You blew it, Trish, said a small, scared voice in her mind. You screwed up after all.
Upstairs Cain’s heavy footsteps rumbled closer, the footsteps of a fairy-tale giant combing his castle for intruders.
Directly outside the cellar he stopped.
The sharp intake of breath was Ally’s.
Trish set down the flashlight, then aimed the Glock at the head of the staircase.
Shivering with tension, blinking sweat out of her eyes, she prepared to make a last stand.
38
Tyler followed Cain’s gaze and focused on the closed door. “Cellar,” he said, remembering the blueprints he’d studied.
Cain nodded. “This is the only access. They’re trapped.”
“Yeah. But Robinson’s in a good defensive position. She can take out anybody who goes down the stairs.”
“Unless we take her out first.” Cain glanced at Tyler and lifted an eyebrow. “There’s a way.”
“How”
“Stay here.” He brushed past Tyler. “I need my duffel. Stashed it in the den.”
“Hey, what’s the plan, boss”
At the kitchen doorway Cain glanced back. A smile split his face like a second scar.
“Souvenir from Yuma,” he said, and he was gone.
“Why don’t they come down” Ally breathed, chewing her bruised lip, oblivious of pain.
Trish couldn’t figure it out either. She tried to see the situation from Cain’s point of view-the closed door, the cellar stairs …
It was like a drill she’d run at the academy. To barge into the cellar was to risk being cut down in an ambush.
“They’re scared I’ll get the drop on them.” She tested the laser sight, beaming a red dot on the door. “I’ve got a tactical advantage.”
“You mean you can hold them off”
She wanted to say yes, but the truth was less comforting. “Doesn’t look like they’re going to try a frontal assault.”
“What else can they do”
One set of footsteps departed. Cain pounded through the kitchen, into the living room.
Trish listened to him go. “They’ll think of something,” she said softly, somehow certain they already had.
Tyler loitered in the laundry area, staying shy of the door. Most likely it had a hollow core. Robinson could punch a bullet through it if she had a mind to.
Not a good idea to get killed now. For one thing, he didn’t want to miss what was coming up.
Smiling, he remembered Yuma. It was the first time he had ever worked with Cain.
The two had met in the state prison at Lompoc, where Tyler was doing time for his role in an auto chop shop. Cain had been in for knocking over a gas station on Interstate 10, ordinarily a simple enough job, except that a state trooper had happened along at the worst possible moment.
Cain got out first. After finishing his own sentence, Tyler tracked him down in Indio. He was living in a squalid trailer, off by itself at the edge of town, amid the sun-scarred flats and humming power lines.
Lilith was there too. Though only fifteen, she’d been Cain’s girl even before his year-long stint in prison; he liked to start them young. Having seen Cain naked in the shower, Tyler sometimes wondered how the petite, slim- waisted waif could handle him.
But of course Lilith liked pain.
Cain offered Tyler work, which Tyler readily accepted. And that was how they ended up in Yuma, Arizona, long past midnight, peering through a steel chain fence at Southern Pacific Railroad’s east freight yard.
A single guard desultorily performed his rounds. Cain waited for him to go inside the office and warm his hands over the radiator-it was February, cold in the desert night-then snipped through the chain link with bolt cutters, gouging a man-sized hole in the fence.
Dressed in black, Cain and Tyler and two others entered the yard and pried open the back of a freight car. After that, it was only a matter of unloading carton after carton, spiriting the boxes through the fence into a trailer hooked to Cain’s van.
They had taken only as much as the trailer could hold, a mere fraction of the freight car’s contents. Still, the haul had been considerable.
Marlboros. Panasonic VCRs. Nike running shoes.
And the prize catch-a crate marked DANGER: EXPLOSIVES and containing a gross of dynamite sticks.
In the underground economy there was always a seller’s market for dynamite. Cain fenced it all.
Or nearly all. He had a habit of holding on to things that could prove useful.
Four of the sticks had been added to his collection.
His souvenir from Yuma.
Tyler wondered if either Trish or Ally had a birthday coming up. He hoped so.
Not that they would be getting any cake tonight-but Cain sure was going to light them one hell of a candle.
39
Had to be a way out of this. Had to be.
She could find it, she was sure she could, if she was able to fight off fear, fight off fatigue, and think.
Think.
Trish remembered the portable radio and switched it on, hoping to eavesdrop on her enemies’ chatter and learn their intentions.
Channel three was silent. She scanned the other channels. Dead air.
They weren’t using the radios, weren’t giving her any help.
She kept the transceiver on its scanning mode and picked up the flashlight, angling the beam at the ceiling.
No ventilation ducts. No removable panels over a handy crawl space. Just bare fluorescent tubes, dark now, mounted on a sheet of poured concrete, as flat and smooth as a marble headstone.
The flash searched the floor. Concrete also, utterly featureless, unmarred even by cracks.
She was a hunted rabbit. Cornered, crouching, the dogs closing in.
“Was Cain right”
The question startled her. She glanced at Ally. “What”
“He said you came back to save me. Did you Is that why you’re here”
“I … it’s complicated.”
“You should’ve stayed away.” Weary desolation leeched the energy from Ally’s voice. She sagged against an antique bureau. “Shouldn’t have given up your life for me.”
“Don’t talk that way,” Trish whispered, part of her ashamed for having had the same unworthy thought.
If she’d stayed at the lake … if she hadn’t decided to be a hero …
“It’s true, though.” Ally spoke softly, the words almost inaudible. “You didn’t have to do it, but you did. You’re brave. You’re the bravest person I’ve ever met.”
“I’m not brave, Ally.” She tried to smile, couldn’t. “I’m so scared I can hardly stand up.”
“But you’re here.”
Trish meditated on that. Fear wasn’t cowardice, was it A coward would have heeded those plaintive, reasonable voices in her head that had warned her to stay where she was safe.
