Mason crawled to the mouth of the vertical shaft, rising in a half-crouch, hands and shoulders hard against the immovable ceiling, slumping back to the bottom, knees to his chest. The passageway thinned, though he knew the sensation was more panic than real, the darkness tightening around him, the concrete scraping through his pants as he slithered back to the other end of the tunnel. Unable to see his watch, he guessed at the time, calculating the odds that Samantha would arrive before Centurion got away, measuring Abby's chances in minutes and seconds.
He scratched and pawed the trapdoor, searching for the handle, disoriented by the claustrophobic blackness, choking on the dust and his fear of being too late, finding it at last, a steel ring frozen from lack of use. Mason slipped the blade of the box cutter beneath the ring, popping it free. Pulling the door up, he poured out of the shaft onto the platform above the basketball court, pounding on the switch to lower the ladder, leaning over the side when nothing happened. The ladder lay on the floor, fifteen feet below, ripped from the platform.
Mason eased himself over the edge of the platform, dangling by his fingertips, swinging his body away from the ladder, dropping and rolling, grunting as he absorbed the hardwood impact. Racing back through the weight room, he glanced in Nix's office. The money and drugs were gone. Nix wasn't.
He was sprawled on his stomach across the width of his desk facing the door, feet just off the floor, arms hanging over the sides in an embrace, blood oozing onto the desk blotter, eyes open, lips moving soundlessly. Mason helped him onto the floor, propping him up to ease his labored breathing.
'Hang on, Terry,' Mason told him. 'Help is on the way.'
'Too late, man,' Nix whispered, fingering the gunshot wound in his chest, Mason could hear Nix's death rattle.
'Is there another way out of here besides the main road?' Mason asked, leaning close to Nix's mouth.
'Path into the woods, behind the barn,' Nix managed.
Mason said, 'You knew Gina and Robert Davenport when you lived in St. Louis. You sold dope to Robert and a baby to Gina.'
Nix nodded, wincing.
Mason asked, 'What about Emily's birth certificate? How did you manage that?'
'Wasn't my part of the deal,' Nix said through clenched teeth. 'Gina said she had that covered.'
'When you came to Kansas City, you picked up where you left off with Robert and blackmailed Gina about Emily. Is that how it went down?'
'Yeah,' Nix said, moaning and leaning his head back, pressing his hand against his chest.
'Stay with me, Terry!' Mason said, holding Nix's head up. 'Then Gina came to you when Abby called her about her baby. What was Gina going to do?'
Nix blinked his eyes, clearing the growing fog for a moment. 'Just like when Emily killed herself, tell the whole fucking country,' Nix said, barely able to force the words. 'Said her listeners would understand and forgive her.'
'Good for her, bad for you and Centurion. Did he kill her?'
'Nah,' he rasped, 'woulda told me to scare the piss outta me. Told me I better shut her up.'
'The drugs the cops found in Gina's office. Did you do that?'
Nix smiled, a thin trickle of blood dripping from the corner of his mouth. 'Get her busted, shut her up. Tipped off the cops too, 'cept they didn't bust her before she got killed. Pretty smart, huh?'
'Yeah, pretty smart,' Mason said, cocking his head at the sound of sirens mixing with the rotor beat of a helicopter. 'Just a few more minutes, Terry. You can make it. What about Emily? Was Abby Lieberman her mother?'
Nix struggled to answer, his words lost in his last breath.
Mason left him, emerging from the house a moment later, greeted by a SWAT team standing in the red shadow cast by the still-roaring barn fire, the helicopter hanging aloft in the near distance.
'Don't shoot him,' Samantha said. 'At least not yet.'
'Centurion took Abby,' Mason began. 'If you didn't see him on your way in, there's another way out through the woods.'
'We didn't pass anyone,' Samantha said, radioing instructions to the helicopter pilot, the chopper tilting toward the woods, cutting the night with a broad-beamed searchlight. 'What about Nix?' she asked, motioning the SWAT team into the house.
'Office in the basement. Dead. Centurion shot him.'
'What about you?' she asked, losing her cop's edge.
'I'm good,' Mason said. 'Ruined another suit, but none of the blood is mine.'
'Give me the details,' she instructed him.
Mason told her what had happened, ignoring her raised eyebrows when he described setting the fire in the barn, explaining why the law of necessity trumped the law against arson. She took it down, shaking her head.
'All clear in the house,' a member of the SWAT team radioed to her. 'One dead in the basement. No sign of anyone else.'
'Give me your car keys,' she told Mason.
'Why?'
'Because I'm not letting you run loose until I have a better idea where Centurion is.'
'You can't do that,' he told her.
'Really?' she asked, folding her arms across her chest. 'I can arrest you for arson and handcuff you to a tree if I want to. I'm not going to waste manpower having someone drive you home and I'm not going to let you play Junior G-man and race off into the woods after Centurion and your girlfriend. I know you, Lou, and it's not happening. We'll find them and we'll get Abby back, so save the I'm-going-with-you speech because you're not. You're staying here until we're all ready to go home.'
Mason hesitated, hands in his pocket, fingering his car keys.
'Sergeant!' Samantha snapped over her shoulder at a cop who materialized at her side.
'Okay, okay,' Mason said, raising his hands in surrender, and giving Samantha his keys. 'I'll behave.'
'Sergeant, station a man at the door of the house. Make sure Mr. Mason stays inside until I get back.'
Mason looked at Samantha, taking comfort in the hard set of her face as she issued commands, directing search teams into the woods, setting up roadblocks on the highway, studying a map one of her men held up while another shined a flashlight on it. He walked slowly toward the house.
'Lou,' she called to him, turning him toward her. 'I'll get her back.'
Mason wandered around the first floor of the house, his failure to protect Abby gnawing at him, his love for her turning his frustration and fear to a simmering rage. They had not talked about their feelings for one another, expressing themselves instead with touches, looks, and embraces. Their reticence was mutual, springing from past disappointments, an intuitive superstition that speaking of love too soon was bad luck. Threatened with losing her, Mason regretted his reluctance, and resolved to cast it aside if Samantha made good on her promise.
Touring the house was a small distraction. In addition to the standard rooms for eating, dining, and sitting, there was a well-stocked library, a media room with a big screen and video games, a sunroom, a study, and a music room, each room sponsored by people and companies trying to do the right thing.
Whether by intent or accident, Centurion and Nix had done a few right things, Mason conceded. For many of the kids who lived there, Sanctuary was exactly that. Nix, for all Mason knew, may have been a decent counselor, handing out good advice even while he was working the angles. Centurion proved that a successful partnership between business and social services was possible, even if he corrupted the model. The trouble was no one would remember any of that. Instead, they would only remember the deceit, making the right thing that much harder to do the next time.
Mason sat down in an easy chair in the study, examining the frayed patches of wool that covered his knees, rubbing his hands over the fabric of his suit, able to sit still for a full minute before launching himself into another tour of the house. He stopped at a phone on a counter in the kitchen, pacing in short circles as he checked his voice messages at the office, stopping cold when he heard the last message.
'Mason, it's Roy Bowen. Next time you ask me to thread the bureaucratic needle, it's going to cost you. I don't speak their language or trade in their currency, but I got what you're looking for, I think.'
Mason listened to the rest of Bowen's message, replaying it twice to make certain he heard it correctly,
