Page 21 of Us in Ruins

Van retreated. He flexed the muscles in his hand, shaking out his fingers like he’d clenched them so hard they’d cramped. “This is why I don’t work with partners.”

“I get it. I’m stuck with a partner I don’t want to work with either, but haven’t I proved myself useful already?” Margot asked.

Scrubbing a hand over his face, Van sighed. His glare didn’t exactly fade so much as wear away, his resolve like silt in a riverbed, eroding. “Could you keep it down? I’m thinking.”

“You know, trying to silence women might have been cool in the thirties, but it’s such a faux pas these days.”

“I’m not trying to silence women,” Van scoffed. “I’m trying to silence you.”

“I didn’t see this restaurant in your diary, that’s all I’m saying.”

His fingertips dug into his temples—she had no doubt he blamed her for that migraine. No, it couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that he’d spent the better part of the last century entombed in stone and now he was in way over his head.

Then, it clicked. “Your instructions are wrong.”

Van straightened, defensive. “Certainly not.”

A smug grin washed over Margot’s face. “They might have been right a hundred years ago, but not anymore. Some of these buildings are new, aren’t they? And now you don’t know where to go.”

“You’re wrong.” His mouth twitched. “I know exactly where I’m going.”

Margot peered both ways down the alley. A dead end. “But you can’t get there.”

A metaphorical light bulb flashed behind Van’s eyes. His gaze darted from the top of Martines Cucine to the bottom, scanning left to right. She could practically see him downloading information, analyzing his options.

His attention snagged on the tower of wooden boxes.

Wordlessly, he picked up the lemon crate and repositioned it against the restaurant’s wall. Retracing his steps, he stacked a carton of tomatoes on top of it. A tower. He couldn’t go through the buildings, so he’d go over them. Even if she kind of hated him, Margot had to admit it was a good idea.

She heaved the next crate into her arms.

“What are you doing?” Van snapped.

The weight nearly toppled her over, but she managed to drop her carton on top of the one he’d just moved. “I’m helping you.”

“No, you aren’t.” He grabbed two crates next. Like he was trying to make a point.

Margot’s shoulders sagged, flustered. “Are you kidding? I just saved you from Italian Gordon Ramsay. Don’t I get a little bit of credit?” She scooted the last crate out of the way with her legs. “You don’t think I can handle a little parkour? I took three months of gymnastics. I was made for this. I’m coming with you, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”

Van’s face scrunched up, caught somewhere between annoyance and amusement. He didn’t climb the crate tower they’d built. Instead, he stayed quiet as he pried up a metal sewer cover that had been buried beneath the boxes and dropped it against the ground with a crash.

Sinking down the first rung of a ladder descending beneath the city, he finally said, “We’ll see about that.”

8

Margot severely underestimated the extreme yuckiness of the sewer system.

The stench clogged her nose, so rotten she was certain she would never smell anything nice ever again. Not her favorite cinnamon vanilla perfume, not a fresh bouquet of peonies, not gooey chocolate chip cookies hot out of the oven. Just rotten eggs for the rest of her days.

But she wasn’t going to let Van prove her wrong just because of a little biohazard situation.

Van peered over his shoulder, checking to see if she was still there, and she wiped a Colgate smile across her face. She didn’t get braces for nothing. But the second he turned forward again, trudging through the soupy brown muck, Margot’s face screwed up in disgust.

This was not her preferred way to spend an afternoon, that was for sure.

Down here, the walls curved overhead. Van had to walk through the deepest waters in the center of the tunnel so his scalp didn’t scrape against the ceiling. Every few feet, streams of pale light filtered down from above, striped through the storm drains. A relieving detail. That meant they weren’t in a wastewater sewer, just a stormwater one. Still, Margot kept to the sidewall where a step had been carved into the channel, so only her socks got soaked.

She groused, “I don’t recall your diary mentioning this part.”