The Key (The Magnificent 12 3)

He considered adding a smiley face. He often did that. But it felt wrong. So he typed: >:-(

And he hit Send.

The text went flying through the air, from Sedona to Paris. Where the cell phone signal failed to penetrate the deep, stony sewers.

* * *

Twenty-one

* * *

The sewer tunnels are bigger than you think. Some of them are so big they could practically be Métro tunnels. Others are narrower, or crammed full of dripping metal pipes that run along the arched stone ceilings.

The parts of the sewers that are on the tour are safe and well lit. There are metal catwalks and railings. There are signs pointing toward the exits.

But that’s just the part that’s on the tour. There are miles and miles of sewer tunnels. (And beyond the sewer tunnels, connected to them here and there, are the tunnels no one wants to talk about. But we’ll get to that later.)

The last sewer tour was long since done for the night and the entrance was bolted shut (there went 24 euros for unused tickets), but Sylvie twisted the numbers on a combination lock with practiced ease.

“This is a side entrance,” she said. “My grandfather is one of the engineers who maintain the tunnels used for tours. It is because of him that I knew of the perfect hiding place.”

They stepped inside and immediately noticed the aroma. Yes, let’s go with the word aroma. It’s much more genteel than stink.

“The light switch is on this wall.” There was the sound of Sylvie scrabbling at the brick and a loud snap, and light flooded the space. It was a tunnel, arched, made of limestone. There were pipes running along one wall, four or five of them in different sizes.

And the aroma.

“This way,” Sylvie said, and led them onto a steel catwalk. The catwalk took a hard right turn away from the pipes and into a place that smelled less but seemed older. Here the brick was weathered and crumbly.

“This area is not safe for tours,” Sylvie explained.

“Then why is it safe for us?” Dietmar wondered.

“It isn’t. But it leads to our hiding place.”

The tunnel had begun to narrow. Already a tall man would not have been able to walk erect. They reached the end of the reassuring catwalk and had to step down onto damp, worn stones that formed a walkway beside the channel.

There was no question that in a hard rain the two feet of sludgy, smelly water running through the channel would swell to fill half this tunnel and become a raging white-brown river.

“Not much farther,” Sylvie said.

Only now there were no longer lights running down the roof of the chamber. It was getting darker, and ahead was absolute darkness.

“I should have picked up a flashlight!” Sylvie cried. “I was shaken up; I forgot.”

“Phones will do the trick,” Jarrah said. She whipped out her phone, pushed a button, and shone an amazingly dim and pitiful light at the darkness ahead.

The others all did the same so that it was six dim, pitiful lights combining to make one dim, pitiful light. But it was enough to let them place their feet carefully, one before the other.

“It’s not that much farther,” Sylvie said.

But it was that much farther. Soon they lost sight of the lit part of the sewer. Now they were a tiny island of dim light shuffling along while they all tried really hard not to think about rats.

Because once you start thinking about rats, well, there’s no unthinking it, is there?

Rats.

And in Mack’s case, claustrophobia. Darkness in an underground space is one of the starting points for serious claustrophobia. After all, claustrophobia is a fear of small, enclosed spaces, which is to say, caskets, which is to say, being buried alive, which was not so very different from being twenty feet down in a musty sewer in the dark.