Five hours, twenty two minutes, and four seconds.
Five hours, twenty two minutes, and four seconds since Jack Wilder vanished without a sound. Left on his own to do what none of the others could face.
"Selfless, stubborn martyr child," as Daniel called him around hissed swear words. "Didn't want to put us in danger."
Five hours, twenty two minutes, and four seconds.
Alma knew this exact number because Daniel had glanced at his watch the instant they realized. He insisted on reminding everyone of the time. Alma suspected it brought him an illusion of control.
"Five hours, twenty two minutes, and fifty seconds."
A few phone calls later—"Oui, monsieur. I'm investigating the possible citing of a theft cold case suspect. Yes, I have my badge number right here…merci."—and Alma had clearance to download footage from the last five hours.
And twenty six minutes and ten seconds, she could practically hear Daniel add.
By the time Merritt came back from a search of the rooms, face grey and hands a little shaky, Alma had used her tablet to scrub cameras in Boston.
Daniel hovered over her shoulder where she sat on the couch, sharp eyes scanning the boxes on screen. There were fifteen in total—all from around the nearest supermarket, almost an hour walk on foot. They played at a slightly faster speed. Alma ached for a sight of the young man. Luckily, the footage was in colour. She kept her eye on hair colour.
Their argument had evaporated like a tropical storm. It felt like years ago already. Silence was a poisonous blanket over the living room. Their minds churned with worst case scenarios.
They'd had to physically hold Merritt back from just walking out the door and going after Jack. Hence, they'd sent him on a 'mission' to search the cottage instead.
Dylan paced by the counter. His worried murmur to the Eye on a burner phone was the only sound. Alma's finger swiping the screen was silent too.
"Try camera seven," said Daniel. "It's right in front of the grocery store entrance. There! There he is!"
Immediately, all three were behind Alma and she scrambled to pause the footage.
"G-Go back!"
Merritt and Dylan had the good grace not to look as shocked as they all felt by Daniel's stutter. His long finger tapped at the rewind bar. Pulling it back, the crowds in the sunny parking lot writhed like ants.
And then a leather jacket, hoodie underneath and half drawn over a familiar head of auburn locks, ducked across the bottom third of the camera's scope.
Merritt gasped.
Jack's cheeks were red from the nippy March winds. He'd put on a giant pair of sunglasses. His breath puffed in the Boston air. No patrons paid Jack any attention, small as he was.
"Camera ten," said Dylan.
Alma brought it up.
A flower delivery truck pulled up to the curb. Two giant trolleys of sunflowers, easily eight feet high, were pushed from the ramp and into the grocery store. The manager greeted them warmly.
The trolleys going by only took four seconds.
By the time they cleared, Jack was gone. There was no footage on camera two—the one directly inside the market lobby—of him going in with the flowers. The truck disappeared in a curious rush.
A fresh blood patch adorned the pavement where the flowers had gone by. Jack's blood.
Daniel cried out.
Alma's earliest childhood memory was going to the cinema with her parents on a December night.
The film was long, sleep inducing. But there was one scene, one profound scene that she'd woken in time to witness. The two main characters were about to jump from a bridge into freezing waters. They spread their arms, doves about to fly. The film had slowed to almost nothing.
Edith Piaf's "Non Je Ne Regrette Rien" had played in the background. It was so stark—the triumphant music while Alma waited, tortured, for the two men to hit the water. A fuzzy arena of countless emotions. Halting, exquisite. Alma hadn't experienced that insular place since she was three years old.
Until now.
Another thirty minutes later and they tracked the flower truck to an abandoned four-storey on the river. It was easy, the truck passing routinely by traffic cameras. For Alma, it was a silent horror.
This time, she was the one waiting to hit the water.
They all were.
"Balayés pour toujours..." That song warbled endlessly in Alma's brain.
A tornado of activity preceded the Horsemen's rush to grab a cab, weapons, and coats. Nobody cared if they were caught on the grid now. Their pursuers already knew they were in Boston.
They made it to the building.
It took almost an hour to find Jack, despite the building's absence of furniture and windows.
They actually passed right by him the first time in their rampage up to the third floor. The black leather of his coat, combined with the fact he sat crumpled just outside an open door like a melted mannequin, made it so that only Alma's nose recognized him.
"Jack!"
Under the leather lurked a stench of vomit and blood. Wide metal cuffs locked his wrists together. Splotchy black bruises marred his face and neck.
Merritt knelt.
Daniel and Alma both stiffened, braced for the snide one-up sure to follow. Merritt's eyes were carefully blank, but his brows met in a conflicted embrace.
He took off his hat and held it to his chest. More reverent than any of them had words for. They were spellbound.
Merritt's face suddenly went a brilliant shade of white and reflected spots of domineering fluorescent lights overhead.
The truth of that, what Alma was seeing, took a long time to hit home. When it did, her heart skipped several beats. Daniel gasped. Dylan did a kind of blinking double take—
Merritt was crying.
Merritt McKinney, greatest hypnotist and mind reader in the last fifty years, callous hermit by all appearances, embittered by his brother's betrayal, was crying.
Silent tears. Utterly silent. If the moment hadn't been such a nuclear bomb drop, Alma might have wondered about that. Even Jack wasn't crying.
He shivered, though.
Shivered like the Arctic Circle had descended on Manhattan. Enough to be audible where his teeth met each other. Despite the chill of the abandoned building, it was clear the boy's shivering had nothing to do with temperature.
"Merritt?" Daniel's voice came out as small as Alma felt.
The mentalist opened his mouth, but it was Jack's panicked mantra that answered. They jumped.
"Won't come off. They—they won't—I tried everything but they…won't come off." He tugged at the fused, forearm length manacles, They were made of tarnished brass or bronze. Jack's bloody fingers twitched and they finally saw what he gripped.
"Why won't it work?" he wailed.
Merritt gently took the lock picks from Jack. He'd shed fresh tears in the meantime. Like melted ice. His wide palm stilled Jack's efforts. "Jack, stop."
"It's…I've tried everything," Jack insisted. He kept looking down. Alma wasn't sure if he even realized they were here.
"I know you did." Merritt's hand moved to Jack's neck. He squeezed, careful to avoid the bruises, and wrestled back a throat-thick noise. "You're a good kid, Jack."
"No. I'm a failure." Jack turned his face away. Shame rolled off him like a contagious nausea.
Merritt's eyes blanked. Completely shut off. Somehow it was a gesture of more emotion than anything thus far.
"Cement, Jack." Dylan darted forward at Merritt's proclamation. He squinted at the manacle lock. His entire body went rigid. "Someone cemented the lock. It's not your fault you couldn't pick it. Not to mention you're drugged up to your eyeballs. You even got out of that jail cell of a room. Pretty good for a bad day, son."
They hit the water.
The air left Alma in a slow wave. Freezer burn, that's what they called this feeling. It was the only English equivalent that came close to the agony inside her chest.
They…they gave him picks and a wide, easy lock, knowing he would fail. That he'd try and try and never get free.
Dylan couldn't hold back any longer. He'd put up a valiant effort so far. But the sight of such psychological cruelty buckled him and he knelt.
He wound an arm around Jack's shoulder and touched his forehead to the sleight's. A shudder rolled through Jack. He gasped, coming up for air.
He blinked and his eyes focused at last. Dylan gripped him harder.
Alma suddenly felt the weight of their gravity, of how much these four men had banded together in her absence, how much she'd missed. Every little moment of bonding. The comforting touches and the respect for each other's demons they hadn't had three years ago.
She hadn't been there for the London/China fiasco, had only just begun spending more time with them. Now she felt like the intruder.
Jack frowned. He glanced around, the most lucid since they'd found him. Daniel murmured a quiet word about getting him out of the cold and to one of their private doctors. Dylan nodded.
"Ramses," said Jack. "I overheard…demolition."
"Ramses?" Dylan drew back. "They did this?"
Jack nodded, weak.
Merritt, however, had more immediate concerns. "Demolition?"
Jack leaned forward, eyes wide. He would have toppled then and there if it weren't for Merritt's steadying hands.
"Overheard them…condemned…"
"Who?" asked Alma. "Who did they condemn? Are they after one of us?"
Merritt sucked in a sharp breath. The sound was a gunshot in this cement space. "We walked into our own grave."
"What are you talking about?" Daniel spluttered.
Dylan paled. "The building, its—"
The world became a blender. Walls and the ceiling cracked. The floor roiled under their shoes, enraged, snarling. Its broken teeth clamped together.
Merritt threw himself over Jack. A dust tsunami had knocked the pork pie from his head. Alma lost sight of them when Daniel shielded her with his body. Dylan was a bridge over them all, as if paternal instincts alone could keep everyone unharmed.
"Non, je rien de rien…Non, je ne regrette rien…"
Alma did see the demolition wrecking ball that sailed less than six inches from their heads. If she was uncomfortable, she couldn't fathom how Jack felt. Sedatives plus the inability to move his arms, the pain. Merritt must have come to the same conclusion, for he muttered soothing words in their youngest's ear.
A hand hauled on the back of Alma's coat and all five surged towards the stairwell.
Make that all four. After Jack's knees crumpled in a second attempt to get up, Dylan slung him in his arms. He cradled the boy's head on his chest.
Hit after hit shook the building. They passed a window on the second floor and Daniel leaned out. He waved his arms at the wrecking ball driver.
"Hey! Stop! There are people in here!"
Instead of a panicked flurry of activity from the crew on the ground, a chorus of ribald laughter met their ears. Their upturned hands all had flail and crook tattoos. Shrike and Daniel shared a look.
"Ramses," said Merritt. "They're even better connected than we are. Points for that."
"Move!" shrilled Dylan. He was eight steps ahead before they did just that.
Their fleeing was all adrenaline and arms keeping each other from tripping and backwards glances and shrieking and—
I don't miss this part.
Then again, being trapped in a condemned building while a sadistic, rival organization tried to kill them, using Jack as mentally tortured bait, was a first. This was an ante of danger even they'd never faced.
They slammed open the stairwell doors and flew across the front entrance lobby. The doors were glass, granting a perfect view of the street—safety—beyond. Just a few sprint-strides away.
The first explosion tore a hole not ten feet from Dylan's shoe. He roared, shielding Jack's head from spraying debris. Daniel's young legs made it outside first.
He held the door open and scooped an arm at them. "Come on! Go!"
Merritt shoved Dylan through, then Alma. Detonations rocked the foundation. The floor fell into nothing.
Alma turned back. Her eyes widened. She had a hand out and buried in Merritt's lapel before her eye could blink.
If she hadn't yanked him out and thrown him to the sidewalk, he'd have died in that half second. A fuse burst where he'd stood. Merritt blinked at Alma from where he lay prone. Alma gazed back. Both quaked and Alma had never seen the man so shaken in his life.
A bullet whizzed off the sidewalk.
"Oh come on," Daniel snapped. "Is the persistence really necessary?"
Apparently it was, because three more bullets followed the first. The demolition crew held rifles now, poised at the Horsemen.
"We should be flattered we're worth all the attention," Merritt breathed, but it fell flat.
An SUV squealed up to the curb. Dylan fumbled to grab the gun in his waistband without dropping Jack. Daniel didn't even try. Alma already had her hands up. They were dead men walking.
The passenger window rolled down and Li's sweating face appeared. "Hop in! We gotta move."
Alma had never felt such relief. They cattle piled in the back, a tangle of arms and coats, while Daniel sat up front and directed Li around the gunmen.
"Radio ahead," said Dylan. He stroked Jack's head in his lap. "Tell the Eye we need a doctor. And maybe a welder."
"What—?" Li twisted around in the driver's seat. He honed in on Jack's wrists and colour drained from his face. "Oh no."
"Nothing more we can do."
Those words never got easier to hear. Not when mothers died, not from lawyers when brothers scammed the other out of life savings, not when a neglected kid wore manacles that made his wrists a red fountain.
"But the sedative is already wearing off. It hasn't done any lasting damage," the Eye doctor added.
Dylan thanked the man and shook his hand. Then it was just the four of them standing in the cottage living room, gathered in a half circle around the Chesterfield where Jack sat slumped.
Everyone was coated in gyprock and explosive powder. Li and Bu Bu had left to buy supplies—and maybe a pry bar.
Merritt hoped it didn't come to that. He perched on the coffee table across from Jack.
Stitches lined a gash on his eyebrow and an electric heating pad got to work on bone-deep bruising in brushstrokes along his back. But they only had eyes for the cuffs.
Five of the greatest minds in magic history and none of them had a clue how to get cement-jammed manacles off this skinny street rat without amputating both hands.
Not even remotely an option.
"The lock is wide, almost mockingly so," said Daniel. "It's like something out of the forties. What if we just pick at the cement? Break it off in chips?"
"The tumblers are damaged," said Dylan, hand over another cellphone conversation at his ear. "Even if we get it cleared, there's no guarantee they'd open."
"Laser?" suggested Alma. "We're in the manufacturing district. They'd have laser cutters."
"I have something a little more portable."
They turned. Thaddeus stood in the doorway. At the sight of Jack, he took off his hat. One hand held a canister with a metal nozzle. The other fingered his fedora, a flat metal rod, and a mallet.
"Thanks for coming so quickly." Dylan's soft voice tightened something in Merritt's throat.
"Ramses acted faster than we ever imagined," said Bradley. "A mistake we won't repeat."
Merritt shifted to make room for Thaddeus on the coffee table. Thaddeus' face fell. At the sight, a fierce chill gripped the room. Even Jack felt it, for he shivered. Dylan rushed to drape another blanket around him and upped the heating pad's dial.
Thaddeus waited until Jack's restless eyes met his. "Mr. Wilder, we're going to get you out of these. Do you trust me to do that?"
Jack's irises shifted a little, searching Bradley's face. Thaddeus let him, as long as he wanted.
"I'm not like those men," Bradley said. "I want to help. I'm not going to hurt you."
Jack's brows drew back. That icky feeling in Merritt's throat constricted.
You can trust us. We're not tricking you like they did.
Jack nodded. At all of them.
Everyone exhaled noisily and tension released. Not all of it, but enough for Merritt to discern hope at the end of this hellish tunnel.
Thaddeus held up the canister. "This is—"
"Liquid nitrogen," Jack croaked.
"Indeed. Hold still for a minute."
High pitched sprays were the only sound for a stretch. Veins appeared on the cuffs, icing it enough for Merritt to see his reflection and Daniel's worried face over his shoulder.
Jack, normally so easy to read, now wore a white washed stare. For the first time, Merritt had to work to see all the emotions behind that thick curtain. He settled a hand on the boy's knee, more for his own sake.
With the room so quiet, everyone jumped at a tinny hiss. Alma's hand flew to her heart.
"It's alright. That's just the air escaping." Thaddeus reached for the rod and mallet. "Now comes the hard part. This is going to be uncomfortable, okay?"
Jack nodded, as if he'd expected this. Dylan brought over the door jam, a knee high iron dragon. He tipped it onto its side and set it on the coffee table.
Ever so gently, Dylan pulled Jack's wrists to rest on the iron. He stroked the abused fingers once with his thumbs before letting go. Thaddeus rested the rod on the cement. His mallet swung into the air.
"We're here," said Daniel.
Alma smiled. "It's just like another escape act."
"You've got this, Jack," said Dylan.
Merritt, marveling at his own inability to speak, squeezed Jack's knee.
WHAM! The first hit struck true. Jack winced, eyes clenched and lips tight.
WHAM! Thaddeus pounded again.
Jack's hands began to shake. Merritt grasped those too.
"Come on," Thaddeus muttered. Merritt shared his prayer.
WHAM!