Free Bones Omnibus by Mark Wheaton Page B

that connected the buildings. These service tunnels then had access points to the sewers for access by city workers. This made it possible to walk down the tenth-floor hallway, get into the trash chute service hatch, and slip down through and under the building unseen by anyone before popping up four blocks away.
    Did this routinely make life that much easier for Trey and his crew?
    In a word, yes.
    The three teens were already in the locker room of Building 3 when the shooting started. It didn’t sound like much, just a distant knocking as if someone, somewhere was doing construction work or hanging a picture upstairs. But then a burst of automatic fire came along to sober Trey.
    “What building is that coming from?” he barked.
    “Dunno,” shrugged Alvis.
    “
Shit
.”
    Though they’d come in via the outer door, Trey hurried through the storage area and bounded up the inside stairs to the lobby of Building 3. Gathered by the front door were a number of residents staring out at Building 7.
    “What’s going on?”
    “Police raid. Think it’s the Nigerians in 7. Squatters.”
    As Trey prayed it was anything but that, he counted up the windows to the floor where the muzzle flash was coming from.
    Please don’t be six, please don’t be six, please don’t be six
…
    “Sixth floor,” one of the old-timers said, as if reading his mind. “You got people up there, son?”
    “What do you know about it?” Trey scoffed, trying to scotch the worry from his voice.
    Ken took off running the second word came over the radio. The warehouse was in the Bronx, usually about a twenty-minute ride on the 4 train.
    Only tonight, he didn’t have twenty minutes.
    Normally, a black man running hell-bent for leather through the South Bronx was exactly the kind of thing that would get him stopped by a cop or tripped by some asshole, but maybe this night they saw his face and gave him a break. This was a man trying to stop time with the soles of his feet.
    He finally spotted a cab at Morris and East 138th and beat on the driver’s-side window.
    “East Harlem, 111th,” he cried.
    Fearing the driver would wave him off, Ken was relieved when the fellow, wearing a bright orange turban, simply nodded and indicated the back seat.
    The cab arrived at 115th and 2nd a few minutes later, but could advance no further. Police had cordoned off the block.
    “Sorry for your troubles,” the driver said to Ken as he paid him.
    “Nothing’s happened, man,” Ken stated adamantly. “And that’s just the way it has to be.”
    The driver nodded gravely and drove off.
    Even with all the noise out in the hall, Becca still managed to fall asleep. She’d locked Bones in the hall bathroom first, figuring it would be easiest to clean up in there if he had to pee or puke. What she didn’t count was the shepherd taking a quick nap, then getting up and opening the simple bathroom door with his teeth a few minutes later.
    Bones walked around the apartment and got a clear aromatic sense of the place. He smelled Ken and the food he dragged in. He smelled Trey and Trey’s friends and their drugs. The dog also picked up Becca’s scent, figuring out pretty quickly which part of the living room she sat in to eat while watching television, what side of the couch she preferred, and which window she’d sit at to watch the neighborhood go by.
    The floor was fairly crumb-free, so Bones headed for the couch. There he found broken chips, candy, chunks of bread, and pieces of cereal all buried between the cushions. He went after these with gusto.
    But when that task was complete, Bones plopped down with his head on the armrest and stared at the noise coming from the hall.
    It was a full hour before the voices neared the front door and stopped there.
    “We’d ask that you stay indoors until we give you an all-clear, is that understood?” bellowed an authoritarian voice.
    “‘Understood?’” grunted Ken. “Shouldn’t that be more like ‘is that