“This smells worse than the sulfur fumes coming out of the mud pits back at Yellowstone.” Grace did her best not to touch anything with her bare hands, though it was almost impossible.
Asher breathed into the crook of his arm, making his voice muffled. “No. I’ve smelled both. This is way worse. This place brings together all the odors of an outhouse and meshes it neatly with the stink of a pile of roadkill. I’m glad I talked to my sister before we came down here. I wouldn’t want to open my mouth outside my shirt.”
It was a storm sewer, not a toilet, but it didn’t make it smell any better. “Oh, come on,” she complained after spotting a white blob on the ground. “Who would throw a dirty diaper into the sewer?”
“We’ve passed about six of them,” Shawn said dryly. “And two used needles.”
Every cell of her body wanted to crawl out the next hole and breathe fresh air again, but they were on the most dangerous leg of their journey. Despite the frantic call from Asher’s sister, Shawn still wanted to press the case of his tribe. Asher needed to see why Petteri had his sister. She wanted to get TKM to stop harassing Asher. Plus, she’d taken on the job of leading Angela and her team to the rock. She pretended it didn’t stink like death in the tunnel, and that the damaged walls weren’t coated with multi-colored slime.
Grace lost her footing on a tilted rock. “Ohmygod!”
Her heart stopped for the two seconds it took to reach the bottom of the slope a few feet later. When it restarted, she realized the asteroid piece was directly in front of her. As she looked it over in the dim light, Asher cursed and slid into the backs of her legs.
“Dammit!” he shouted.
“Oh, sorry, I should have warned you,” she said, spinning around to help him up. “Hey, guys, there’s a slippery rock right here!”
Shawn, Angela, and her three grad students made it through without incident once they knew what to look out for. Standing aside and brushing himself off, Asher spoke quietly to her.
“Thanks for the warning,” he said sarcastically. “I think I’ve got slime all up my backside.”
“I’m really sorry. I almost fell, too. I got distracted by this beast of a rock.”
Angela’s team wore headlamps, which barely reflected off the dark-colored stone. The professor went right to the fragment and began chipping with a small hammer.
“Do you know what it is?” Grace asked. “We found a smaller one of these up north. Asher said it was stuffed with gold and platinum.”
Angela didn’t turn around. “He’s right. This is a magnificent specimen. Thank you for getting us here.” She eventually turned to Grace. “We need a few minutes to survey this area. Would you be willing to escort us back to safety, once we have what we need?”
“How much do you need for your samples?”
“Just a few pebbles, really. It shouldn’t take us long. The TKM area is close; they set up shop on the clean face of the rock, so they could drive dump trucks next to it. If you can find a sewer lid, you should be able to go up and see it. That way.” She pointed to their right, along the curve of the rock. In the beam of Angela’s headlamp, Grace could see some of the sewer passage was still intact. “You can have my flashlight; I won’t need it.”
“Thanks,” Asher said as he took the light.
“Don’t mention it,” Angela replied.
Grace figured there was no point in watching them, so she corralled Asher and Shawn. “Let’s go up ahead and see if we can find a way out. We might have to come right back.” She hadn’t made up her mind about escorting Angela back to safety.
“We’ll be back in a couple minutes. We’re going to scout ahead.”
“Fine,” Angela said distractedly, while helping with the duffel bags set down by her assistants.
Asher led the way with the light, allowing her to get a look at the mushy, wet mess on the back of his pants. Normally, it would have been ripe material to poke fun at him, but he was driven to find Diedre.
“I see a ladder up ahead,” Asher remarked, steadying himself on the wall.
“We should be ready with our guns,” she said, hoping guns wouldn’t be necessary. Once they went up the ladder, they’d be in the thickest part of the mining operation, and it didn’t sound like they were getting along. The gunshots were muffled by being underground, but she was positive they were still out there.
Asher held his pistol at his side.
“Wait!” she insisted. “Let me go first.”
“No,” Shawn said from the rear. “I have the biggest gun.”
They reached the ladder underneath a circular lid about ten feet above them. She was prepared for all three of them to begin arguing who would go first, but Asher sprang up before anyone said a word. He’d been full-on intense since hearing from his sister.
“Ash, be careful,” she said, feeling the wobble of emotion in her voice.
He made it all the way to the lid before glancing back down. “Don’t worry—”
An explosion resonated from the area of the tunnel they’d come from.
“What the hell was that?” she yelled over the dying roar.
Asher tested the lid by lifting it a few inches off its ledge. The sounds of battle snuck through the opening. She saw him look outside for two seconds, then let the heavy lid drop with a metallic clang. He spoke fast while hanging on to the top rung. “I saw the tents. You can’t miss them from this close.”
She was torn between the two directions. Smoke rolled up the tunnel from the direction of Angela’s work site. The condition of her deal was she’d protect the grad school team if they got her to the TKM area, so technically she didn’t owe them anything, but she was close enough to at least check on them. “I’ll be back in two seconds!”
Shawn shook off the dust, glancing up at Asher, then at her. “I’ll hang with you.” He cast a stern glance at Asher. “Don’t go anywhere without us.”
Angela wasn’t more than thirty feet away. When Grace arrived in the chamber where the grad students had been working, she was surprised to find light beaming in from above, suggesting there’d been a roof cave-in. “What the heck happened?”
Almost immediately, a stout little aircraft dropped in through the ten-foot hole above them. It was dull white, with numerous symbols painted on the surface. It took her a few seconds to figure out it was a flying drone, though its function only became clear when it touched down. Angela and her helpers tossed broken rocks into a large basket set between the four fan blades.
Grace coughed on the smoke and dust kicked around by the spinning props. “I thought you only needed a little?”
“What do you care?” Angela snapped. “You can leave. We’ve got this.” The woman used two hands to pick up a watermelon-sized rock and heave it into the cargo area of the drone.
She didn’t care, except she’d risked her life for them. “Well, I only wanted to know what you’re doing.” With less smoke, and more light from above, she saw a three-foot divot in the face of the rock blown out by explosives.
“Clear!” Angela shouted.
Her people stepped back from the drone, then it lifted off the floor of the sewer. Flames shot out from the bottom and the engines screamed while it thrust itself through the hole with the rocket assist. A second or two later, an identical drone dropped back through.
“Holy cow,” Grace remarked, realizing what was taking place. “You planned this from the beginning. Are you even with the university?”
Angela laughed as she went for more rocks. “What does it matter? Each load will allow us to buy a university! You’ve made us rich!” She tossed a hand-sized rock to Grace. “Take some yourself!”
“No, I—” A shadow interrupted her train of thought. When Grace looked up toward the hole, she expected another drone, but there was a man instead. Without warning, he fired what appeared to be a submachine gun hanging at his side.
Angela’s body exploded into its own bloody divots.
Grace aimed her pistol, even as the
barrel above sought new targets.
St. Charles, MO
Ezra found it hard to concentrate while they drove through the blocks of St. Charles. He worried they were being followed by the man who’d spotted them leaving the fight scene. He was sure the cops were on the way. He was beginning to think they’d been away from Susan’s Grace for far too long. Someone might have already taken it. But the most distracting thing was also the cutest.
“Grab him,” Haley said, reaching across Butch to try to stop the puggle. The little guy hopped excitedly between his lap and Butch’s as they sat in the long front seat of the pickup truck. The pup’s leash slid through his fingers as the dog changed directions, though Butch finally locked him down.
“Got ya!” Butch exclaimed.
When Ezra looked back to the road, he was surprised to see a long convoy of police and TKM trucks heading their way. “Turn off!” he exclaimed.
“We can’t,” Haley said with an icy voice.
“You’re heading right for them,” he complained.
She rolled down her window. “I know. Check this out.”
As the lead cop car passed, she waved out her window. The driver flicked her a brief salute. The next police driver also gave her a nod. The first TKM truck did the same thing. A blue-shirted man waved as he flew by.
He and Butch shared a look once the convoy had passed. He leaned forward to see her better. “You’re either crazy or brilliant. They didn’t stop us.”
“I know how these law-enforcement guys operate. We would have stood out if I didn’t give them a casual wave. We’re just another truckload of paid thugs on our way to bang some skulls.”
Butch seemed awestruck. “Are there women working for TKM?”
“Of course. Are you saying we aren’t strong enough to drive a truck or pull a trigger? ’Cause that’s all these guys are good for. You saw them back at Bass Pro. They didn’t care a lick for you or me. Any dumb blonde could play the part.” She took off her camo hat, letting her blonde hair blow wild in the wind.
She turned down a quiet street with smaller bungalow-type homes, then turned into the driveway of a gray house with a pointy black roof. “We’re here.”
“Where’s here?” he asked. “You said you had a friend?”
Haley didn’t wait. She got out of the truck, taking the keys with her. As he sat there wondering what was going on, she grabbed the small backpack from the rear cargo area, then walked toward the front door.
“Well, should we get out?” Butch asked.
He smiled, knowing his buddy wanted to follow the girl. “I guess. We’re not going to be her dog walker, you know?” Butch still held Liam in his lap.
When he checked on Haley, she was already inside the house.
“Hey, how’d she get inside? We’d better get up there.”
Butch scrambled out the driver’s side while he exited through the passenger door. The big guy put the tiny dog on the ground as he grabbed his rifle from the cargo bed. Once they each had their weapons, they trotted up the front steps and into the home.
“Be careful,” he said to Butch, knowing it wasn’t necessary.
His blood was in turmoil. Nothing seemed normal after surviving the shootout. His adrenaline had drained away, leaving him feeling empty and cold, despite the summer heat and humidity. Going into a strange house wasn’t his idea of smart. The lights were off, so it was dim and shadowy.
“I got her!” Haley yelled from deep inside the home.
Liam struggled on the end of his leash, desperate to get to his mother.
“What do you have?” Ezra shouted in reply, wary of what she meant.
Without warning, Liam ran backward, pulling his leash behind Butch, as if he were a flag shifting in a fickle wind. Ezra looked out the front door to see what snagged the little puggle’s attention.
“Oh, shit!” he groaned. A police car had pulled onto the lawn.
Butch restrained the dog as he slammed the door shut and locked it. “We’ve got company!”
“We’re cool,” Haley said, coming into the room. “She’s safe.” The fitness instructor held out the little red backpack with its top zipper half-open. She tipped it a little in his direction, so he was able to see an orange furball inside. Two little tabby cat eyes peered out.
“You came here to get a cat?” he said in amazement.
She beamed. “Not just any cat. She’s my friggin’ family. My Victoria.”
Butch seemed to absorb the meaning faster than he did. “So, this is your boyfriend’s house?”
The police banged on the front door. “Haley, I know you’re in there! They said a fitness woman led a robbery at Bass Pro. It was you, wasn’t it? I knew you’d come here.”
Haley’s smile finally died. “Yep. He’s the cop outside.”
Chapter 20
Denver, CO
Grace was no military-grade markswoman, but the man wasn’t more than ten feet away, and he made a huge target backlit by the sky. She squeezed the trigger as she’d practiced dozens of times in her head. This time, the pistol jerked and barked out a bullet, which instantly impacted the man’s shirt, almost on his TKM logo. He fell backward before she could fire a second time.
Her next move wasn’t as simple as she would have imagined. The three grad students, or whoever they were, froze where they stood as they digested what had become of their leader. The second drone sat on the rocky ground with its bay conspicuously empty, silently demanding someone load it. There were also people shouting in the stinky tunnel leading up to the dig site as they approached.
A face appeared from the darkness. “Aha!” he cried out. “They came this way to steal rock right out from under Tikkanen! Nice!”
Men spilled out of the tunnel, some slipping and falling exactly as Asher had done. They regained their footing and lunged for the broken chunks of space rock sitting on the tunnel floor. Others snooped around the drone. A couple went directly for the asteroid surface, hammers in hand.
Someone grabbed her from behind, scaring her to death.
“Oh, God! Shawn.”
The Crow man pulled her away. “We’ve done more than enough here. We’re going outside before this place blows up.”
“She lied,” Grace said dryly. “Why’d she do that?”
“Who knows? The promise of money can make anyone do anything. Trust me.” By the time they’d gone back to the ladder, Asher was almost down.
“I heard shooting. Is everything all right back there?” His eyes suggested he already knew the answer.
On cue, someone fired a gun behind them.
“Angela’s d-dead,” she stammered. “There are miners swarming in. We have to get out of here right now.”
A flashlight appeared thirty feet behind them. “They went this way!”
A gunshot went off, though it was impossible to tell who the target was. Men screamed and yelled, possibly meaning someone had been hit.
Her stomach squeezed so tight she thought it might create diamonds. “Go!”
Asher was already on a low rung, but he hopped off so she could climb on. Rather than argue who should go first or last, and why, she hopped to the second rung, then scrambled up. She got to the top in seconds but had to use her shoulder to shift the cast iron sewer lid.
“We’re right behind you!” Asher shouted from below.
Grace took a second to look, then pushed through the opening. She had to crawl out and use her feet to shove the lid even farther out of the way. A second later, Asher’s face appeared, half-smiling.
“Out!” she demanded.
Shawn Runs Hard came up on Asher’s heels. He kept moving until he was clear of the hole. She and Asher worked together to move the lid, but Shawn stopped them before it was all the way shut.
“I’ve got to slow them down.” He knelt on one knee and aimed his rifle into the black sliver.
“Wait!” she protested. “We can’t shoot them in cold blood.”
Shawn cast a doubtful gaze at he
r. “They were shooting at us.”
She thought it over. For her, it was kill or be killed when the man in the hole shot Angela, then pointed a gun at her. If they now shot blindly into the sewer, they’d be no worse than that TKM employee.
“I have to,” Shawn said matter-of-factly. “It will buy us some time.”
She bit her lip in indecision but came up with a compromise. “Shoot, but don’t hit anyone.”
“You mean as a warning?” he asked, shifting around the hole to line up the proper angle.
“Yeah,” she replied, glad she thought of it.
“They’re here!” Shawn fired his rifle four or five times. It was as loud as someone slamming a hammer on metal six inches from her head. On the last shot, she finally got her hands over her ears.
“Run!” Shawn shouted once he seemed done. “I didn’t hit anyone.”
She looked around, realizing she’d paid absolutely no attention to anything on the surface. The rock was behind her and she was no longer on the street that had been cut up by the asteroid piece during its arrival. Instead, there were about fifty dump trucks parked side by side, and end to end. A few navy-blue tent canopies sat on the sidewalk on the left side of the street, signaling their destination.
“Follow me.” She put her pistol in the holster, praying she’d never need it again, and absently wondering how men like Misha could do such things for money. If she thought about it too seriously, she figured her stony stomach would toss the empty void pretending to be her lunch.
Once they’d made it to the first tent, she estimated they were out of sight of the sewer lid, but she decided to keep running along the street to be sure. Only when they’d gotten to the last TKM tent did she take a break. “There’s no one here.”
The canvas shelter was filled with communications gear, including radios and a series of flat panel televisions hanging on the rear wall. One of them was cracked, but most seemed in working order. While catching her breath, she pressed the on button for one of them.
A kid’s cartoon show flicked on, already in progress. “…today we’re going to see what’s inside the gigantic space rock. Won’t that be fun, kids?”
Impact Series Box Set | Books 1-6 Page 75