Mac’s shot caught Roman high in his left shoulder. He shrieked—a cry that rattled my eardrums—and dropped his gun. It skimmed away in the rising water and fetched up against the wall as Roman sank to one knee.
Mac stepped fully into the corridor behind me.
“Hands up!” she yelled.
Roman lifted his head. His face was spattered with blood—his or Hiram’s or both. Beyond him, Hiram lay unmoving.
Somewhere deep in the earth, a great rumbling built. From far away came a series of cracks that sounded like tree trunks snapping, then an oddly muffled whump.
Roman sank to all fours, his elbows bent, his good hand grappling for support. “Can’t . . . ,” he said weakly. “Hurts.”
I eased off Clyde. “Fass!”
But even as Clyde leapt, Roman’s groping hand found my gun where it lay near his knee. Clyde was in midair when the gun went off. The sound boomed in the small space.
Then Clyde slammed into Roman, and the two of them tumbled backward.
I ran after Clyde. He had his jaws clamped around Roman’s arm. Roman was awake, but he didn’t move or make a single sound. His eyes followed me as I kicked the .45 farther out of his reach and grabbed my gun where he’d dropped it.
“Don’t move,” I told him. “The more you struggle, the harder he’ll bite.”
I wanted to check Clyde. I wanted to fall on my knees and run my hands over him, see if Roman’s shot had struck him.
Instead, I ran past him and Roman and Hiram, rounded the corner, and skidded to a halt in a small room.
Light came from a lantern set on a barrel. There were two cots. A shelf stacked with food. A pair of shovels propped in the corner. A table covered with the makings of bombs. On the other side of the room, a small opening led to what appeared to be another tunnel, this one narrow and maybe five feet off the ground.
Nothing of Lucy.
“Lucy? Where are you, honey? You’re safe now.”
The ground shook for a second or two. One of the shovels teetered and crashed. Then everything went very, very quiet.
My eyes scanned the room again. On one of the cots, the huddle of blankets gave a slight twitch.
“Lucy!”
I dropped next to the cot and, terrified at what I might find, drew back the blanket.
I knew her face. Had held it constantly in my mind, seen it in my dreams. The lively brown eyes, the soft brown hair.
But now Lucy’s face was rigid with terror, her eyes wide and vacant. When I reached a hand toward her, she flinched.
“Lucy,” I said. “My name is Sydney. I’m going to take you to your dad.”
She blinked. “My daddy is dead.”
“No, Lucy, he’s very much alive.” Willing it to still be true. “He was hurt, but now he’s waiting for you.”
She shook her head. “I saw him.”
I remembered the picture she’d drawn, the one in Ben’s desk. “He told me to tell you something. He said, ‘You have to be brave, Lucy Goose.’”
Her eyes came into focus, met mine. A small bit of the horror there was replaced with hope. “He told you that?”
“Cross my heart.”
“It’s wrong to lie. My mommy said so.”
“No lie, Lucy. Let’s go see him.”
She held out her arms and I scooped her up and carried her back toward the tunnel. I paused next to Hiram, took one look at his wide, staring eyes, and stepped over him and out of the room.
Clyde had released Roman’s arm but sat close. My partner looked unhurt. Roman had fallen onto his back when Clyde hit him, and now he lay in an unmoving, broken sprawl. His eyes were wide and empty, his mouth open. Maybe Mac’s shot had nicked his heart and he’d bled out. One could always hope.
“Mac!” I called.
Silence.
I set Lucy down next to Clyde and turned her away from the body of her half uncle.
“Lucy, this is my partner, Clyde. I want you to wait with him. I have to go back down the tunnel and get one more person. Wait here, okay? There’s a bomb, so you have to stay very, very still. Wait with Clyde and don’t move. Can you be brave again?”
Her eyes widened in her pale face, but she nodded.
“Pass auf,” I said to Clyde. Guard.
I hurried down the tunnel, stepping over the trip wire. The light was faint here, and I pulled my goggles back over my eyes. The world came greenly into view.
Mac sat with her back to the wall, her legs stretched in front of her. Her face was white and still. A chunk of flesh was missing out of her right leg, halfway between her knee and her hip. She’d removed her belt and yanked it tight around her thigh as a tourniquet.
Beyond her, the tunnel ended in a pile of rubble. And from beyond that came the sound of water rushing.
“Mac?” I crouched next to her. “Mac!”
She opened her eyes. “Lucy?”
“She’s waiting. We have to get out of here.”
She smiled. “Roman?”
“Dead. Now get on your feet!”
“We’re trapped,” she said. “The water . . .”
“There’s another tunnel. Get up!”
She pressed her palms against the ground, bent her good leg, and pushed. I grabbed her beneath her arms and hauled her to her feet.
She screamed when her bad leg touched the ground.
I slung her arm across my shoulders, and we hobbled along the tunnel. At the trip wire, I lifted her over and we shuffled on toward Lucy and Clyde. I helped Mac lean against the wall, then bent to pick up Lucy.
The four of us rounded the corner past Hiram’s body, which was already half-submerged by the rising water. We sloshed our way across the room to the mouth of the tunnel. I shone my light down the passageway—it disappeared into the distance, but a faint breeze trickled my face. Of course Roman would have another way out.
“It leads to air,” I said to the others. “But it’s narrow. We’ll have to crawl.” I looked at Mac. “Can you manage?”
“I’m not liver pâté,” she said.
“No,” I said. “You most definitely are not.”
I fitted my headlamp on Lucy, then hoisted Clyde into the tunnel, followed by Lucy. Mac insisted on going last.
“If you stop, you’ll force me to come back for you,” I said.
“I won’t stop.”
I scrabbled after Lucy, then heard Mac’s sharp intake of breath as she lifted herself in after me.
I tried to determine if we were moving toward or away from the river, tried to picture where the tunnel would emerge into the dawning day—if indeed it did. I tried not to think of the four of us getting trapped here as the water rose; tried not to think of Cohen or anyone else who might have been caught in the tunnel behind us when it gave way.
Every ten yards or so, Lucy would stop, and then Clyde would stop as well. I could hear him waiting up ahead, panting in the moist coolness. Behind me, Mac’s breaths came in ragged gasps.
Each time Lucy stopped, I urged her on. “Follow the dog, Lucy Goose. He’ll take you home.”
And each time, after a minute or two, she’d start up again.
I don’t know how much time passed—minutes or hours. But then Lucy stopped again, and before I could urge her forward, she said, “There’s daylight.”
I pushed off my goggles and squinted past her. Wan, gray light trickled into the passageway, and with it came the faint scents of rain and grass.
“Keep going, Lucy. Keep going. We’re almost there.”
The tunnel widened, then ended sharply in a small space that led to a vertical shaft. Clyde squirmed free of the tunnel, and Lucy followed him. The smells of rain and grass grew stronger, overriding the stink of wet earth. A ladder, a twin to the tunnel beneath the cement factory, led to the surface.
And, high above, through the round opening, a pearl-gray disc shone—the coming dawn.
TWO WEEKS LATER
CHAPTER 32
Every person’s life is a struggle against a world fille
d with resistance. That resistance may defeat us or warp us or crush us.
But sometimes, we find a strength we didn’t know we had. And with that newly recognized strength, we move past the hard times. And we become a little stronger for the next round.
—Sydney Parnell. Personal journal.
The funeral for Samantha Davenport and her two sons was held on a brilliant Colorado afternoon in August—a day that was sunny, dry, and warm. The only clouds were high and thin—wisps of cotton stretched across the azure blue. The rains, after causing record flooding across Colorado, had moved on. The ground had responded to the unprecedented moisture with a luxurious tide of green that spread across lawns and parks and open spaces. Denver looked like a city reborn.
At the service, Clyde and I stood close together in the shade of a copse of trees, watching from a distance as the mourners gathered by the graves. Neither of us were ready to be so near the dead. I’d already said what I needed to say to Ben. And to Lucy. We’d come to pay our respects, but no one needed to know we were there.
Even across the roll of green lawn, I could make out the tall figure of Ben Davenport, his face pale but his bearing military erect. He wore his army dress blues uniform and held a cane he refused to lean on.
The nurses told me that he had awoken in the early morning hours while we were hunting for Lucy. It was as if her need for him had reached the place where he dreamed. As if he knew how much she would need him when she returned home.
As if God knew exactly what the two of them could handle and had given them that much and no more.
The doctors said it would take months of therapy for Ben to relearn skills he’d once taken for granted. But the brain was amazingly elastic, and he was expected to make a good recovery. Probably he would never be quite as he had been, the doctors said. He needed to be prepared for that. But he’d been a different man since the war, anyway. I was confident that Ben wasn’t someone you should underestimate. Whatever the future held, he would adapt.
And maybe the same could be said for Lucy, who, while physically unharmed, had memories no one should carry. But I didn’t underestimate her, either.
She stood beside him now, dressed in a pink dress and white sweater, her hair neatly braided. Her hand was in his, and their eyes sought each other continually during the service. At some point, Ben loosed her hand to wrap his arm around her shoulders. She leaned into him.
They had each other.
My hand slipped into my pocket and—as I had done so many times—I ran my thumb across the photo of the Iraqi boy, Malik. We should never quit fighting for what we believe in. Or what we love.
Beside me, Clyde wagged his tail, and I turned to see Mac McConnell approaching across the grass. The bullet from Roman’s gun had taken out a chunk of muscle and resulted in copious blood loss from a lacerated femoral vein. The wound had then become infected after being dragged through the mud. Mac had undergone immediate surgery and was still in physical therapy. But she’d discharged herself early from the hospital and refused the wheelchair ride to the car, insisting that recovery would come faster if she didn’t baby the leg. The doctors told her she was apt to do more harm than good if she wasn’t careful. She waved them off and laughed, and now there was another reason for people to call her Mad Mac.
“It’s good to finally see the sky again,” she said.
“I wasn’t sure we would.”
We’d talked about those hours we’d spent under the ground. Mac had gotten my message loud and clear, but it had taken her a while to get to the cement factory. She still beat Cohen and most of the police there. The young officer who arrived before she did had been content to stand guard at the entrance to the mining shaft while she descended. Officer Ketz, she’d told me later, is a boy who needs to grow bigger britches.
Ketz was the officer who’d arrived at the accident when all of this started. Maybe getting knocked down a peg or two wouldn’t be all bad. He’d rebound.
Mac’s story was straightforward. She’d followed the trail I’d marked with the Silly String and been—she noted drily—particularly appreciative of the strands hanging off the trip wires. But the water had been rising fast as she went through the tunnel, and she’d known we had little chance of returning that way. She’d come after me anyway. You really are crazy, I’d told her. Crazy enough, she’d responded, that God has learned not to argue.
When the earth collapsed, only one cop had been in the tunnel. Detective Michael Cohen. He’d descended the ladder and was thirty feet in when the walls started to buckle. He’d scrambled back to the ladder and barely made it out, then spent the next two hours yelling at the engineers to find another way in. When we finally emerged, Cohen’s level of enthusiasm for us was as great as Clyde’s at seeing him—it was like being around a pair of two-year-olds.
Now I smiled at Mac as she propped herself against a tree and removed her sunglasses. The black eye was a faded yellow, almost gone.
“Smart move,” she said, “filing your application. You’ll make a great FBI agent.”
“I started the process, Mac. But I’m still not sure.”
She waved a dismissive hand. “It’ll be great.”
I didn’t tell her that I’d also been approached by Cohen’s boss, Lieutenant Engel, who thought I’d make a solid addition to Major Crimes. He wanted me to make a lateral move from railroads to Denver PD. Six months with a training officer would teach me everything I needed to know about rules and forms and regulations. Then I’d be invited to join the Homicide/Robbery Bureau because of my “talent and experience.” The golden girl on the fast track.
Mauer and Cohen thought it was a great idea. I’d told Cohen he’d be sick of me by the end of the first day. But I promised to think about it.
“I’m meeting a few people at Joe’s Tavern,” Mac said. “Why don’t you join us there?”
“You claiming territory on my turf?”
“Why not, when it’s good turf? Meet us there in thirty.”
But I shook my head. “I’m heading over to the cement factory.”
“Why the hell would you want to do that?”
“You aren’t the only crazy one. I feel a need to say my good-byes.”
She nodded as if she understood. But neither of us made a move to leave.
At the graveside, a winch was lowering Samantha’s casket. Ben and Lucy watched stoically, but even at this distance I could see their tears.
“We have a duty to others,” Mac said.
I nodded.
“But we also,” she went on, “have a responsibility to ourselves.”
“You going to lecture me about something?”
“No lecture. Just a piece of advice.”
I shot her a look. “Is this about honor making a crappy shield?”
“Forgive yourself, Sydney. I know you think you should have found Lucy sooner. That you should have saved Hiram.”
“I don’t. I know I couldn’t have—”
“Don’t bullshit me.”
I fell silent because she was right. I’d talked to the chaplain about it at my counseling sessions. As Hayes had said, self-forgiveness was the first step on my marathon. But it was a struggle. I’d been blaming myself for pretty much everything since my father left and my mother started drinking. It’s what kids do. And even once you grow up, it’s hard to sell yourself a different line.
“I’m working on it,” I said finally. Because I had a plan. A way to mitigate at least some of the guilt.
“That’s good then,” Mac said. “I’ll look for you at Joe’s Tavern.”
“Sure,” I said.
After Mac left, Clyde and I made our way to the truck. Clyde hopped in beside me and I drove slowly through the parking lot and away from the cemetery, my mind on the last two weeks and all the fallout from the Davenport case.
Fred “Bull” Zolner had been arrested and charged with the murder of Raya Quinn. He faced a second charge in the death of David Monroe, the engineer from Clinef
eld. He’d also been accused of committing acts of sabotage against SFCO. In regard to the latter charge, the prosecuting attorneys had opened an investigation looking into other questionable activities related to Zolner, Hiram, and DPC.
From what I’d read in the paper, it looked to be a long list.
Lancing Tate never admitted to his role in igniting the fire in Roman Quinn that resulted in the deaths of eleven people, including Veronica Stern’s unborn child. Lancing publicly expressed his dismay over the terrible fate that had befallen his fellow railroad titan, then went silent on the entire affair. But three days after the story broke, he announced he was starting a charity to support orphanages and provide for foster care in rural communities.
His form of atonement, I guessed. Not for me to decide if it was enough.
As for the bullet train, after all the feuding between the Tates and Hiram Davenport, the funding fell to a congressional axe. White elephant or savior, there would be no Gold Mine Express to make the West great again. Not in the foreseeable future.
How the mighty had fallen.
Esta never fully recovered from the torture she’d endured at the hands of her grandson. Or maybe the drugs had already done so much damage that the torture was just the final straw. She was institutionalized at a home in Thornton for the mentally disturbed, not far from where her grandson murdered Samantha.
Roman’s body was never recovered. Hundreds of man-hours unearthed Hiram’s corpse. But Roman had disappeared under tons of mud and sludge. Or maybe his body had been swept into the South Platte and would emerge someday in the future, like a ghastly Jack-in-the-box.
My feelings about him were complicated. He’d murdered nine people that we knew about. And he’d done so in horrific ways. There could be no earthly forgiveness for him—at least, not on my part. But I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of man he might have been if he’d grown up in a stable home, surrounded by family and friends and classmates. All the energy he’d put into assuming a false identity, into worming his way into the Davenports’ lives just so he could destroy them, all of that could have gone into his photography, which showed real talent. Or into his relationship with the woman who’d been sitting in his Jeep. Maybe instead of Roman Quinn, he would have been the congenial, buoyant Jack Hurley he’d pretended to be.
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