by Mason Cross
I advanced down the alley, moving as slowly as I dared to give Carol time to go around the long way. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe Gage had what he thought was a foolproof way to kill me and take the diamonds.
“Talk to me, Blake.”
He couldn’t see me now. He was relying on me to tell him where I was in the alley.
“Still here,” I said.
“Just keep going.”
I slowed a little more as I reached the far end of the alley. As I advanced I could see it opened out into a vacant space between the buildings. There were a couple of cars parked and a line of storage units and the rear of what looked like some kind of warehouse. Was that where he was holding Sarah? It would make sense. Inside, out of sight.
“Keep walking, straight ahead.”
I hesitated, surveying the space between the alley and the buildings on the other side, wondering how I could let Carol know where I was headed.
“The warehouse?” I asked. “The one with the red roof?”
“I said keep walking.”
There was an edge of irritation in his voice. I didn’t want to do anything to risk tipping him off that we weren’t the only two people on the line. I kept it simple and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. The empty lot was sheltered from the noise of the traffic. My footsteps on the rough concrete echoed off the buildings around.
I slowed as I reached the opposite side of the lot, gazing from side to side. Where was Carol? Between my hesitation at the end of the alley and the measured speed with which I had crossed the lot, she should have had enough time to circle the block and approach from the opposite direction.
“Stop right there,” Gage said.
I said nothing, waiting for instruction like a rookie actor waiting for the director to give his orders. There were three units close to me, all with steel shutters rolled down and a door on one side.
“Walk to the far end, right-hand side.”
Did that mean he was behind the door on the far right? I looked at the three identical units with their three identical steel shutters and their three identical blue doors, looking for a distinguishing feature that I could mention out loud for Carol’s benefit. It was like one of those old game shows, which door held the prize? I walked to the end of the row. There was a ten-foot-high chain link fence bridging the gap between the factory and the next building. I examined the door. It was locked, but fresh paintwork and a new padlock told me this unit was in use.
“Climb the fence.”
I looked away from the door and took a closer look at the chain link fence. On the other side of it was a stretch of cracked concrete, with some hardy weeds poking through. After that, there was what looked like some kind of drainage ditch, and then another fence and the road beyond.
Out of the corner of my eye I caught a flicker of movement. Being careful not to look directly at the corner of the lot, I turned my eyes to look. A slight movement in the shadows. Someone was there. Carol had found a way around.
“Blake ...”
“Climb the fence, got it,” I said.
“Don’t flake out on me now,” he said.
I was carrying the backpack by one strap over my right shoulder. I took a second to loop the second strap over my other shoulder and grabbed the fence. I climbed up and over, grateful there was no barbed wire at the top.
I waited for instruction, and when there was none, walked to the edge of the drainage culvert. It was much deeper than it had looked from behind the fence: a sloped concrete incline that descended around ten feet. The channel emerged from beneath the warehouse on one side where there was a steel grill, and then went back underground about ten yards later, into a large open tunnel about ten feet by eight.
“Get some shade,” Gage said.
I took a long look at the eight-by-ten entrance to the tunnel. Tunnels, to be exact. I knew this was part of Las Vegas’s underground drainage system. I had read an article about it a couple of years back after the system flooded during a big storm. I didn’t relish going down there in the dark. I comforted myself with the knowledge that Gage couldn’t shoot me until he had confirmed I had the diamonds.
“Okay,” I said out loud. To myself, as much as Carol. “Looks like I’m going down there.”
“I don’t need a running commentary, just get on with it.”
I took a deep breath and stepped over the edge, running down the slope fast enough to stop myself from falling. I stepped across the shade line and felt the temperature drop immediately. It was still warm in here, just not as warm as it was outside. A deeper, more animal part of my brain told me it was the coldest I had been in more than a year.
The wide opening meant that there was enough light to see by for the time being. I stepped forward cautiously, blinking my eyes to adjust them to the dark. I stepped around an old refrigerator that somebody had dragged in and left ten feet from the entrance. I wondered how deep Gage would lead me into the labyrinth, and couldn’t help but appreciate the ingenuity of his chosen drop point. Absolutely no way it could be surveilled, and tracking devices would be useless. But he had been talking to me the whole time, which meant he couldn’t be ...
As if in confirmation of that thought, from behind me I heard the crack of shoes landing on concrete from a height. I turned around. Trenton Gage was standing in the tunnel entrance. A perfectly black shape against the sunlight streaming into the gap. There was a gun in his right hand.
“Where is she?” I said.
The black silhouette moved as Gage pointed the gun lower, at the bag in my hands.
“You first.”
I hesitated again. This was it. As soon as I opened the bag, he would know I had what he wanted. And then I would find out just how committed to the concept of a deal Trenton Gage really was.
66
“Let me speak to her now, or I walk right out of here.”
My demand echoed softly against the walls of the tunnel. Gage took his time answering. “I don’t believe you’ll do that, Blake.”
“We had a deal,” I said, hoping Carol was on the way.
I couldn’t see the look on his face against the sun, but I knew he was smiling.
He called out, his voice louder now. “Tell your friend he can relax, Sarah.”
There was a pause, and then I heard a voice from deeper along the tunnel.
“Blake? Is it you?”
Reluctant to turn my back on a killer with a gun, I kept my eyes on Gage and called out.
“Are you okay? Where are you?”
“I’m fine. I don’t think I’m too far in. There’s a smaller tunnel on your left-hand side.”
“Satisfied?” Gage asked.
“Not yet,” I said. I raised my voice to address Sarah again. “Can you walk toward the sound of my voice?”
Gage seemed to consider it, before nodding. “Come on out, it’s fine.”
I heard nothing at first, and then the soft sound of footsteps, slowly getting louder. I didn’t turn around. A moment later, I felt arms around my neck. I looked down and saw they were cuffed together. Gently I ducked under the hands and turned around to face Sarah. She looked okay, all things considered, just grateful to see somebody who wasn’t Gage.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. I’m so sorry. It was so stupid to go there alone, I just ...”
“It wasn’t your fault. Besides,” I said, turning back to Gage. “We’re all done here, right?” I said.
Gage had advanced so he was just five yards from me. His gun didn’t move. I knelt down. I unzipped the pack and took out the case. When I opened it on its hinges, the light from the tunnel mouth caught the pile of diamonds and cast stars on the walls of the tunnel like a disco ball. I placed the case on the ground gently, like I was leaving an offering at an altar.
Gage closed the rest of the distance. He kept the gun on me, and crouched down next to the case. He took a long look at the contents, then nodded approvingly.
“Pleasure d
oing business with you,” he said. He put the case back into the pack and zipped it closed again. He paused before standing up. The gun didn’t waver. “Just out of curiosity, what did you do with Carol?”
I didn’t answer, because I was too distracted by a faint metallic scuffing noise. Like the sound a chain link fence makes when someone is scaling it, trying not to make too much noise. A second later, another silhouette appeared behind Gage. This figure had a gun in its hand, too.
Gage saw something in my eyes and reacted with the speed of a panther, turning around and training his gun on the new arrival. My first thought was it was Carol, and that she had decided to risk our lives to get the diamonds back.
When I realized the silhouette belonged to a man, I knew the trouble we were in was a whole lot deeper.
67
“Police, everybody drop their weapons.”
Gage made no move to obey. I raised my hands to show I was unarmed. The man stepped inside the tunnel. The face was silhouetted, but the sunlight at his back picked out gray hair, the wide frame of a man about six feet tall wearing a sport coat. The body language certainly said cop.
“It’s okay, Blake, I think it’s Costigane.” Sarah’s voice was uncertain, but hopeful.
It took me a second to remember the name. Costigane as in Detective Costigane, as in the cop who had been looking for Freel. But how in the hell had he found us down here, at this exact moment?
“Gun down, now,” he yelled, addressing Gage. Gage had a funny look on his face. His gun was still pointed at Detective Costigane, and he showed no inclination to lower it.
“How did you find me?” he asked.
“You,” Costigane said, addressing me. “Kick the bag over here.”
“There are no weapons in it,” I said.
“He knows that,” Gage said calmly. “He knows exactly what’s in that bag.”
Sarah spoke quickly, a tremor in her voice. “He tracked my phone to the airport. When Gage used it to call you, he must have ...”
If Costigane heard Sarah, he ignored her. “Gun down now, or I blow your fucking brains out. Three of us against one of you.”
There was an edge to Costigane’s voice. I knew what he was doing: hinting that I should rush Gage to take his gun out of play. My mind was already calculating the risk, blocking out potential moves. But something held me back from acting; I was curious about what Gage had said.
“Costigane,” Gage repeated, not moving an inch. “That’s not the name you gave when you hired me.”
“Shut your mouth and put down the gun,” Costigane yelled.
“It’s good to see you again, Grant. I missed you at Walter’s little meeting.”
I looked from Costigane to Gage. They knew each other? Everything was moving and changing a little too quickly for my liking.
“He’s one of the guys who hired me to find Freel,” Gage said quietly. “You help him and he’ll put a bullet in your head next. He wants what’s in the bag.”
“Don’t let him bluff you,” Costigane said. “My name is Detective Ray Costigane. Ask your friend. I’m a police officer.”
“And crooked as a pretzel. We have a deal, Blake. I’ll let you both walk out of here, this guy will put you in the ground.”
Sarah was looking from one man to the other, uncertainty creeping into her eyes.
“Where’s your backup?” Sarah asked. “That was you in the gray car back at Wilston Street, right? You had to have followed us from there. Why wait until now to come down here?”
Costigane ignored her and looked back at Gage, perhaps realizing he had made a mistake by not firing as soon as he had Gage in his sights. Police training dies hard, I guess, even if you’re not exactly a shining example of the profession.
“Put the gun down, you son of a bitch!”
I held my breath. This situation was about three seconds from one of them pulling a trigger, and I was too far from either one of them to do anything but get shot. My eyes met Sarah’s. She knew it too.
The click of the Beretta being cocked echoed through the wide concrete tube. No one moved. Gage and Costigane tensed, but kept their eyes on each other. Carol broke the silence after a second.
“I think both of you should put your guns down.”
I smiled. Carol had negotiated the fence with far greater stealth than Costigane. I hadn’t even heard her approach.
She circled around toward me and Sarah, keeping both of the men within range. She stopped within a couple of feet of the bag. I could sense her fighting the urge to look down at the prize that had slipped from her grasp once already.
“I’m a cop,” Costigane said from between gritted teeth. He knew the situation was spiraling out of his control, and he was not enjoying the experience. “Both of you put your fucking guns down.”
Gage’s eyes flicked to Carol. In that second, Costigane’s gun exploded. Things seemed to slow down. Gage grunted in pain and returned fire. I saw Sarah dive for the ground and cover her head with her cuffed hands. Costigane fell back behind the old refrigerator as Carol cursed and dived toward the wall. She needn’t have bothered. Gage was firing in one direction: at Costigane. He had been hit, but he was fit enough to fire six shots at Costigane’s position.
I kept my head down. There was a lull and I heard a scuff and then quick footsteps. I saw Carol running into the darkness, holding the bag. “No,” I shouted, “they’ll kill you!”
As if to reinforce the point, Costigane looked from behind the refrigerator and fired three shots after Carol, forgetting about Gage. Gage hadn’t forgotten about him. He fired back at Costigane, but the wound had obviously messed up his aim. Both shots went wide: one into the back of the refrigerator, one smacked into the wall of the tunnel. Costigane ducked behind cover again as Gage moved backwards down the tunnel, firing another couple of cover shots over our heads as he headed after Carol.
I knew Gage would have explored the territory in advance: he would know this section of the tunnel system. If he caught up with Carol, she would be no match for him. But I had my own problems to deal with first.
Costigane got to his feet cautiously and approached me. Sarah was still hunched over at the far side of the tunnel. I could see her moving, so I knew she was okay. He seemed to have forgotten all about her, or maybe he just remembered her hands were cuffed. Costigane was out of breath. He was pointing his gun at me, his badge held up in his other hand.
“Why the hell didn’t you help me, asshole? I had him.”
I kept my hands up and didn’t respond, thinking about what Gage had said, and more importantly what Sarah had said, and how it matched up with his actions since arriving on the scene. He put his badge back into his pocket and reached to his belt for a set of handcuffs.
“You’re under arrest. But first we’re going after your friends.”
He kept the gun on me and stepped closer, the cuffs in his left hand. He held the cuffs up and waved them at my hands. Slowly I lowered them, brought them together in the correct pose, wrists up. When Costigane glanced down at them, I winked at Sarah, hoping she would get the message.
“Oh my God, look out!” she yelled.
It was utterly convincing, and so loud in the confined space that Costigane could not ignore it. His head turned for a split second, and that was enough.
I flipped my hands from the cuffs position and cupped them around his gun hand, forcing it upwards as he pulled the trigger. The gun discharged, deafeningly at close quarters, but the bullet passed harmlessly over my head and into the ceiling. Costigane tried to wrestle the gun back using his other hand, but he hadn’t had time to drop the cuffs, and they got in the way. I changed my grip, yanked the gun out of his hand with my left and slammed a short, jabbing right into the middle of his face. I felt his nose break like balsa wood. He swung his now-empty right hand around, turning it into a fist. The swing was wild, a reaction to the sudden pain. I batted it aside with my left forearm. I slammed the butt of the gun into the underside of his jaw.
He staggered backwards from the impact, his eyes rolling up in his head. He looked like he needed a little more encouragement, so I hit him again, hard in the middle of his face. His knees buckled and he dropped face first into the trickle of water running down the center of the tunnel. The set of handcuffs rattled off the concrete as it bounced loose from the fingers of his left hand.
I shook the ache out of my fingers and knelt down next to him. Every atom of my being wanted to charge down the tunnel after Carol and Gage, but I knew I couldn’t take the chance of Costigane recovering and following me. I could still hear footsteps from deeper into the tunnels, hushed chatter. Only it sounded like more than two people. Our little fracas seemed to have attracted some attention.
I grabbed Costigane’s wrists and brought them together around his back, snapping the cuffs on over them. Sarah came over to us, slightly unsteady on her feet, as though she was walking away from a car crash.
There was a key ring on Costigane’s belt with a handcuff key on it. I ripped it free of his belt loop and fitted it into the slot on Sarah’s cuffs, grateful Gage hadn’t used a nonstandard set. I twisted the key and the lock clicked open.
“That looked ... painful,” Sarah said.
I flexed my fingers again. Nothing felt broken. “I’m fine.”
“I wasn’t talking about you.”
68
Gage tucked the gun into his belt and gripped his bloody shoulder for a moment; the additional pain brought out blossoms of stars in his vision. He had chosen the location well. Unlike everyone else, he knew where all the exits were.
As he had anticipated, Carol had taken the wider tunnel. He knew she was just ahead around the turn. She was moving quietly, but she couldn’t do anything about her quickened breathing. He had had some time to enhance his knowledge of the tunnels while he waited for Blake. Carol’s luck seemed to be holding. She had chosen well; was headed for the nearest of three potential exits he had identified. But that meant in another couple of seconds, her hands would be occupied. He stopped and listened. From farther back, he heard the sounds of a struggle, and then a gunshot. Costigane taking care of Blake, or vice versa, he guessed. It didn’t matter, he had too much of a head start on them. It was just him and Carol. He heard other sounds too: people moving around, disturbed by the noises. Low, scared whispers. The community, as Kevin had called them on Gage’s first trip to the underworld.