“Take Coop and run as fast as you can,” Mike said softly to Mercer. It looked as if his theory about how much ammunition Quillian still had in his gun was wrong.

“Don’t move your hand, Wallace,” Quillian said, his head cocked to the side so that his left eye-the good one-could focus on what his two armed adversaries were doing.

Mercer glanced at the red sticks I had lined up. “Okay, Alex. Ready?” he whispered.

I palmed the matchbook and nodded my head.

“If you know Bobby Hassett killed my brother, why don’t you arrest him, dammit? He’ll be along any minute,” Quillian said.

“What?” Mike said, puzzling out the answer. “So Teddy O’Malley double-crossed you? He went to Trish to get the money you wanted, but then he called Bobby Hassett to tell him where you were hiding. Let him even up all the old scores by trapping you in here and finishing you off-his father’s death, Bex’s murder. Your sandhog instincts are awfully primitive. How’d you know, Brendan? How’d you know Bobby Hassett is coming here?”

Quillian was taking baby steps along the curved wall in our direction. He was angry now, the bad-tempered Brendan Quillian who was responsible for so many deaths.

“’Cause I asked Teddy O’Malley if I could use his cell phone to call Trish. And when I opened it to dial her, I saw the last number he had called before getting here to meet me. It was Bobby Hassett’s phone.”

“Go ahead, Brendan. Take the tunnel,” Mike shouted. Quillian was getting uncomfortably close to the three of us. “We’ll let you run before the rest of the cops show up.”

“You’re not going anywhere, Chapman. That’s obvious. But that leaves Mr. Wallace and Ms. Cooper to chase after me. And I don’t really like that idea.”

Every time he moved, Quillian squinted and tilted his head to adjust the vision in his eye.

“Stand up, Mr. Wallace. Stand up now, will you?”

“No!” I said to Mercer as he lifted a knee, acting as though he were going to obey the command. He was far too big a target to put in Quillian’s way.

But as he shifted his weight, Mercer gave me the cover I needed to light the first match. I held it to the wire sticking out of the tip of the firecracker and lobbed it in Quillian’s direction. As soon as it was in the air I got two more off, throwing them over Mercer’s back and as close to the mouth of the tunnel as I could.

The loud barrage of explosions filled the small tube as the earth seemed to rattle and the hollow vaults burst with a deafening series of blasts. The black hole we were all in, backlit from the subway car that had disappeared behind the curving wall, came alive with a blinding series of colorful streaks and sparks-orange, yellow, green, and a searing white flash.

“Dynamite, Brendan,” Mike yelled out as I kept lighting firecrackers and throwing them as near to Quillian as I could. “They’ll blast you to kingdom come if you don’t make it out of here.”

The killer had panicked at the sound and sight of the explosive devices as they landed all around him. It was a combination of every noise, every vibration, every fear that had kept him for all of his young life out of the tunnels in which his father had worked, ever since the accident that had taken the sight of his right eye.

He lifted his gun to shoot in our direction over the other thunderous booms, but fired wildly as he bobbed his head to try to protect his eye from the streaking lights bursting around him.

I watched as he clapped a hand over his left eye, turning away from us before uncovering it to run toward the cylindrical tunnel that led off the side of the platform.

Phin was right-Quillian was so spooked by the noise that he didn’t stop to think that the cops would never use real explosives in a subway tunnel.

But the fireworks forced him to the exit he had been seeking-the one Mike said was an old pneumatic mail tunnel-and I had no idea where it led.

Within minutes, because of our proximity to both City Hall and One Police Plaza, Peterson had been able to assemble a sophisticated team of sharpshooters to send in to retrieve us. A handful of men in helmets and bulletproof vests, armed with rifles and handguns, surrounded us to learn what had happened, while two transit crewmen who had entered with the police worked to extricate Mike’s foot from under the railroad tie.

Mercer pointed with his flashlight at the narrow tunnel into which Brendan Quillian had fled.

“You know where it ends?” one of the cops asked, while two others, rifles at the ready, positioned themselves on either side of the black hole.

“Murray Street,” Mike said, still on his back. “A few blocks west of here. It used to feed into a building that was rented out by the city as a wine cellar.”

“I’m Gary Passoni,” the group leader said to Mike. “Let’s get you topside. The commissioner himself is on this. There’s a SWAT team going in from above at every one of those old station exits. They’ll find the wine cellar. They’ve got the maps.”

Passoni put his walkie-talkie to his mouth to transmit the information about Quillian’s flight into the Murray Street tunnel wing.

Another officer took my arm. “Ms. Cooper? The lieutenant wants you out of here yesterday, okay? You’re with me.”

“I’d like to wait until Chapman’s leg is free.”

“Let’s go, blondie,” Mike called to me from the tracks. “Don’t hold up the traffic. I’m bringing up the rear.”

I looked back and saw that he was being helped to his feet by the crewmen. I started to move along the platform with my escort, worried that Mercer was going in the opposite direction, to help the new arrivals find Quillian.

Someone gave a signal that the track was clear, and again the train started a slow approach to meet us.

Before it pulled within range of me, a volley of gunshots rang out, this time from the cylindrical cave into which Brendan Quillian had disappeared.

The men guarding the black hole dropped to their knees, and one screamed out for all of us to get down.

A voice called Passoni’s name from within the tunnel.

“Yeah?”

“Hold your fire on that end. I think we hit him after he took a shot at my first man in. My guys are coming toward you, sweeping for him. Stand away.”

The police had clearly found the Murray Street entrance and encountered Quillian on his way to a last-ditch effort to escape.

Mercer yelled at the cop holding on to me, “Move her out. Move her out now, understand?”

The man tugged on my arm and I went forward, but continued to look at Mercer, calling out to him, “You get out, too. You don’t have a vest, you don’t have-”

Passoni held a finger to his lips. I stopped midsentence and could hear the sound of someone whimpering, crying softly, out of sight but not far away.

The two sharpshooters saw something through their night-vision goggles that caused them to lower the aim of their rifles.

Seconds later, Brendan Quillian crawled out of the darkened tunnel, one hand pressed against his throat. He rolled onto his back at the foot of the subway platform.

One cop stepped on his neck, pinning him in place while three others were upon him immediately, wresting a revolver from his hand and searching him for the other gun.

Mercer was on his knees closest to the fugitive when the officer lifted his boot and the gunshot in Quillian’s neck spurted blood like a small geyser.

“Get him in the bus!” Passoni shouted, waving his team to carry the dying man to the subway train and out to the ambulance that had been summoned for Mike.

I broke away from the cop who was trying to escort me when I saw Mike hobble toward Quillian.

“How does your fucking neck feel, Brendan?” Mike asked. “At least it’s a faster way to die than strangulation.”

One of the guys pushed Mike back while they worked to stop the bleeding and lift their prisoner to get him to help. I could see Quillian gasping for breath like a fish out of water, his one good eye darting wildly around at his captors.