and yanking with exertion. Parker stopped beside Briggs, grabbed his arm to get his attention, and pointed back at the stairs. “Knock it out.”
Staring, Briggs said, “Michaelson,” and bobbed his head toward the stairs.
Parker looked. Michaelson was sprawled across the sill up there, his head and arms hanging down the first few steps. He wasn’t moving. “He’s finished,” Parker said. “We’re not. Close it up.”
“Oh, damn,” Briggs said. He was petulant and pouting, ridiculous mannerisms, but he went down on one knee, opened his tool kit on the floor, took out a metal tube wrapped in black electric tape, twisted the top, stood, and tossed it in a gentle underhand at the stairs. Before it landed, Briggs was on one knee again, shutting the tool kit.
The tube sailed over Michaelson and hit the top step next to his rib cage. The doorway disappeared in a flash of light and sound and smoke and debris. Parker was shoved backward a step, and Briggs, halfway to his feet again, was knocked back to his knees.
Smoke rolled backward at them swiftly across the room. The explosion reverberated back and forth, enclosed in the stone walls. Parker yelled at Briggs, “Come on!” and couldn’t hear himself for the ringing in his ears.
But Briggs was moving anyway. Shaking his head in annoyance, he was on his feet again and hurrying to the tunnel. Fussily he pushed the tool kit ahead of himself, and followed it through.
Parker looked over where the stairs and doorway had been, but the smoke obscured everything. And he couldn’t hear anything outside his own body, no sounds other than the thud of his own heart and the rush of blood through his veins. Turning in the roaring silence, as the smoke puffed around him, he pushed through the tunnel, twice the length of his body, twelve feet through rock and damp hard earth, and came out in the other basement, where Briggs was fussing over his tool kit and Hurley was across the way at the foot of the stairs.
“Coveralls,” Parker said to Briggs, and started to unzip his own.
Hurley called, “Come on, come on, we got no time.” “Get the coveralls off,” Parker told him. “We’ve got time to look like straight citizens.”
Hurley frowned in urgency up at the door at the top of the stairs, but he unzipped the coveralls in one fast downward motion and shrugged out of the shoulders.
Parker, stepping out of the coveralls, flung them into a corner with a gesture of irritation. Briggs, sounding surprised, said, “Don’t we take them?”
“Why? We won’t come back here, and they don’t trace to us.”
“I suppose.” Doubtful, shaking his head, Briggs dropped the coveralls he’d been neatly folding and followed Parker across the basement to the stairs.
This was a newer basement in a newer building, with concrete floor and plaster walls and the big green power plant humming to itself away on the right. They’d been coming in here every night for a week, after the old man on guard duty upstairs fell asleep in his chair, the way he always did, and they’d dug the tunnel through to the jewelry store basement in the next block. A wooden crate had hidden the hole by day, and a stack of six cardboard cartons had taken the extra dirt.
Hurley was the first one up the stairs, with Parker behind him and Briggs trailing. At the top, Hurley waited till Parker and Briggs stopped clattering on the metal stairs, then pushed the chrome door open enough to look out at the lobby. “Crap,” he said.
“What?”
“The old man’s up.”
Parker moved up to the top step, to look past Hurley’s shoulder. Behind him, Briggs whispered, “The explosion must have woke him.”
The guard in his gray uniform was down by the glass doors, peering through them, looking this way and that. Parker looked at him, and saw he was wide awake, and said, “Just cover your faces. Come on.”
They pushed through the doorway, Parker in the lead now, and kept one hand up, obscuring their faces. Parker took the two-inch Smith & Wesson revolver from his pocket and held it at his side.
They were almost to the old man before he heard them, and turned around, his eyes startled and blinking. “Who— Who—”
”Stay very tight,” Parker said. He showed the gun. “You don’t have any part in this,” he said. “No reason to get dead.”
“Holy Jesus,” the old man said. “Holy sweet Jesus.”
Hurley had the key. He went down on one knee, because the glass doors had their locks down at the base, and quickly unlocked the nearest door. He pushed it open and rose in the same movement, heading outside and across the sidewalk to Dalesia waiting in the Chrysler.
Briggs followed, holding his tool kit tight to his chest, and Parker said to the guard, “Walk over to your chair. Take your time and don’t look back.”
“Oh, I won’t,” the guard said. He carried a gun, but he knew he hadn’t been hired to do anything with it. “Now?” he said.
“Now. I’ll be watching through the glass.”
The guard walked off, staring at the building directory on the rear lobby wall. Parker shoved the pistol back in his pocket, moved quickly across the sidewalk, slid into the back seat beside Briggs. Hurley was up front, next to Dalesia. The engine was running.
“Go,” Parker said.
They rolled, and Dalesia said, “Michaelson?”
Hurley said, “He won’t be coming.”
“He got shot,” Briggs said.
