“Stay put, Bruce,” she shouted back. “You’ll be safe here.” Bruce watched her take off down the hall after the officers, her men behind her.
As the chaos on TV continued, the scene in the back of the precinct quieted even further. Half the lights were off now, and the only people not on duty were a few guards, their attention all turned to the TVs and phones. Bruce gripped the bars hard, then closed his eyes, bowed his head, and slid slowly down into a crouch by the door of his cell. How had all of this gone so wrong? And now here he was, stuck, unable to do anything to help.
“Oh, thank you,” Harvey Dent said to someone. “Yeah, I’m here to see my dad.”
Bruce’s eyes snapped open as his friend Harvey stepped into the holding area with an officer hurrying beside him. Harvey didn’t meet Bruce’s gaze right away, but when the officer pointed at a cell farther down the hall, Harvey gave the man an earnest smile. “Yes, I can go from here. Thank you, sir.”
“All right, kid. You’ve got ten minutes.” The policeman rushed off, distracted by the chaos in the office.
“Harvey?” Bruce said in a low voice as his friend’s eyes locked on him.
“Bruce,” Harvey hissed, then headed over toward his cell. “There you are.”
“What are you doing here?” Bruce said as his friend approached him and gripped the bars. “You’re here to see your dad…?”
Harvey gave him a shaky smile. “I finally reported him, Bruce,” he said. “The police arrested him.”
At that, Bruce blinked, unable to stop a quick smile spreading across his own face. After all this time, his friend had stood up to his father. “You—you reported your dad? They’re keeping him in this holding area?”
Harvey nodded. “Yeah. But I’m not here to see him. It was just a really good excuse to get the police to let me come back here.” He held up a small key between them. Bruce glanced down at it, his smile fading into shock.
It was the key to Bruce’s holding cell.
“Turns out,” Harvey whispered, “that I have some slick hands, and that Alfred is one convincing talker.”
Alfred. Bruce stared at him. “He put you up to this? You’re helping me get out?”
“Hey, be flattered that I’m willing to break the law for you and Dianne.” Harvey shoved the key into the lock. “My dad belongs in here, not you. Now, let’s go.”
—
On any other night, the holding area of the GCPD precinct would have been a near-impossible place from which to break out. Detective Draccon would have interrogated Bruce again before the night was done; there would have been two rotations of police in the back, not one; and everyone’s attention wouldn’t have been consumed by the screens mounted on the wall, displaying the nightmare of events going down.
But tonight, as the Nightwalkers held the city hostage, Bruce was able to creep down one of the precinct’s halls at a fast clip, head down and shoulders tense, keeping his eyes on Harvey, who hurried forward in front of him. They were making a run for the building’s single back door, which led out to the rain-washed parking lot behind the precinct.
Suddenly, Harvey darted to one side and wedged himself into a nook where the bathrooms were. Bruce did the same. An instant later, a young officer hurried past them, her hand on the gun at her hip. They held their breath as she rushed by. As she went, they heard her shout, “Is anybody left in here? We called for more backup!”
“The National Guard’s on their way!” a voice answered her farther down the hall. Bruce heard a pair of footsteps run away from them, then fade. He let his breath out.
“Come on,” Harvey snapped. They bolted back out into the hall. As they went, Bruce heard another shout go up from the holding cell area.
“I thought Draccon was keeping Wayne here!”
“She is—”
“How the hell did he get the key?”
“Get Draccon on the phone—we have a missing—”
Bruce gritted his teeth as both he and Harvey broke into a run. I guess that officially makes me a fugitive. They burst out the door and into the night, and the jail was behind them.
They took two steps before a black car screeched to a halt in front of them. This was not the usual, stately ride Alfred used to take Bruce around, but a car that Bruce recognized from WayneTech, sleek and understated and black, its surface blending in with the night.
“Need a ride?” Alfred said.
Bruce broke into a grin. He and Harvey rushed into the car. Bruce had barely shut the passenger door when Alfred slammed his foot down on the pedal, sending them barreling out of the parking lot. In the rearview mirror, they saw the young officer stumble out of the precinct just in time to see them speed away.
“A little slower on the turns, Alfred,” Bruce managed to say as they screeched around a corner and bolted into a freeway tunnel.
Alfred chuckled. He still had his hospital band wrapped around his wrist. “WayneTech cars aren’t made for slow turns, Master Wayne.”
“And you wonder where I get it from.” Bruce felt as if his stomach could touch his spine. Even in his Aston Martin, he’d never been able to drive the way Alfred was now.
“I used to be in the Royal Air Force, Master Wayne,” Alfred answered in a dry tone. “At least I have an excuse. Just because one can doesn’t mean one should. I expect you not to use this against me the next time you go for a joyride.”
“I’ll try not to,” Bruce managed to reply as he clutched the edges of his seat. In the back seat, Harvey looked green. “Why’d you agree to get me out, Alfred? I thought for sure that you would’ve refused. Too dangerous and all.”
“Your Madeleine makes a poor friend,” Alfred replied as they entered another turn.
“I’ll say,” Bruce muttered.
“No, I mean literally. I received an alert from your bank accounts half an hour ago. There has been some suspicious activity.”
“Suspicious activity?” Bruce’s words faded as Alfred handed him a phone, showing him an overview of his accounts.
“Looks like someone’s organization needed a boost of funds,” Alfred replied.
Bruce stared down at the zero balances in three of his older accounts, the ones that he’d had prior to turning eighteen. All three had been completely emptied. His throat turned dry. Madeleine.
“Holy shit,” Harvey muttered as he looked on from behind Bruce’s seat.
More lies, more deceit. None of what Madeleine said to me at Arkham was true. She had been after his funds this entire time. And when he had decided to soften and open up to her, she’d sent him to jail and taken his money in the process. Just like the Nightwalkers. Just like what they had done to every single one of their past victims before they killed them. And that meant they would target everything Wayne Industries stood for now, if the pattern of their past victims continued to hold. They would target the new accounts that had opened to Bruce, where the bulk of his family’s fortune sat.