Page 106 of Identity Unknown

“As usual, Kay, you stick your nose where it doesn’t belong. And guess what happens?” Norm takes another step. “Nobody better thanyours trulyto take care of bitches like you, and I’ve been waiting for this moment a long fucking time. Come out, come out wherever you are, Kay!”

He can’t be more than ten feet away, and I’m aware of the broken bits of stalactite I’m still clutching. I toss a piece of it beyond the beam of probing light, and Norm chuckles again, wheezing.

“You know, Kay, it all goes back to what motivates someone.” Another step, another cough. “And I have plenty of motivation when it comes to fucking you.”

I toss another piece a little farther this time. Then the last chunk, and he chuckles again. I can smell his sweat as he pauses by the recess where I’m flat against the wall like the moth trapped inside the SLAB.

“This is getting tedious, Kay!” he calls out, the red dot of his pistol’s laser sight bouncing around the cavern walls.

Then I see the vague bulk of him in the glow of the phone he holds in one hand, his pistol in the other, and he’s inches from me. Gripping the intact stalactite like a dagger, I lunge, throwing my weight behind the stabbing motion from low to high. I feel the sharply pointed tip pierce fabric and flesh as he screams, the pistol clattering to the rock floor.

I drive the stony shaft up under his ribs, into his chest cavity as he shrieks and shrieks, grabbing at me, but it’s too late. I back away, and he falls heavily, my hands trembling and slick with blood. Turning on my phone’s flashlight, I shine it on him, his eyes wide open and fixing on me. The thick end of the stalactite protrudes from his torso, blood soaking his shirt.

He moves his lips as if begging for help, and I won’t give it. Finding his gun, I pick it up, a Glock 9-millimeter that I’m taking no chance he might retrieve. I don’t see how he could survive what I just did to him. But I’m not trusting anything right now, maybe never again. Following my light, I find the way back to the door Norm Duffy left open wide.

TextingMAYDAYto Benton, I tell him to send an ambulance as I hurry back inside the building, terrified.

“Marino?” I yell.

Please be okay.

“Marino?” I call out, passing the bathroom.

Please God.

“Yo! In here!” he shouts to my enormous relief, my knees going weak.

He’s inside the office, bare-chested and sitting in a chair, his face dazed. The floor under him is spattered and pooled with blood, his pistol some distance away halfway under the sofa.

“Jesus! Don’t move.” I wash my bloody hands in the sink.

“I’m not moving,” he says. “I don’t even know how I got in the chair.”

I take away the shirt he’s holding over a gaping bullet graze at the back of his head. “An ambulance should be on the way shortly. Do you remember falling and hitting the ground? Were you unconscious?”

“When?” he weirdly asks.

“You’re going to be all right, Marino,” I assure him even as we hear the wailing of sirens.

“Is there a fire somewhere?” His eyes are glassy.

On the security monitors I see a caravan of police cars and ambulances charging through the cement plant. Benton has gotten my texts and taken care of it from Poland.

“How’d you get here, Doc? We’re not flying the helicopter home, are we?” Marino asks, and he’s not thinking straight. “Tell Lucy we’re driving, okay? Where is she anyway?”

“Take it easy,” I reply.

He winces as I gently palpate his scalp, making sure the bullet didn’t penetrate, and it didn’t. But another fraction of aninch and it would have smashed through his skull. My bigger concern is that he fell and hit his head. We need to get him to the hospital as soon as possible.

“Tell me what you remember.” I tie his bloody shirt around his wounded scalp, making a bandage of sorts.

“About what?”

“About Norm Duffy shooting you.”

“What’s he doing here?” Marino looks baffled. “I don’t remember getting shot. Are we sure I was?”

“A graze, but you might have been knocked out,” I reply.

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