Steven James - The Queen

“She was setting explosives.” Alexei nodded toward the dirt wall of the tunnel. “Triacetone triperoxide.” A strip of TATP with a wireless detonation package had been implanted into the tunnel’s wall with two narrow spikes.

Oh, this was just getting better and better.

Lien-hua bent beside Millicent, checked her pulse, her airway. “She’s alive.”

I patted Alexei down. “What did you do to her?”

He was clean.

“It’s Propotol.” He was eyeing the tunnel’s opening carefully. “She’ll be all right, but she’s going to be out for a couple hours. We should really get out of the line of fire.”

I thought again of the geographic alignment of this tunnel.

Donnie’s biometric ID was at the sawmill… In their break room there was a stairwell to the basement… With a second tunnel, that would explain “You came from the sawmill, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“You hacked into my email, read the schematics, that’s how you found it.” It was more of an observation than a question.

“Yes.”

I helped him to his feet. “Where’s the bone gun?”

“I don’t have it on me.”

“What about Burlman’s sidearm?”

“I don’t use guns.”

A person in his profession?

“Because of your wife? Because she was shot?”

He stared at me. “Yes. Because of my wife.”

Millicent had a handgun, a radio, and two sets of plastic handcuffs, all of which Lien-hua helped herself to.

When Alexei had first asked me to help him, he’d told me he wanted to deal “appropriately” with the people who killed the Pickrons, and he’d wanted my help finding Valkyrie… “It was Valkyrie, wasn’t it?” I said. “That’s who killed Tatiana?”

He chose not to reply, but I took his silence as a yes.

At the sheriff’s department when the topic of our wives’ deaths had come up, he’d said that he had someone to take out his vengeance on, that I had only God to blame.

That’s why he’s here. To kill Valkyrie. “Did Millicent tell you who Valkyrie was before you drugged her?”

“Yes.”

“Dana Murkowski?” I said, referring to the alias Cassandra Lillo was apparently using for this mission.

Alexei looked at me stiffly. “That’s right.”

But why would Cassandra have killed Alexei’s wife?

“Pat,” said Lien-hua urgently, “we need to get-”

Abruptly, Alexei held out both hands, palms up, dropping the spent cuffs to the ground. I aimed the Glock at him, but he wasn’t coming at me. He’d freed himself even faster than I’d guessed he would.

“If you fire,” he said, “it’ll give away our location.”

I looked at the time on my watch: 8:55.

Move, Pat. Go.

Dragging Millicent across the ground wasn’t ideal, and with my bum ankle and Lien-hua’s slim frame, we weren’t well-suited to move her. Gesturing toward Millicent and then the railcar, I told Alexei, “Carry her over there.” He lifted her, brought her to the cart, gently set her down. Lien-hua tested one of the bars supporting the metal runners to make sure it was sturdy, then cuffed Millicent’s left wrist to it.

You can’t leave Alexei here.

And you can’t take him with you.

“Stick out your leg,” I told him. “Quickly.”

Giving me a curious look, he obeyed. While Lien-hua kept her gun trained on Alexei, I secured the GPS ankle bracelet that I’d brought with me around his left ankle.

“You knew we’d meet up with him?” Lien-hua sounded amazed.

“I had my suspicions.”

Lien-hua asked Alexei, “Did Millicent say anything about Jerusal-”

“Get down!” I’d seen movement near the stairwell.

We ducked, flashlights off.

The three of us slid behind the railcar.

A dump-truck-sized man came into view and turned toward our tunnel, an assault rifle in his hands.

He was less than thirty meters away.

“Cyclone?” he yelled.

If you call to him he’ll pin you down, but you can’t fire first, not without “You in there?”

Alexei tossed a rock ahead of us, and it clanged on the metal track. The man with the rifle raised his light, saw Millicent unconscious, and immediately sprayed a burst of bullets at us, hitting the cart. Lien-hua and I returned fire. I hit him in the chest, she might have as well, but he was wearing body armor and he didn’t go down, but instead lurched awkwardly back into the stairwell out of the line of fire.

“You threw that stone so he’d shoot at us,” Lien-hua said to Alexei.

“Law enforcement protocol,” he replied. “You have rules. I realize that. It was the best way to get him to-”

The radio we’d acquired from Millicent came to life. The guy was calling for his team.

This was going down.

Now.

8:56 p.m.

4 minutes until the transmission

Solstice heard Typhoon radio for help.

“Spread out,” she barked into her radio. “Cover the hallways. No one gets to the control room.”

Then she ordered Donnie, “Finish with the code now or I swear I’ll have my people shoot your little girl where she stands!”

I recognized the voice on the radio. Cassandra Lillo.

“We have to move. Lien-hua, cover me. Alexei, you stay here.” I angled toward the entry bay and waited for any glimpse of the shooter edging around the corner of the stairwell.

Nothing.

Heart slamming against my chest, I made my way toward the end of the tunnel.

Amber didn’t come out of the bathroom.

Tessa reassured herself that Amber was just using the toilet or maybe cleaning up after having her tears smear her mascara so much, but beneath those thoughts was a dark inkling, a tiny, discomfiting suspicion that barely even registered to her on a conscious level.

But then it did.

The toilet had not flushed. The water in the sink had not been turned on. No sound at all was coming from the room at the end of the hall.

With a deepening sense of apprehension, Tessa picked up her flashlight and went to check on her stepaunt.

“Pat!” I heard Lien-hua whisper harshly behind me, but I’d already seen what she was warning me about-Alexei, streaking toward me through the tunnel, flipping something out of his right sleeve.

The bone gun.

How?

You had him carry Millicent. Maybe he’d hidden it under I almost squeezed the trigger, but he wasn’t coming for me. He reached the room, and as Lien-hua and I went after him, he disappeared into the stairwell.

Two rapid shots.

The sound of a body tumbling down the stairs.

By the time Lien-hua and I got to the stairwell, Cassandra’s voice was cutting through the radio we’d taken from Millicent: “Kill the hostages.”

The metal stairs twisted out of sight before us.

No one visible. Not Alexei, not the shooter.

Lien-hua and I flew down the steps, taking them two at a time.

Tessa rapped on the bathroom door. “Amber? Everything okay?”

Nothing.

She tried the doorknob.

Locked.

“Amber. Open the door.”

Only silence in reply.

“Amber,” Tessa cried louder, trying the doorknob again. “Open up the door!”

We reached the bottom of the stairs.

The shooter lay at our feet. His neck was broken, his head contorted at a hideous angle. He was breathing hoarsely, wide-eyed and afraid.

The AR-15 semiautomatic rifle he’d fired at us lay on the ground-Alexei had left it-but a large sheath on the man’s belt was missing its knife. “Help me,” he managed to say.

There wasn’t anything we could do for him right now. I knelt beside him and asked urgently, “Where are the hostages?”

“Room,” he muttered. He tried to say more, but his words burbled away into something indistinguishable.