Page 78 of No Safe Place

“A free one-way ride into the forest is more like it,” I said. “With you and a shovel. I’ll pass. I figure the longer I hold out, the faster all the people you’re suckering with this shit carnival are gonna start smelling the BS.”

“You have more faith in the intelligence of people than they deserve,” he said. “Honestly, I’m here to help, cop. You come out now, I’ll take it easy on you. But if you make this any harder than it has to be, there’s going to be consequences for you and especially Miss Doherty. Consequences of a kind you never even heard of.”

“Oh, I’m going to make this harder,” I said, gritting my teeth. “So much harder that you’re going to wake up in the graveyard. Do you think this is the first phone call I made with this satellite phone? See all the hills around here? The hills are going to have eyes real soon, Sarge. You think you’re the only one who knows how to play bury-them-in-the-woods?”

“Oh, I’m shaking,” he said.

“Fine, you have to make me say this, don’t you?”

“Say what?”

“I got a confession to make. That explosion wasn’t an accident. That was me.”

“Yeah, right,” he said.

“It’s true. I beat your buddies to the detonator punch. Daisy told you I was a cop, right? Maybe she forgot to mention what kind of cop I used to be.”

I paused smiling.

“I was on the bomb squad, dummy. Out of all the walls of all the joints in all the world, your buddies had to try to breach one that had a block of MDX on its other side.”

Over the phone line there was silence. He was pondering what I’d just told him. I knew I’d struck a nerve there. Bringing up your opponent’s own personal safety tends to do that.

“As a final warning, you stick around, there’s a real good chance I put a bullet in your head before you put one in mine. So why not wave the white flag, Sarge? Take a knee. Get out of here. Or don’t. Come in here so I can snap your neck.

“One last thing,” I said. “Do me a favor and tell your boss that if he has one of those billionaire bunkers somewhere, it’s bugout time. Because when I’m done with you, he’s up next.”

67

“What happened? Where is everyone?” Mathias said as we saw him appear in the stairwell.

“They’re gone,” I said as I handed Colleen the phone and jogged up the stairs back onto the ground floor.

“No!” Mathias said. “Dead?”

“Yes,” I said. “They all got shot in the tunnel. We barely got out alive ourselves. They were waiting for us.”

“How?”

I pointed down at Colleen.

“The phone she’s talking on, that’s a SAT phone. Daisy had it. She must have found it on one of the dead mercenaries when we were taking their guns and tried to cut a deal.”

“She betrayed us?”

I nodded.

Mathias interlaced his fingers on top of his head. He blinked rapidly. He was in total shock.

“Now they know about the tunnel?” he said. “They’ll come in now. We’re boxed in!”

“No,” I said. “I blocked the tunnel. No way they can get in. At least not for a while.”

“But we have no way out now.”

“Not so fast, Mathias. Listen to me. Things are different now. We have a link outside,” I said, pointing at where Colleen had just started speaking into the phone.

“Colleen is calling her law firm. They’re very heavy hitters with contacts in the media. Once we put some outside pressure on those thugs out there, they’re going to have to back off. They’ll cut bait and get out of Dodge. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and now with the SAT phone, we have a flashlight to make the cockroaches run.”

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