network had been established across a few of the more notorious underground- possessing universities, but word spread. Via underground, more or less.
On the night of February fourteenth, seven years ago, Craig Brandt asked his girlfriend, Virginia Meredith, to meet him and a friend at what had become the RATS secret entrance to Columbia’s tunnels.
She met up with him and, for Valentine’s Day, he showed her his tunneling trophy – an accolade more esteemed to him and his compatriots than a Golden Globe was to an actor. A secret passageway, right under Buell Hall, untouched by another human hand in nearly one hundred years.
Jack glanced in his rear-view mirror. Annabelle rode dead center of the mirror, clear to his sight at all times. She stayed a good ten seconds behind him, and her control of the bike was superb. For a rider who’d only been on a V-Rod once before in her entire life, she was doing remarkably well.
He smiled grimly to himself as he thought of how lucky he was and how very much he stood to lose – not just over the next few days, but over the remainder of his life. Hopefully, the latter was exclusive of the former.
Jack caught Annabelle flashing her lights at him in his mirrors and he shot her a glance. She signaled to him. He looked up. They’d arrived on campus and he hadn’t even noticed it. He’d taken them there on auto-pilot. They’d already passed the garage once.
She was probably laughing at him back there.
He shook his head, mentally kicking himself in an already tender spot. Then he signed an apology and signaled that they would circle back around.
She followed him around the block and then into the garage. He paid for the space they would share and they shut the bikes down and dismounted.
“You okay with this?” Annabelle asked him as they joined up and exited the garage together. It wasn’t like Jack to make the kind of mistake he’d just made, and she was a little worried. She knew he didn’t like dark, enclosed spaces. And she knew him well enough that he hadn’t been able to hide his growing unease from her as Virginia Meredith had told them all where the vial and note were hidden. No one else would notice his fear. But she would. And she had.
Jack smiled at her reassuringly and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, drawing her beside him. “No worries, luv.”
“Right.” She said softly.
He led them down the sidewalk, staying close to the building walls and taking the opportunity to scan their surroundings for danger. As melodramatic as it sounded, he had the distinct feeling that they were being watched. But, logically, he knew that was highly improbable. Anyone posing a threat would have had to either obtain their destination in between the time that Virginia Meredith had made the map and now – or they would have had to follow Jack and Annabelle from the apartment to the University.
He couldn’t imagine how the former would be accomplished, given the flat they’d been in at the time belonged to Sam, and he doubted that the latter was even possible, with the route and methods he and Annabelle had used on their bikes.
So, with that thought, Jack forced himself to relax. Concentrate.
Virginia and Craig had given them first-rate directions to the secret opening formerly recognized as the RATS entrance. Throughout Columbia University’s campus were small wooded areas with paths winding through them. However, the largest wooded area anywhere near Columbia’s campus was most certainly Morningside Park – and it was not part of the campus, itself.
Morningside abutted Harlem, and Harlem’s residents had always maintained a strong hold on the park. In 1968, Columbia leased a plot of the park’s land from the city to begin building a gymnasium on the property. It was a mistake. A protest and rioting erupted, closing down the University and strengthening the sounds of discord between Columbia’s faculty, staff and students, and Harlem’s inhabitants.
Morningside became “the bad park”, “the dangerous park”, and “no-man’s land” to all attending Columbia University. At night, its vine-covered cliff faces would light up as if by fireflies due to the flames of individual lighters warming spoons of heroine. Muggers, rapists, murderers, addicts, and prostitutes ran a virtual park-wide city of corruption that stretched across thirty notorious acres.
Then, in the late nineties, something changed. People began banding together – “us and them” more or less became “just us,” and plans for cleaning up the park were formed. In the past decade, families and students had very slowly pushed out the addicts, bums and criminals. Gardeners and landscape architects had been called in. People began volunteering their time to weed and pick up trash.
So, it wasn’t with as much apprehension as Jack would otherwise feel that the RATS access shaft into the tunnels beneath Columbia was to be found in Morningside Park. However, he did find himself drawing Annabelle even nearer to him than usual. She didn’t seem to mind.
As they walked, his eyes continued to scan. He noticed that Annabelle’s eyes seemed to be doing the same thing. Though she wouldn’t know as much about what kinds of things to look for as he would, the thought occurred to him that he could teach her… Something to consider for the future.
“This is it,” he said as they entered a particularly wooded area of the park. They separated as Jack took out the map and handed it to Annabelle. Once they were well hidden by the brush and trees, he drew his gun and held it at the ready, pointing it at the ground.
Annabelle unfolded the map and attempted to read it. It was difficult this far away from any overhead light source. Beside her, Jack clicked a pen light to life and shined it down on the paper for her.
“Thanks,” she whispered, and then studied the map carefully. “It’s a good thing they put some of the more permanent markers on this thing,” she said, stealing a glance around them. “Because all of the plant life is completely different at this point.”
