“It doesn’t matter anymore. It’s over,” I said, my voice cracking with stutters. “I copied Wendy’s hard drive before you stole her computer. I gave it to Troy Clark a few hours ago. He says Colby kept very good records. Tanja has probably been picked up by now and you know what that means. First one to make a deal wins. She’ll give you up before the ink on her fingerprints dries. You can turn yourself in and try to beat her to the punch or hide down here for the next fifty years. It doesn’t matter. It’s over.”
Grisnik shook his head, turning his gun toward me. “Listen to you, Jack. You’re a lousy liar. Troy Clark is right. You are half crazy.”
Tremors began to percolate in my gut, tickling their way into my arms. I didn’t have much time left before I’d be on my knees next to Colby. I had to convince Grisnik that he was finished, that Wendy couldn’t hurt him. If I succeeded, he’d come to the only other conclusion. He’d have to kill both Colby and me, a price I’d pay to keep her safe.
“This is the way I figure it,” I said. “Tanja handled supply. Rice handled the money. You took care of the KCK cops and Colby played us. Rice went down, but he was willing to do the time to protect his investment. Marcellus Pearson and Javy Ordonez were both going down, but neither of them would take the long view like Rice did. So you decided to close up shop. Latrell Kelly bailed you out with Marcellus.”
“I was supposed to do him, but I was only going to warn him,” Colby said. “Tell him to get out of town. I was too late.”
“Is that what you told Javy Ordonez? Except he said he was staying put, so you killed him.”
“I set up the meeting with Javy, but that’s all,” Colby said. “Grisnik killed him. There’s another entrance to the mine on the other side of the lake. Comes out in the woods behind the rail yard. Grisnik showed me. Perfect way to get in and out without being seen. Grisnik used the boat. We didn’t know that Latrell used the other side for some kind of hiding place. Grisnik found his gun and the photograph of Latrell and his mother. It was just dumb luck.”
I looked at Grisnik. “That’s why you put Javy’s body in the Dumpster. You knew it would get caught in the sweeper blade, just like the homeless bums you told me about. You left the gun where it would be found and planted the photograph. But you couldn’t have known any of that would tie back to Latrell. We didn’t find out about him until later.”
“I didn’t care who it tied back to so long as it wasn’t me,” Grisnik said.
“And Thomas Rice?”
Colby said, “Rice panicked after you and Grisnik went to see him. He was afraid you’d go after his wife. He called me. I told Grisnik and he called New York. They said Rice had to go.”
“And you gave the job to Wilson Reddick,” I said. “What about Bodie Grant?”
“In the water,” Colby said, nodding at the lake. “That one’s on me, too,” he added, dropping his head.
“Why?”
He hesitated, choking on his answer. “Tanja,” he said.
“She tell you that she’d chosen you instead of Grisnik?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Pathetic, huh?”
“You don’t know how pathetic,” Grisnik said. “I’m a patient man, but I’ve run out of patience.” He stuck his gun in Colby’s ear. “Tell me where I can find Wendy.”
Colby raised his face toward me. For an instant, a crooked smile?ashed across half his face. It happened so fast, I wasn’t certain I’d seen it. Then his face and his voice?attened out.
“I threw her body in the Missouri River. She’s halfway to St. Louis.”
“Well, ain’t that the shits,” Grisnik said and shot Colby in the head.
Chapter Seventy-one
Colby’s head exploded in a mist of bone, blood, and brains, his torso toppling into the lake, his legs still folded on the?oor. I went down with him, the gunshot triggering a spasm that coiled me tighter than a roll of steel cable, my head on my knees, and my chin hard against my chest. I braced myself for the aftershocks, using the?ashlight like a pylon to steady my feet.
The spasm eased and I tilted my head up, gathering my breath. Grisnik was standing in front of me, arms at his side, gun in his right hand.
“If you think about it, Jack, I’m doing you a favor,” he said, raising his gun.
“Like hell,” I said, and swung the?ashlight at him, knocking the gun from his hand and launching my shoulders into his gut.
I had the advantage of surprise but knew I was too weakened to ride it more than a few seconds. I drove him backward into the cavern wall, knocking the lantern to the?oor. The bulb shattered and the cavern went black.
Grisnik clasped his hands into a single fist and slammed them down into the center of my spine, putting me on my knees, then grabbed my jacket, yanking me to my feet, and giving me the momentum I needed. Grasping the?ashlight, I speared the underside of his chin with the lens, snapping his head against the rock. He let go of my jacket and slid to the?oor. I didn’t know whether he was down or dead.
The lens on my?ashlight was gone, the edges jagged and sticky with blood. I felt around his neck for his night-vision goggles, pulling them over his head and trying them on, throwing them aside when they didn’t work.
The darkness was disorienting. I crawled to my right until I found the water, then stood and turned my back to the lake. With my hands stretched out like curb feelers, I walked toward where I hoped I would find the ladder. I missed it the first time, tripping over the stack of boxes from the bar. Coming back, I was certain I’d end up in the water until my left hand bounced off the bottom rung.
I grabbed the highest rung I could reach and pulled myself up. Once my feet made it to the bottom rung, I climbed as fast as I could, knowing that if I stopped moving, I would start shaking and lose my grip.
The first shot came when I was halfway up the ladder. It missed wide, ricocheting off the cavern wall, the sound deafening. My feet slipped and I caught myself after dropping a couple of steps. The red dot from the laser sight on Grisnik’s gun searched the cavern for me.
“I know you’re on the ladder,” Grisnik said. “Guys like you always run.”
He fired again, closer but still wide, the air hot with cordite. I started climbing again, the ladder creaking against its shifting anchor bolts. The next shot hit several rungs above me, the steel sparking.
“Getting closer, Jack! I can hear you on the ladder. I’m coming for you!”
Climb and he’d hear me. Hang where I was and he’d find me. I said a prayer to the god of darkness to hide me and climbed, almost losing my grip when Grisnik grabbed the bottom end of the ladder and rattled it.
“Gotcha!” Grisnik said.
I swung to the outside of the ladder, climbing it like a rope, hoping he’d shoot through the center. Four more shots?ew past and I was at the mouth of the shaft. I hung on to the outside of the ladder as he kept firing, swinging back to the center when I heard the dry click of an empty magazine, wondering whether he was reloading. The answer came when I felt the ladder sag with his weight as I climbed into the shaft.
“You’re a dead man! I’m coming for you!”
I held on to a rung on the shaft wall, my feet on the top step of the ladder. I locked my feet around the inside edges of the top step on the ladder and started rocking it back and forth. The anchor bolts rolled around inside the crumbling concrete, the ladder groaning against their loosening grip.
I looked down. Grisnik was invisible in the dark, but I heard his heavy breathing and felt him getting closer. He’d stopped threatening, not wanting me to know how close he was.
Sweating heavily, my muscles trembling, I drove my legs harder, the ladder now swinging freely in a growing arc. I pulled my feet back on the rung so that they wouldn’t get caught if the ladder came out of its mooring, and locked my left arm around a rung level with my chest. I then leaned away from the wall, bent at the waist, and drove my legs back and forth like a child on the swing set in the park.
Grisnik grabbed my ankle as the anchor bolts slid free. For an instant, he and the ladder were suspended in midair, my shoulder wrenching nearly out of its socket as I clung to the rung on the shaft wall. I kicked loose of his grip and a second later heard the ladder crash onto the cavern?oor. He never made a sound.
