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“He is all I can spare. But Constable Winthrop is a good lad. I chose him personally. A very large fellow, and very bright. Claire will be safe, I promise.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now, you three get to the prison and find some answers for me. I’m certain we’re being manipulated and I don’t like it.”

Day rose without a word and went to the door. He held it open for Hammersmith and nodded to Sir Edward before leaving. Adrian March lingered a moment, as if he wanted to say something privately to the commissioner, then he, too, rose and left the office. Day closed the door after them. The sudden silence was almost startling.

It was going to be a long day. Sir Edward hoped that every escaped prisoner would be back in a cell by nightfall. He only wished he knew how many they were supposed to be looking for. And why they had been set free in the first place.

<p>6</p>

Griffin had carried his keys right past the guards without being searched. A simple matter of money exchanging hands. One of the keys, a master for every cell in Bridewell, had been put to use in the escape. Another skeleton key had been used to open the cabby stand. Now he used the third key to unlock the back door of St John of God Church. He stopped inside the doorway and listened. All was quiet. He crept forward through what seemed to be a storage room full of shadows. Shapes that might have been piles of old curtains, extra pews, spools of braided cord, crates of books. Remembering his instructions, he stopped in the center of the room and knelt beside a threadbare rug. He pulled it aside and ran his fingertips over the floor. A seam ran perpendicular to the grooves in the smooth wood. He got his fingernails into the seam and pulled until one of his nails bent back. There was a flash of pain and he felt sudden moisture. He was bleeding. He wiped his fingers on the leg of his trousers and felt around his neck for the chain, raised it over his head and felt for the flat teeth of the largest key. He jammed them sideways into the seam and pried at the floor until he heard a soft pop and a square chunk of wood, roughly two by two feet, came loose. He smiled and lifted the wood up and out, set it next to him.

There were other ways to access the tunnels beneath the prison, but this was the fastest.

He put the chain, with its keys, back around his neck, tucked it under the front of the stolen warder’s jacket, and sat on the edge of the opening in the floor. He could feel cold air wafting up at him, curling around his ankles and up under his trousers. He kicked his feet out and found a ledge three feet down in the dark. He tested it, then put his weight on the ledge and scooted forward. Held on to the lip of the opening and felt forward with one foot until he found another narrow ledge farther down. A staircase. He kept one hand on the cold wall and the other gripping the edge of the hole in the floor above him and moved cautiously down. The air grew colder and then warmer; the square of slightly brighter darkness above him shrank, then disappeared as he went around a shallow curve in the tunnel wall. He stumbled and nearly fell when he reached the bottom, expecting another stair and stepping down too hard on a stone floor.

He took a moment to catch his breath and remember the instructions he’d been given. There was, he’d been told, a lantern hanging from a hook on the right-hand side of the wall three or four feet from the bottom of the stairs. He ran his hand along the stones until his fingers encountered a hook, but there was nothing hanging from it. They had forgotten. Or they had left the lantern in the wrong place.

There had been far too many mistakes made tonight.

But of course, that was why there was a backup plan. That was why they needed Griffin.

There was no time to waste. He oriented himself and began walking, slowly, shuffling along so as not to trip over anything in his path, one hand always on the gritty wall beside him, until he saw a light far ahead.

Griffin slowed down and edged sideways along the tunnel, trying to be invisible. The silhouette of a man cast a blunt-edged shadow up and along the curved wall. Griffin’s foot scuffed up against an old timber, and a pile of bricks tumbled down from the other end of it, scattering in the dirt. The man turned and held the lantern high. He was bald, and the harsh paraffin light made his skin look yellow. Cinderhouse. The escapee swung his head back and forth like a snake and squinted at Griffin.

“Your name is Griffin,” he said.

Griffin sniffed and stepped out into the fuzzy pool of light. “It is,” he said.

“You’re following me?”

“No.”

“Then you got the message, too,” the bald man said. “Just like me. Telling us to hide down here.”

“Yes.” It wasn’t entirely a lie. He had sent the message to the other prisoners, but had included himself.

The bald man nodded. “You came by the well?”

“The well?”

“You came down here through the old well?”

“I came down a staircase.”

“A staircase?”

“Hidden beneath a church.”

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