The tunnel went on longer than Bruce expected, and the ceiling grew lower and lower. Why would Madeleine send him down here? What did she know about this place? What if the tunnel collapsed?
What if someone else is also down here? Bruce suddenly pictured an armed man waiting for him at the end of the tunnel, gun pointed straight at him.
He kept going.
Finally, the tunnel before him opened up into a larger space. He stumbled as the ground fell a half step.
The ground was different here—polished, finished. His phone’s flashlight cast a small glowing circle on the wall. He shone the light farther until he saw a switch. There.
He flipped it on.
Fluorescent light blinded him. Bruce’s eyes squinted shut, and he shielded his face instinctively. When he opened his eyes again, he sucked in a gasp of air.
“Shit,” he whispered.
“What?” Dianne said, her voice pulled tight like a string. “What is it?”
Bruce stood staring at a room stocked half full of ammunition. Guns, bullets, extra clips. There must have been at least a hundred weapons of all shapes and sizes here, laid out on tables and hanging on the walls. He gaped. This looked like a military arsenal.
“Bruce,” Dianne murmured over the phone. Even though she couldn’t see what he was seeing, she could hear the tension in his silence. “Get out of there. I’m coming for you.”
A faint sound drifted toward Bruce. He froze. It came from the other end of the room, where a second door led out. It was a voice, male and deep, frustrated. He sounded like he was talking to someone. Immediately, Bruce flipped the light switch and turned off his phone, shrouding the room in darkness again. He started to back up.
Too late.
The second door opened—and a man’s silhouette stepped in, still talking loudly as he switched on the light. Bruce glimpsed a pale worn face, a beard. “Look, I don’t have time to babysit this storage anymore. Tell them to bring the truck tomorrow night so we can move the rest—”
His words cut off as his gaze fell on Bruce. The two of them stared at each other for an instant, both stunned into silence.
The man squinted at Bruce’s mask. “Hey—you’re not—did the boss—”
Bruce started sprinting away, but the man bolted after him. Right as Bruce reached the narrower part of the tunnel, he felt rough hands grab him by his shoulders. His fighting instincts went on autopilot. Bruce twisted free of the man’s grip and brought his fist up to punch the man’s face in the same motion.
His opponent blocked his blow, barely, and threw his own jab at Bruce. Bruce ducked down. He swung a leg out, catching the man hard enough in his calves to send him toppling. Bruce turned to run again, but the man’s fingers hooked onto his pant leg, dragging him down, too. Both hands grabbed at the mask on his face.
It left the man defenseless for a moment. Bruce swung up with every ounce of desperation inside him. His fist connected with the man’s chin, landing exactly where it needed to—his opponent’s head rocketed back. His body flopped, suddenly limp, and he collapsed on the floor.
Shaking from head to toe, Bruce stared down at the unconscious man lying at his feet. His limbs burned. Were there more people down here with this guy? Stockpiling weapons. Madeleine had led him straight to it. She had helped Bruce, when the police had failed for months to get her to talk.
Draccon’s going to kill me for this.
But what were they stockpiling weapons for? There was so much ammunition down here that it seemed excessive for anything less than a full-on raid. And what if this wasn’t the only hideout? An ominous premonition weighed on him. What were the Nightwalkers planning that would require so many weapons?
I should tell the police that I was here.
But what would he tell them? That he acted on a hunch based on the words of a murderer? That he was trespassing? He might get into even more trouble this time around—and he was in no mood for that. Let the police piece it together from here. They’ll find the cut fence and the opened wall.
Bruce switched his phone back on, his hands still trembling. A call from Dianne rang immediately, and when he picked up, she was shouting something in a thin, high voice, a sound of near panic. “Bruce? Bruce! Where the hell are you? I called the police. Get out of there!”
“I’m okay. I’m heading up,” Bruce said to Dianne as he hurried back the way he’d come, the mystery of the hideout still hanging over him.
The next day, Bruce sat quietly in Draccon’s office, staring out at the wet streets of Gotham City while the detective sat across from him, reading the front-page news. Madeleine’s manila folder was open on the table, the documents stacked in a neat pile. Finally, Draccon threw the newspaper down and leaned forward on the desk onto her elbows.
“What happened?” Bruce asked.
Draccon pushed the paper toward him so that he could read the top headline.
POLICE UNCOVER NIGHTWALKER HIDEOUT
“There was an unfinished underground path,” she muttered.
“Like the ones that connect the buildings downtown?” Bruce asked, careful about how he was wording each sentence. As far as anyone was concerned, he knew nothing about the incident.
Draccon nodded. “You know the tunnel running underneath Wayne Tower, right?”
“Yeah,” Bruce replied. Wayne Tower had one of those underground pathways, as did the Seco Financial Building and every other skyscraper. On hot summer days, when commuting on the surface of the city felt like walking in an oven, or on days when freezing snowstorms rolled in, people could take the subterranean routes and never have to set foot outside.
“Well,” Draccon continued, “it was part of a subterranean route that had been defunded by the city. The Nightwalkers apparently turned the section underneath the Bellingham building into a storage facility for weapons.”
The previous night replayed itself over and over in Bruce’s mind. He and Dianne had headed back to the concert in silence, had managed to convince Harvey that they’d been questioned by police. Something crazy going on down the street, Bruce had said to Harvey, and Dianne had agreed. Cops are investigating that corner again and have been questioning people all the way up these blocks.
Barely minutes later, they’d heard sirens reach the corner of the Bellingham building. It seemed to verify their story, and Harvey had let it drop.
Dianne hadn’t said a word about what happened, and neither had he. The potential for a longer probation sentence for Bruce—but also the possibility of putting Harvey in harm’s way—kept them both mute. And although he kept expecting the police to call him, or Draccon to question him—no one seemed to know they’d been there.
“How did the police find the hideout?” Bruce asked.