Chương 6
The words were plain, without defense.
“Did you know then?”
“I was sixteen.”
“That is not an answer.”
“No.”
“When did you learn?”
“Twenty-three.”
“And what did you do?”
Gage looked toward the ceiling. A muscle moved in his jaw.
“Nothing that helped you.”
Delaney waited.
“I killed the man who drove the truck off the bridge,” he said.
Curtis’s face tightened.
Ruth made a quiet sound behind the counter.
Delaney felt anger surge so cleanly that it steadied her.
“You think that counts as justice?”
“No.”
“Then why tell me?”
“Because you asked what I did.”
Outside, footsteps crossed the porch.
A fist struck the glass door.
“County sheriff’s office!”
The guards raised their weapons.
A second voice shouted, “Open the door! We received an emergency call.”
Delaney looked through the cracked glass.
A uniformed deputy stood beneath the dead porch lamp. Snow coated the shoulders of his brown jacket. Behind him, two men in dark winter clothing held rifles low against their legs.
Curtis moved beside the window, keeping out of sight.
“Recognize him?” Delaney whispered.
“Deputy Allen Pike.”
Ruth spoke from behind the counter. “His father’s in the second ledger.”
The deputy pounded again.
“Ms. Ward, this is Deputy Pike. Open the door.”
Delaney’s blood went cold.
She had not given her name to the dispatcher.
Curtis heard it too.
“How does he know you’re here?” Evan whispered.
“It’s her diner,” Frank said.
“But he didn’t ask whether she was here,” Curtis replied. “He knew.”
Pike leaned close to the glass. He was in his late forties, with a heavy mustache and the calm impatience of a man accustomed to being obeyed.
“We know you have an injured person inside. Ambulance is delayed at the south hill. Open the door so I can secure the scene.”
Delaney stood where he could see her.
His eyes moved over her cream uniform, the blood on her hands, and the men behind the booths.
“Deputy,” she called, “show me your radio.”
“What?”
“Your radio.”
He lifted the microphone clipped to his shoulder.
“Call dispatch. Have them confirm the ambulance unit.”
“We don’t have time for games.”
“You have time to bring two men without uniforms.”
“They’re volunteer search and rescue.”
Neither man wore county markings.
One had a suppressor attached to his rifle.
Delaney stepped back from the glass.
Pike’s expression changed.
Only slightly.
The impatience disappeared, leaving something flatter.
“Ms. Ward,” he said, “you are obstructing law enforcement during an active emergency.”
Curtis whispered, “He wants you frightened of the badge.”
“It usually works.”
“Will it?”
Delaney looked at Gage bleeding into her booth, her mother crouched behind the counter, and the tax notice fluttering on the wall above nineteen dollars.
“No.”
Pike struck the door with the heel of his hand. “Open it now.”
Delaney raised her voice. “The dispatcher did not give you my name, and you brought an armed man with a silencer. I am not opening this door.”
The deputy stepped away.
Curtis pulled her down behind the counter.
Gunfire ripped across the front windows.
Glass burst inward. Men fired back from behind booths and the jukebox. The sound inside the diner was crushing, each shot punching the air. Plates shattered on the wall. The coffee urn jumped as a bullet struck its metal side, spraying hot brown liquid across the floor.
Delaney covered Ruth’s head with her body.
The shooting stopped almost as quickly as it began.
Snow blew through holes in the windows.
Someone groaned near the front.
Mason had fallen behind a booth with blood running from his upper arm. Frank dragged him farther from the glass.
“Through and through,” Mason said through clenched teeth. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine,” Delaney snapped.
“Compared to him?”
She looked at Gage.
His eyes were closed again.
Curtis checked the front. “They’re moving east.”
“They’ll come through the kitchen,” Paul said.
“No,” Delaney replied. “They want the books.”
Every man looked at her.
“If they wanted everyone dead, they could set the building on fire and wait. They don’t know where the ledgers are. They need someone alive long enough to find them.”
Ruth touched Delaney’s apron. “The storage freezer.”
“What?”
“Put the books in the freezer.”
Curtis shook his head. “Too obvious.”
“Not inside it. Under it.”
The freezer was an old chest model near the pantry wall. Delaney’s father had installed it over a floor drain and built a shallow service cavity beneath the compressor platform.
“You hid things there too?” Delaney asked.
Ruth looked offended. “We ran a diner during the seventies. Everyone hid things.”
Delaney collected the ledgers, the torn letter, and the key.
Evan followed her into the kitchen.
“Stay with Sartori,” she said.
“Frank can hold pressure.”
“You trust Frank?”
“No.”
“Then why leave him?”
Evan looked toward the dining room. “Because I think my phone led them here.”
“That doesn’t make every new decision yours.”
“I need to do something.”
“You need to stop mistaking guilt for usefulness.”
He flinched as if she had struck him.
Delaney regretted the sentence immediately. She opened the freezer platform and slid the parcel into the cavity.
Evan stood behind her, breathing hard.
“My sister’s name is Lena,” he said. “Her husband left. She’s due next week. I told her I’d keep my location on because she gets scared at night.”
Delaney pushed the panel closed.
“Did you call her after the ambush?”
“Yes.”
“What did you say?”
“That I was okay.”
“Were you?”
“No.”
“That is how people use phones.”
He wiped blood from his lip. “Frank thinks I sold them.”
“Frank thinks pain is evidence.”
“He could be right about me.”
“Then help me prove something instead of punishing yourself.”
May you like
She pointed toward a dusty radio mounted above the back door.
It was a citizen-band base unit, older than Delaney, with a long whip antenna running up the rear wall. Her father had used it to talk to truckers during storms and traffic closures. Delaney had not turned it on since he died.
