The first time they had seen a train coming, she was certain she would die. There was only a single track, with concrete walls rising on both sides. As the beam of the train struck her, she froze like a deer caught in an automobile's headlights. If it hadn't been for Keith, she knew that in fact she would have died, right there, the hurtling subway train mangling her body in an instant. But she'd felt him tugging at her, and heard him yelling.

"There's a catwalk!" A moment later he picked her up, swung her onto the catwalk, and rolled onto it himself. As that first train rushed by, she lay quivering, and when it was over-so quickly it almost seemed it couldn't have happened at all-she lay there trembling, her breath coming in gasps. "You okay?" Keith asked as he gently drew her to her feet. She nodded, unwilling to admit how terrified she'd been until Keith grinned and said, "Then you're a better man than me- I thought I was going to mess my pants."

"Actually, I thought I was going to die," Heather admitted as they gingerly climbed off the catwalk and back onto the track.

Now, as the fourth train thundered by, Heather knew she wasn't going to die, at least not by being crushed by a subway car. Silently cursing her own cowardice, she forced herself to open her eyes and turn her head so she was looking directly at the speeding train. A wave of dizziness struck her, but she steeled herself against it, pressing even harder against the concrete. After the last car raced by, she jumped back down to the tracks and gazed after it, reading the identifying letter on the back of the last car: D.

Before the train had come thundering up behind them, they'd seen that the tunnel ahead spread wider, and more tracks were becoming visible. Now, as she watched the speeding train, it banked around to the left, and she knew exactly where they were.

Fifty-third Street.

A few paces farther and the two of them were in the far wider section of tunnel that provided the space for the trains to turn, and they began to see the glow of the station far ahead. But before they were close enough that the light spilling from the station would allow them to be seen emerging from the darkness, Keith stopped. Wordlessly, Heather followed his lead, and they stood silently for a moment. In the distance they could hear the faint sound of a train moving away from them, but that sound faded away and a silence fell over the tunnel. But still Keith neither moved nor spoke, and when Heather finally turned to him, he raised his arm and pointed. Then she saw them: two men at the near end of the platform, staring into the tunnel.

Staring, as if looking for something.

Or someone.

"Just like the guys at every other station I've been to," Keith whispered, leaning closer so he could speak directly into her ear. "Except all the others were acting like they were just hanging out. These guys are looking for something."

"Us?" Heather whispered back.

Keith shook his head. "How would they even know we're here?"

"Someone who saw us jump off the platform at Columbus Circle could have taken a train and told them. The trains are full of homeless people."

"Or they could be looking for Jinx," Keith suggested.

"Or Jeff."

Her words hung between them, and Keith said, "You want to know something, the best thing to do is go ask, right? Wait here."

He started forward. Heather, ignoring his last words, kept pace with him. When he stopped and turned as if to say something, she shook her head, and there was a look about her that told him it would be useless to argue. She said, "If there's any trouble-"

"If there's any trouble," Keith repeated, cutting her off, "you just stay down." He pulled the gun out of his waistband, showed it to her, then shoved it and the hand that held it deep into the outer pocket of his pea jacket.

Heather's own hand tightened on the grip of the pistol she'd taken from her father's gun cabinet, which was now deep in the folds of her own coat, a badly worn bomber jacket that she'd tried to convince Jeff to get rid of more than a year ago.

"Let me do the talking," Keith said. "Act like a junkie."

They moved forward, Keith letting his body slump into the defeated slouch of the derelicts he'd seen in the streets, parks, and subways over the past two days. Heather shuffled beside him, her head down, her hair hanging limply so her face was only partly visible. When they came to the platform, Keith climbed up, then pulled Heather after him. "Fuckin‘ bitch," he muttered. "I oughta-"

Heather jerked her arm loose. "Keep your fuckin‘ hands offa me, asshole." As she turned sullenly away from him, he shrugged helplessly to one of the two men, who gave him a gap-toothed grin and winked.

"Shit, man-whyn't you dump her?"

Keith spread his hands. "She'll be okay. Seen Jinx?"

The man's grin faded. "What you lookin‘ for her for?"

Keith's mind raced, then he remembered the wad of cash Tillie had shoved into the girl's hands yesterday. He jerked his head meaningfully toward Heather, whose back was still to him. "Heard she's got some money."

The gap-toothed man shook his head. "You crazy, motha-fuck? You roll Jinx, you be dead. Hunters go after you soon's they finish off the fuckers they're after right now!"

Keith spat out the kind of profanity that never failed to grab the attention of his work construction crew. "Any idea where they are?"

The second man nodded farther down the track. "Heard they was down three, and three workin‘ east, the rest comin' this way. If you ain't herdin‘ I'd get my ass outta here."

"Shit," Keith said. He grabbed Heather, tugging at her arm until she turned around. "Time to go."

She acted like she wanted to pull away from him. "Fuck you-why don't ya just leave me alone!"

"Maybe I will, bitch!" Keith dropped her arm and started down the platform as an eastbound train pulled into the station. "Who the fuck needs you anyway?"

"Don't you leave me here!" Heather screamed, running to catch up to him just as he stepped onto one of the cars. The doors slid shut behind her, and Keith winked.

"You're good," he said as the train pulled out of the station.

"For a second I thought you were actually trying to get away from me."

"I figured I could count on you not to let that happen. Come on."

They made their way back to the last car, and when the train pulled into the Seventh Avenue and Fifty-third Street station, they got off.

They were back on the tracks before the train had pulled away, scurrying into the darkness like rats into a sewer.

"He said the hunters were ‘down three'-got any idea what that means?"

Heather nodded. "Jeff took a class in urban architecture last year. There are all kinds of tunnels under the city, and they go deep. ‘Down three' must mean three levels down from here." She peered into the darkness. "But how do we get there?"

"If there's a way down, then we'll find it," Keith said. "Come on."

Perry Randall felt the familiar thrill run through him as he moved through the semidarkness of the utility tunnel. Behind him, Frisk McGuire-who, like the rest of The Hundred, never brought his honorific through the anonymous door on West Fifty-third, leaving Monsignor Terrence McGuire on the street outside-was on his left, while Carey Atkinson watched the right. The formation wasn't necessary yet, of course, for they weren't nearly deep enough to be in any real danger. Yet at the same time you couldn't be too careful-the jungle beneath the streets could be far more dangerous than the African bush. Only two years ago they'd lost one of their members when the tribe that lived on the lowest level of the tunnels had set up an ambush that even the best of the club's gamekeepers hadn't heard anything about.

But that was what made the hunt thrilling. It wasn't as if there was danger only to the prey-nothing like the hunting farm he'd visited in Zimbabwe, where the sense of adventure was primarily an illusion. Here, beneath the streets of the most civilized city in the world, the risks were as real for the hunters themselves as for the quarry they tracked. Indeed, Perry could still remember the first hunt, after he and Linc Cosgrove had organized the Manhattan Hunt Club within the walls of The Hundred. When Eve had told him what she wished the club to do, it was obvious she already had her husband's support, and that if Perry didn't agree to what she proposed, Linc would simply find another member who would. Linc, after all, had nothing to lose-the heart problems that killed him on the Jamaican beach a few months later had already been diagnosed.