The Final Twist
- Автор: Дивер Джеффри
- Серия: Colter Shaw #3
- Год: 2021
- Язык: английский
- Год: G.P. Putnam's Sons
- ISBN: 978-0-525-53913-1
- Жанр: Триллеры
Электронная книга - «The Final Twist». Краткое содержание книги:
Following the enigmatic clues his father left behind, Shaw plays cat and mouse with the company’s sadistic enforcers, as he speeds from one gritty neighborhood in the City by the Bay to another. Suddenly, the job takes on a frightening urgency: Only by finding the courier bag can he expose the company and stop the murder of an entire family — slated to die in forty-eight hours.
With the help of an unexpected figure from his past, and with the enforcers closing the net, Shaw narrows in on the truth — and learns that the courier bag contains something unexpected: a secret that could only be described as catastrophic.
“The fuck,” the man said and followed him in.
“Bathroom.” Shaw kept with his preferred line of dialogue.
When the guard’s fist drove forward toward Shaw’s solar plexus, he easily sidestepped and dropped his center of gravity. He executed a fair wrestling takedown, his right arm going between the man’s legs and around to his spine. In college his coach had said, “Can’t be shy in this sport. You queasy about going for the jewels, take up fencing.”
Shaw leveraged up and, gripping the man’s collar with his left hand, he took him off the floor entirely and dropped him hard on the oak. Factories made very hard floors and his head banged with a sound you could hear over the music.
Still he needed to debilitate the man, so he dropped his fist into his gut. Hard but nothing broke.
He got out of the way in time to avoid the vomiting.
It was one hundred percent certain that Colter Shaw had just committed an unprovoked assault (the fear of an attack) and battery (an unwanted touching and, in this case, head banging and gut punching).
The question remained: Was it justifiable?
He believed it was.
Shaw was here because Mack McKenzie had finally traced the gray van into which Tessy Vasquez had possibly disappeared near Ghirardelli Square. Through several layers of offshore corporations, she’d learned that it was ultimately owned by a company controlled by Mladic, a San Francisco club owner. And suspected drug dealer and sex trafficker.
His base of operations was this club, the Steelworks.
If the man presently gasping for breath in front of him was not involved in crimes, Shaw would have some consequences to face. But he’d seen no option.
So he searched the man.
And discovered two things. One was a Glock 17 semiauto pistol, which he slipped into his waistband. The other was some information. His driver’s license indicated he was Gregor Mladic, presumably Dante’s son or nephew.
Make that three things.
In his rear pocket was a packet of zip ties.
Two of which Shaw used to bind his wrists and ankles.
Now, for the door on the right.
He opened it.
Colter Shaw drew his gun and started silently down the stairs descending into the old building’s massive, pungent basement, redolent of mold and heating oil.
52
The pounding feet on the dance floor above them had stopped. Everyone had evacuated. The roar of the flames was the only sound encircling them.
Shaw turned to the hole they broke open in the Sheetrock and said to Nita, “Up the stairs now, fast. There’ll be police.”
“But... what about you?”
He smiled to her. “Not yet.”
And turned back, jogging to the far end of the corridor.
It had been twenty minutes since Shaw had descended the stairs from the door on the right down to the cellar of the Steelworks club, and the blaze was growing by the minute — the blaze set by the men in the TV room, under what was surely Dante Mladic’s order to destroy incriminating evidence in the office.
The TV men were gone, Nita was gone.
But Colter Shaw knew that he was not alone down here.
Choking, his mouth covered with his untucked shirt, he made his way down the main corridor, toward the far end.
Shaw believed he heard sirens, though it was hard to say over the raging fire.
At the end of the main corridor he turned down the hallway to the right. He drew his flashlight and hurried forward. Now that the footsteps above were gone and he was around the corner from the flames, he could hear thuds and the muffled cries of “Help” and “Get me out! Please!”
Shaw couldn’t kick the door in — it opened outward — so as quickly as he could, he used the knife trick once more. In thirty seconds it was open.
He lifted his flashlight and played the beam over Tessy Vasquez. She gave a brief scream and huddled away. She was still wearing the outfit that she’d worn in the variety shop security video: the red blouse and gypsy skirt.
“Tessy, it’s all right. Your mother sent me.”
“Mother?”
“I’m going to get you out.”
His knife was still open and with it he cut the restraints around her ankle.
“This way. Come on.”
Heads down, coughing, both of them returned to the corridor.
“There are men, they have guns.”
“They’re gone.”
She staggered along behind him, her legs not used to activity during her imprisonment.
They came to the turn and stepped into the main corridor.
Where Shaw saw that the escape route no longer existed.
The fire now spread from wall to wall. The two of them faced a roiling sheet of flame, floor to ceiling, slowly moving their way.
Soon, they’d be unconscious from lack of oxygen.
Shaw glanced at Tessy, who was crying.
He pointed toward the storeroom that had been Nita’s cell. “Find some cloth or paper towels, soak them with the bottled water and cover your face. Get low.”
Ashton had taught the children that a wet cloth was good protection against smoke, but it was a myth that urine was a better liquid to dampen the cloth. That was only helpful, and marginally, in protecting against chlorine gas.
“We’re going to die!”
“Do what I told you. Now.”
She shuffled into the room, coughing hard.
Shaw got as close as he could to the flames, until he could hardly bear the searing heat. He drew from his waistband the Glock the guard upstairs had been carrying. It was a larger caliber, with a longer barrel, and the magazine contained more rounds.
He squinted into the fire and fired a shot.
A second, third.
Fourth, fifth, sixth.
It was on the seventh that the bullet found its target: the building’s boiler. A stunning explosion rocked the basement accompanied by the banshee cry of escaping steam.
Shaw dove for cover in Nita’s cell. They were some distance from the explosion, but still were hit with a blast of the moist heat that shot into the corridor and filled the rooms. Superheated steam, in a closed container, can reach extraordinarily high temperatures — 900 degrees Fahrenheit. Had that been the case the steam could have melted the Sheetrock like newsprint and Shaw and Tessy might have been scalded to death. But he was ninety percent sure that a boiler this age was probably heated only to the standard 212.
Shaw rose and looked into the corridor. Some flames still flickered, but the path was clear.
“Let’s go,” he told Tessy and helped her to her feet. He went in lead, having replaced the guard’s gun with his own, in case the traffickers returned, which he doubted would happen. The police and firemen would be there soon if they weren’t already present.
Shaw glanced in the office and noted that not everything was destroyed. Crime Scene should probably find enough evidence to convict Mladic.
As they got to the stairs, they stopped. Footsteps were coming down. Shaw lifted his gun.
His tear-filled eyes peered through the smoke.
The heavy steps came closer.
Shaw got the gun into his pocket just before firemen arrived. The large men, fitted with their bulky equipment, plodded down the stairs.
One pulled his oxygen mask off. “Anyone else down here?”
“No. There’s still some fire in the office. First door on your right.”
Another fireman surveyed the scene. “What happened?”
“Boiler blew. Put out the flames.”
“Lucky you.”
As they started past, Shaw said, “Save the files and computers. The district attorney’ll want to see them.”
Shaw felt a fireman’s head turn his way, then he and the young woman were climbing the stairs.