“I promise, there won’t be any police.”
“That’s comforting. How about we do this?”
__________
AFTER PAUSING TWICE more so Orlando could rest, she and Dani finally reached the door at the end of the emergency tunnel.
“What’s on the other side?” Orlando asked.
“Level one.”
“And what’s there?”
“Storage.”
“Storing what?”
Dani was silent for a moment, and then seemed to come to some kind of decision. “Weapons.”
“What kinds of weapons?”
“Military grade, mostly. Rifles, guns, ammunition, explosives, different things like that.”
“Why?”
Another pause. “Do you know who Charles Hayes was?”
Orlando stared at her. “The arms dealer?”
Dani nodded. “This was his secret hoard.”
Hayes had been the kind of man who sold weapons to both sides of a conflict to keep the flow of cash coming. No wonder The Wolf was involved. She’d been his partner and had been crippled when their business collapsed after his death.
“How do you know about this place?” Orlando asked.
“He was my father.”
That was even more stunning.
“Please tell me you’re not here to lay claim to all of it.”
“God, no. I’ve been trying to keep it secret so no one would ever find it.”
Orlando believed her. There was so much more she wanted to ask, but that could wait until they were safe.
“Switch places with me,” she said.
It took some coordination to squeeze past each other, but soon Orlando was at the door with Dani behind her. She pulled down on the lever and was relieved when it didn’t stick.
Of course, just when she cracked the door open, another contraction hit. She leaned against the wall as the pain shot through her.
“Are you all right?” Dani whispered.
No, she wasn’t all right, but even if Orlando had wanted to admit it, she couldn’t at that moment because she’d temporarily lost her command of words. She held up a finger, hoping that would be enough to answer Dani.
She couldn’t deny it anymore. The contractions hadn’t been false at all. She was officially in labor. She tried to remember how long it had been since the last contraction. Fifteen minutes ago? Less?
Finally, her muscles started to relax again. She took a deep but quiet breath. As soon as she could manage it, she smiled at Dani. “I’m fine,” she whispered.
“Are you about to have—”
“Don’t,” Orlando said. “Don’t even say it.”
She turned back to the door. When she’d cracked it a few minutes earlier, she hadn’t remembered hearing any voices, but she could definitely hear them now. Quinn’s voice, and a woman’s. She opened the door farther, saw she wasn’t in direct sight of anyone, and crawled out.
Free of the tunnel’s confines, she could now hear every word being spoken. She motioned for Dani to stay where she was, and then worked her way along a row of crates until she could have a visual on the situation.
__________
“I’M SURE THERE’S a room here we can lock you all in,” The Wolf said. “You can spend your last few days starving to death. No messy bullets. It’s a good offer.”
“Some might say generous,” Quinn said.
The Wolf smiled. “Very true.”
“I’m not one of them.”
She sighed. “I’m afraid it’s the best I can do.”
“You’re not getting out of this,” he said. “Drop your weapons and we’ll—”
With a suddenness that surprised everyone, Orlando slipped out from the stack directly behind the women and whipped the barrel of her gun into Bianca’s head. As the hunter staggered, Orlando yanked the woman’s gun from her hand. She then pointed one of her weapons at The Wolf and the other at Bianca.
“What was the plan here, folks?” she asked. “Were you all going to talk each other to death?”
As The Wolf started to move her gun around, Orlando took a quick sidestep and shoved the muzzle of her gun into the woman’s ear.
“Go ahead and test me,” she said. “I am not in a good mood.”
The woman lowered her gun hand.
“Drop it.”
The Wolf let the pistol clatter to the floor.
Orbits, apparently seeing an opportunity, ran past Orlando and down the central aisle toward the exit.
“Please tell me I’m supposed to shoot him,” Orlando said.
“I’ll get him,” Ananke said.
As the assassin ran off, Quinn and Nate took over watching The Wolf and Bianca.
“Where were you?” Quinn asked Orlando.
“Service tunnel.” She made a vague gesture across the room.
“Have you seen Dani?”
“How do you think I found the damn thing?” Raising her voice, she said, “Dani, it’s okay. Come on out.”
After a moment, Dani stepped into the aisle.
__________
ANANKE RACED AFTER Orbits.
“Ricky! Stop!” she yelled to no avail.
He turned down the short aisle to the exit and disappeared into the tunnel. She entered just in time to see him go around the bend. She then heard a cry of surprise and a thud.
She slowed as she came to the corner and raised her gun before moving around it.
“I think I may have hit him too hard,” Daeng said.
He was kneeling next to Orbits, who lay on the floor, unconscious.
Ananke lowered her weapon. “I doubt it.”
CHAPTER 42
THEY PUT THE Wolf and Bianca in an empty maintenance closet and tied them up.
“You know I’ll be free again in no time,” The Wolf said. “I know people in very important positions. I’ll never see the inside of a prison.”
“Perhaps not a typical prison,” Quinn said. “But I’m sure Helen will find someplace nice to put you.”
“Helen? Do you mean Helen Cho? I hate to break it to you but Helen won’t be doing anything anymore.”
“And why is that?” Orlando asked.
“Let’s just say I never worry about the dead.”
“Oh, right,” Orlando said. “You’re under the impression your people killed her at the Imperial Theater.” She shook her head sympathetically. “Sorry, but she got out yesterday, very much alive. And I know she’s going to be pleased to learn that you’re our guest.”
For the first time, The Wolf looked uncertain. Her eyes flicked past Quinn and Orlando to Dani standing just outside the room. “You’re not going to let them do this to me, are you? I was your father’s friend. I used to play with you when you were a baby. We’re practically family.”
Dani stared at her, and then stepped into the doorway. Without taking her eyes off The Wolf, she swung around the hand she’d been holding behind her back. In it was a gun, pointed at The Wolf.
“Hold on, Dani,” Quinn said. “Think about what you’re doing.”
“My father?” Dani said to The Wolf. “You think I care about your relationship to him? I hate him for who he was, for the harm he did. My real family—my mother and sister—are dead because of him. You were his partner so you are just as responsible.” She pushed the muzzle against The Wolf’s cheek.
“Dani,” Orlando whispered calmly.
“How many hundreds of thousands of lives are you responsible for taking already?” Dani asked as if no one else but The Wolf was there. With her free hand, she gestured behind her. “And how many more would you be responsible for after you took everything my father had stashed here?” She pressed the gun deeper into The Wolf’s skin.
Quinn tentatively placed a hand on her shoulder. “Dani, you don’t want to do this.”
She shot him a quick look and then focused back on The Wolf. “Tell me one reason why she doesn’t deserve to die.”
He took a step forward and put
a hand over the gun. “Even if there isn’t one, you’re not an executioner.”
He pulled gently on the barrel, her resistance holding it in place for another second before she relaxed.
The Wolf smiled. “I guess you’re not your father’s daughter after all.”
“That’s probably the nicest thing you could have said to her,” Orlando said, before she smacked the grip of her gun into The Wolf’s cheek.
__________
ORBITS CAME TO as they finished zip-tying him to one of the pipes running up the side of the silo.
“Are you going to leave me here to die?” he asked.
“I wish,” Ananke said.
“Then what’s going to happen to me?”
“That’ll be up to our client,” Quinn said.
“Your client? No, no, no. There’s no reason you can’t just let me go now. You’ve got The Wolf, man. Your client will be more than happy with her. And don’t worry about me. I’ll strike this place from my memory.”
Ananke looked at him as if he were a child. “Ricky, you auctioned off a human being.”
“Well, okay, sure, but ultimately I didn’t. In fact, if anyone should be in trouble for that, it should be The Wolf for stiffing me.”
“I’m sure she will be aptly punished,” Quinn said.
Looking less than satisfied with the answer, Orbits said, “That won’t get me my money, though, will it?”
After the two men Daeng had taken care of on the stairs had been carried into the room with The Wolf, Quinn had everyone gather back in the level-one storage area.
“So…what now?” Ananke said. “We call Helen and let her deal with everything?”
“Soon enough,” Quinn said. He looked at Dani. “We’re going to have to tell our client, you realize that, right?”
“What will she do with everything?”
“See that it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.”
“Who decides whose hands are right and whose are wrong?”
He paused for a moment, and then said, “I can only tell you that I trust her.”
Dani nodded. “I guess that’s the best I can hope for.”
“Can I ask a question?” he said.
Dani looked at him.
“When you were, um, talking to The Wolf, you mentioned your father. Who was he?”
She looked at Orlando and back at Quinn. “Charles Hayes. He was an arms dealer.”
Quinn had heard the name before but it had been years. “And The Wolf was his partner?”
“Yeah.”
“So all this,” Nate said, looking around, “was what? A shipment that didn’t get delivered?”
“Backup supply. He’d skim a bit off other jobs and deposit it here. He once told my sister it was his retirement plan.”
“You were trying to get here when Edmondson caught you, weren’t you?” Orlando asked.
A nod. “I thought…I thought there’d been enough time. I thought everyone would have forgotten.”
“What do you mean?” Nate asked.
“I’d stayed out of the country for ten years, living under a false name. For the first few years, people tried to find me. There were rumors, you know, about my father’s ‘treasure.’ After a while, they stopped searching. I promised myself I’d wait a full ten years. I guess it wasn’t enough.”
“But why come back at all?” he asked.
“Because I had to.”
No one said anything, all waiting for her to go on.
“My mom didn’t know what my dad really did until after my sister and I were born. When she found out, it scared her to death. She wanted to leave him, but she was afraid he’d take us from her. So she stayed, and secretly brought us up to hate everything he stood for. Marianne and I were scared of him, too, and it wasn’t hard hiding from him how we really felt.
“When Marianne turned sixteen, he said it was time to start showing her the business. I was ten then. The idea that he would expose Marianne to his world finally set off my mom. They argued for nearly two weeks, night and day. Then one morning Mom was gone. Our father said she was visiting a friend or something like that, I don’t remember exactly. But she never came back.”
“He killed her?” Nate said.
“There was never a body, but, yes, I’m sure he did. Marianne told me not to worry. That she would take care of me. She let our father teach her the business. He showed her everything, even this place. She acted interested but she became even more revolted by what he was. We would sit up nights and sometimes think of ways to destroy him, but it was all just wishful thinking.
“That was until I turned fifteen, and he said it was almost time for me to join the business. Marianne had no intention of letting that happen. She told me she had a plan. She laid it out and then taught me my part, going over and over every detail for months, including the backup plan in case things went wrong. Turned out the main part of the plan was just a smoke screen, and the emergency plan was what she’d intended for me to carry out all along. A month shy of my sixteenth birthday, she killed him in his office. Later that night she died in a one-car accident that wasn’t an accident at all. My father’s people were responsible.”
“The Wolf?” Orlando asked.
“It wouldn’t surprise me,” Dani said. “I think Marianne knew she wasn’t going to get away with it. That’s why she worked so hard to prepare me. She’d even arranged it so that immediately following the funerals, I was sent to a boarding school in London. The day after I arrived in England, a friend of Marianne’s took me to France and helped me disappear.”
“There’s something I still don’t understand,” Quinn said. “The gear here has got to be worth hundreds of millions, but it’s older stuff. On top of that, getting it out of here without attracting attention won’t be easy, not to mention getting it out of the country. Transportation costs, bribes—even if we ignore The Wolf’s fifty-million-dollar bid for you, the next highest was in the upper forties. That’s too much for this.”
“That’s because everything you’ve seen is just the icing,” Dani said.
Without another word, she led them to the elevator. Even though the car was sitting there and the door was open, she stepped over to the call button and ran her fingers along the edge of its metal faceplate.
“Ah, there,” she said with a grin as the plate swung out.
In addition to the wires leading from the button, a key sat in a small space at the bottom.
“Who’s coming with me?” she asked as she stepped onto the elevator.
“Daeng, Ananke, if you don’t mind staying here and keeping an eye on things?” Quinn said.
“Of course,” Daeng said.
“You can stay,” Ananke said, “but I’m not going to miss this.”
Quinn was about to argue, but Daeng held up a hand. “It’s okay. I can handle things.”
As Orlando moved toward the elevator, Dani looked at her stomach.
“You should probably stay up here, too,” Dani said.
Orlando stopped. “Why?”
“Just a precaution.”
“A precaution from what?”
“It’s okay,” Quinn said. “Keep Daeng company. If I think it’s safe, I’ll come get you.”
Orlando did not look happy at all, but only said, “Don’t be long.”
“Nate, do you mind shutting the doors?” Dani asked.
While he did this, she stuck the key into the hole next to the orphaned button on the control panel. When she turned it, the button lit up and the elevator began descending.
The trip was a short one. Nate opened the inner gate when they stopped, only to find a set of closed doors on the other side, split down the middle top to bottom. Embedded in the door was a meter with a range from green to red, the needle resting comfortably in the former.
“What’s that for?” Nate asked.
“Just a safety precaution. Green is good,” Dani replied.
When she turned the key again, the doors slid apart a
nd lights came on in the space beyond.
Though Quinn was sure the size of the room was no different than that of the levels above them, it appeared considerably larger since there were no stacks of crates filling it. The only unusual feature was a boxed-off room of some kind protruding from the wall on the other side. Quinn wasn’t surprised when Dani began walking toward it.
Halfway there, they passed another meter, this one mounted to a structural post. It, too, was registering in the green zone.
The walls of the separate room were unpainted concrete. Near the only door—also made of concrete—were two more meters, a monitor, and a control panel. The needle on one of the meters was in the green, but the other one was sitting a bit past the point where green started fading into yellow.
“What is this?” Quinn asked.
“You wanted to know why people were willing to spend so much?” Dani said. “This is it.”
She fiddled with the control panel until the monitor came to life, revealing a shot of what was presumably the room’s interior. Four trunks sat side by side, approximately two feet apart from each other. All were black with gold-colored metal trim and had what looked like thick leather handles. The feed could have easily been of a photograph because the image was completely still.
The back of Quinn’s neck began to tingle. A bunker full of weapons. An isolation room. Strategically placed meters. “Please tell me those aren’t what I think they are.”
“They are.”
Nate looked at Quinn and then the monitor again. “Nukes?”
“What?” Ananke said, moving several steps backward. “Are you saying those are nukes?”
Dani nodded. “According to Marianne, my father considered the trunks his greatest asset. But you don’t have to worry. The room has a thick lead lining and three feet of concrete on the outside.”
“Is that enough?” Ananke asked. She looked at the others. “Does anyone know? There could be a leak.”
“No leak,” Dani said. “The meters are all in the green.”
Ananke did not look convinced.
Quinn said, “Unless there’s something else, I think we should head back up.”
Ananke turned and headed for the elevator.
The Buried Page 28