Chương 10
His pulse was barely palpable.
“He needs blood,” she said.
Curtis removed his coat. “Mine.”
“You don’t know his type.”
“O positive.”
“How do you know?”
“I know everything medical on his security file.”
“That does not make this safe. We cannot perform a field transfusion with diner equipment.”
“There’s tubing in your bag.”
“No.”
“He’ll die.”
“He may die if we put the wrong thing into him or contaminate the line.”
Curtis’s composure broke.
“He has twenty years of doctors on call, clinics, drivers, people who can clear roads. He cannot die in a basement because the one person willing to help him is afraid to use a tube.”
Delaney stood.
“I am not afraid of the tube. I am afraid of pretending desperation turns me into a surgeon.”
Curtis’s eyes hardened.
Gage spoke without opening his eyes. “She’s right.”
Curtis looked down at him.
“Boss—”
“No.”
It was the first order Gage had given that Curtis seemed unwilling to obey.
Delaney knelt again. “I can keep pressure, protect his airway, keep him warm, and get him to people who can do more. That is what I can do.”
“You can do more,” Curtis said.
“And kill him faster.”
Curtis turned away.
He stood near the shelves, breathing through his nose, hands on his hips. After a moment he picked up a box of paper placemats that had fallen and placed it back on the shelf. The ordinary gesture looked almost embarrassing.
Evan crouched beside the basement window well.
“There’s an engine,” he whispered.
Everyone listened.
A vehicle idled close to the building.
Frank began laughing again.
Curtis crossed the room and grabbed him by the jaw. “What?”
Frank’s eyes watered from the pressure. “Pike isn’t leaving.”
A voice came through the floor above them.
“Delaney!”
Pike was inside the diner.
The men raised their weapons toward the basement stairs.
Pike called again. “I know you can hear me.”
Delaney looked at the open basement door.
Curtis whispered, “He may have one man with him. Maybe two.”
“Or six.”
“Six would make more noise.”
“You say that as though your people have been quiet.”
Pike walked across the dining-room floor above. Glass crunched beneath his boots.
“I am giving you a chance to separate yourself from them,” he called. “Come upstairs alone.”
Ruth sat against a shelf, pale and sweating.
Delaney crouched beside her. “Pain worse?”
“No.”
“That means yes.”
“It means I dislike the basement.”
“You hid things here for years.”
“I didn’t sit with them.”
Pike dragged a chair across the floor.
Then came the unmistakable click of a pump shotgun.
“I have gasoline,” he called. “If I don’t get the books, nobody gets anything.”
Frank’s smile vanished.
Curtis looked at him. “He wasn’t supposed to burn it.”
“No.”
“Then Vescari lost control.”
“Pike panics when he thinks people are coming.”
Delaney glanced at the ceiling.
There were two exits from the basement: the stairs and the sealed coal chute. The chute opened outside behind the diner, near the propane cage. Her father had bolted a steel plate over it from the inside after raccoons got into the canned peaches.
“How long to open the coal chute?” Curtis asked, following her gaze.
“Ten minutes with tools.”
“We have tools?”
Delaney pointed to a rusted toolbox beneath the stairs.
Curtis assigned Mason and Evan to the bolts.
Pike poured liquid above them. The smell of gasoline seeped through the floorboards.
Gage opened his eyes.
“Give him the books,” he said.
Delaney turned. “No.”
“They’re records of dead men.”
“They’re records of living ones too.”
“Your mother matters more.”
Ruth said, “Do not use me to win an argument.”
Gage ignored her. “Vescari already knows enough names to destroy the rest.”
“He does not have the originals.”
“He has power.”
“So do you.”
“Not much at the moment.”
“You owned my tax debt from a hospital bed?”
“Before.”
“Then use whatever remains.”
Gage’s gaze held hers. “I can tell Pike the books are upstairs.”
“He won’t believe you.”
“He wants to.”
Delaney understood. Pike needed a way to convince himself he had regained control. Fear made people accept thin evidence when it pointed toward escape.
“Where upstairs?” she asked.
“The register.”
“That is the first place he’ll look.”
“Then give him something to find.”
Delaney looked at the three torn pieces of Sartori’s letter in Curtis’s pocket.
“The copies,” Ruth said.
“What copies?”
“In the office mattress.”
Delaney stared at her.
Ruth lifted one shoulder. “The freezer platform was full.”
“Of course it was.”
“You said hiding was wrong. You did not say it was disorganized.”
Even Curtis looked at Ruth with something close to admiration.
The mattress contained photocopied ledger pages, twenty years old and incomplete. Enough to look valuable. Enough to make Pike stop searching.
Delaney moved toward the stairs.
Curtis blocked her.
“No.”
“You said he’ll underestimate me.”
“That was before he brought gasoline.”
“He wants me upstairs.”
“He wants the books.”
“I can give him copies.”
“He may shoot you after.”
“He may burn us before.”
Curtis’s hands curled at his sides. “I can go.”
“He will not believe Ruth gave you anything. He may believe I found it.”
Gage spoke from the floor. “She’s right.”
Curtis looked down at him with open anger. “Stop agreeing with the person trying to get herself killed.”
Gage’s mouth moved faintly. “You always hated that.”
Delaney climbed the stairs before anyone could stop her.
At the top, she closed the basement door behind her but did not latch it.
The kitchen looked as if a storm had entered and searched the place. Broken glass covered the floor. Snow blew through the service-door window. Blood marked the tiles near the dead attacker. The red emergency lights had begun to fade.
Delaney went to the office.
May you like
She sliced open the underside of the mattress with a paring knife. A packet of photocopies slid out, wrapped in a plastic grocery bag from a supermarket that had closed twelve years ago.
“You could have used an envelope,” she muttered.
