Undertow (The UnderCity Chronicles) Read Online Free Page B

sound as if she’d spread slanderous gossip.
    “All I ever said about you was the time we visited the tunnels when we were kids and… and what we saw. I told her that to try to stop her from going down.” That had backfired. It had only made Seline sit bolt upright on the couch and demand what Jack had meant by ‘They’re real.’ Lindsay hadn’t been able to answer, because Jack had never told her. Whenever she’d brought up the subject, he’d always become distant—and then fall quiet. During her last few weeks with him, he last thing she’d wanted was a silent Jack. She had wanted him full of life, wanted him happy around her and because of her. And if that meant not talking about their experience in the tunnels, then so be it.
    Jack brushed at his face, as if ridding himself of a crawling fly. “Looks like it didn’t work.”
    “No, it didn’t.” At twenty, Seline had more courage than brains; she assumed that a knack for dealing with street people gave her impunity in the tunnels. The people who lived beneath the city’s streets were steeped in dark urban legend, and even the most ignorant New Yorker knew that the world beneath their feet was one of danger.
    Jack had his eye on Reggie’s pan of eggs. “Leave any for me?”
    Reggie pointed his thumb behind him at the plate on the plank-wide counter. Jack slid past him into the narrow kitchen and practically disappeared behind the black man. The grocery bag rustled, a drawer opened and then the draw of a knife through bread.
    Lindsay crossed the room to him and raised her voice to make sure she was heard. “Seline’s been missing for the past week. Eight days, to be exact. She’s in the tunnels, I know it.”
    “She could’ve come up and not come back home,” Reggie suggested.
    “No. We had rules.”
    After the first time Seline had gone down, Lindsay had kicked her out but had relented a week later, when she spotted her niece outside Grand Central with an empty guitar case and singing about paving paradise for a parking lot. Two weeks after that, Seline went down again. So ground rules were established. “She couldn’t stay for more than two days, and she had to call within an hour of re-surfacing. She always did.” Lindsay didn’t add that each time she’d picked up to her niece’s cheery voice she felt as if she were drawing breath for the first time in two days. Eight days now, and every breath was an effort.
    Reggie scanned Lindsay up and down through a squinted eye. “You don’t look old enough to be her aunt.”
    Her eyes locked on Reggie. “She’s my brother’s kid. He and his wife were killed in a car accident twelve years ago. So were my mom and dad. I’m not Seline’s aunt. I’m her whole fucking family.”
    There was dead silence, Lindsay’s chest tight with the ache of her chronic grief. She wrapped her arms around herself, an instinctive act that had she’d developed into a deliberate, self-comforting one. It was a way of recognizing the pain without giving in to it. And this was absolutely one of those times that she couldn’t let it run the show. Reggie blew out his breath in a long gust and slowly pivoted on his heel, like a door opening, so that nothing stood between Jack and Lindsay.
    There was the Jack she’d known, the real Jack. The sympathy in those deep golden eyes was unmistakable, and hit her to the core. Lindsay suddenly felt more weak and vulnerable than she had in a dozen years, and more than anything wanted to walk straight into his arms. Then hardness crept over his features and the imposter was back.
    “Heard about that from Seline. Sorry.” He might as well as have laughed at her for all the tenderness in those trite words. “So your niece went down into the tunnels.” He was changing the subject because he didn’t care about her tragedy. And why should he? There had been twelve blank years between them. He was now someone she’d once known.
    “Yes. Monroe said you might be able to help me