Chapter 14 - Two Guns
Daniel turned slowly.
Detective Paul Rourke stepped from the shadows.
For a dead man, he looked remarkably healthy.
Daniel stared. “They found your body.”
Rourke grinned. “They found a body.”
Grant had staged the garage death using a homeless man of similar build, burned badly enough to delay identification. Rourke had bought them time.
“You corrupted the investigation from the beginning,” Daniel said.
Rourke shrugged. “Grant paid better than the county.”
Lily whimpered.
Daniel focused on her face.
“Look at me, sweetheart.”
She did.
“You’re going to be okay.”
Grant tightened his grip. “Card.”
Daniel held it up.
Before he could hand it over, a crash came from upstairs.
Sarah screamed Grant’s name.
Grant’s attention shifted for half a second.
Daniel threw the microSD card across the cellar.
Rourke instinctively looked toward it.
Daniel attacked.
He slammed Rourke into the wall. The gun fired into the ceiling. Grant dragged Lily backward toward a tunnel entrance.
“Daddy!”
Daniel punched Rourke, grabbed his gun wrist, and twisted until bone cracked.
Rourke screamed.
Upstairs, another gunshot boomed.
Grant disappeared into the tunnel with Lily.
Daniel tore after them.
The passage was narrow, wet, and black. Fifty feet ahead, Lily’s cries echoed.
Then a figure stepped from a side chamber.
Vanessa.
Daniel stopped.
She wore a stolen police jacket and held a flashlight.
“How did you get here?”
“I made a deal,” she said. “Ruiz let me show them the icehouse entrance.”
“Where’s Sarah?”
“Upstairs. She’s alive.”
Daniel heard Grant shouting ahead.
Vanessa grabbed his sleeve.
“There are two exits. He’ll take Lily to the quarry road.”
“How do you know?”
“Because that’s where he took Sarah three years ago.”
They ran.
At the tunnel fork, Vanessa stopped suddenly.
“No.”
“What?”
She aimed her flashlight at the dirt floor.
A thin wire stretched ankle-high across the passage.
Daniel followed it to a box tucked against the wall.
A red light blinked.
May you like
Vanessa whispered, “Grant rigged the tunnel.”
Then they heard Lily scream from the other side of the tripwire.
