Vance let out a wheezing, triumphant laugh. "There isn't a soul within ten miles of this pit, Hale. The only people who know this road exists are the men who work for me. And here they come."
He gestured with his chin toward the floor below.
The patrol cruiser skidded to a halt near the crumpled nose of Vance’s pickup. The doors flew open. Deputy Halloway stepped out, his face pale as milk, his hand still clutched around his bruised throat where Victoria had struck him. Bobby Vance jumped out from the passenger side, his utility belt empty, his hands trembling as he stared up at the forty-foot iron tower.
"Uncle Ray!" Bobby screamed, his voice carrying up the framework. "Uncle Ray, don't do it! Put the gun away!"
The Sheriff didn't look down. His gray eyes remained locked on Victoria’s chest. "Shut up, Bobby! Stay by the car!"
"Sheriff, listen to him!" Halloway shouted, his voice hoarse, scraping past his swollen vocal cords. "There's a vehicle on the ridge! Up on the fire road! We saw dust when we came out of the shed!"
Sheriff Vance’s jaw tightened. For a fraction of a second, his focus fractured. His pale eyes flicked toward the high limestone ridge that bordered the southern edge of the quarry.
Victoria didn't need a full second. She needed two inches.
During the climb, she had spotted the manual release lever for the conveyor counterbalance—an emergency brake assembly designed to drop a heavy counterweight if the primary drive chain snapped. The lever was an iron bar two feet long, coated in peeling red lead paint, protruding from the side of the crusher housing right beside her right hip.
She didn't reach for the lever with her hand; that would have triggered Vance’s finger on the trigger.
Instead, Victoria shifted her weight, dropping her hip against the iron casing, and kicked the base of the lever downward with the heel of her sneaker.
Fifty years of rust screamed in protest.
The heavy iron pawl disengaged with a sound like a rifle shot. Inside the housing, a massive three-ton counterweight dropped six feet through its guide tracks, bottoming out against the structural frame with a concussive shudder that felt like an earthquake.
The entire platform tilted four degrees to the south.
The sudden, violent jolt tore the steel grating beneath their feet. The rusted anchor bolts on Vance’s side sheared clean off, snapping like dry twigs under the shock load.
Vance’s balance evaporated. His heavy boots slipped on the rusted grating, his knees buckling as the platform dropped inches beneath him.
His finger convulsed against the trigger.
BANG.
The .357 round tore through the open air, punching through the empty sky six feet over Victoria’s head.
Victoria didn't retreat. She drove forward through the smoke.
Chương 16
As the platform shuddered and pitched toward the emerald water below, she closed the distance between them. She grabbed Vance’s gun arm with both hands, driving her thumbs into the nerve cluster behind his wrist while using her body weight to force the heavy barrel outward over the guardrail.
"Drop it!" she commanded, her face inches from his.
Vance snarled, a feral, cornered sound. He was sixty pounds heavier than her, his upper body dense with the thick muscle of a manual laborer. Even off-balance, he swung his left forearm around like a club, catching Victoria across the side of her temple.
The world went white for half a second. Stars exploded behind her eyes, and the taste of copper flooded her mouth.
Victoria didn't let go of the wrist.
She twisted, dropping her center of gravity, and drove her right knee straight up into Vance’s groin with every ounce of leverage her hips could generate.
The Sheriff let out an agonizing, wet grunt. His grip on the Python finally failed. The heavy revolver slipped from his fingers, bounced twice against the tilted steel grating, and slid through the severed railing.
Victoria watched it fall. It took two full seconds before the weapon struck the water forty feet below, disappearing into the dark turquoise depths with a tiny, white splash that vanished instantly.
Vance stumbled backward against the housing of the crusher, his face gray with agony, his hands clutching his stomach. But the man was not finished.
He looked at the open drop behind Victoria. He looked at the forty-foot fall into the flooded pit, where sunken girders and iron scrap lay hidden beneath the murky surface.
A terrible, desperate madness took hold of his features.
"If I go down," Vance whispered, blood flecking his lips, "you're going with me, girl."
He lunged with both arms outstretched, his massive hands reaching for her throat, intending to use his sheer bulk to carry them both over the edge of the sheared platform.
Victoria braced her back foot against the solid corner of the concrete pylon. She didn't try to stop his momentum; she stepped to the inside of his reach, caught his heavy leather utility belt with her left hand, and drove her right palm upward into his armpit, pivoting her hips on the ball of her foot.
Vance’s forward charge carried him past her. His boots hit the slick, tilted edge of the grating where the railing had broken away.
He didn't fall immediately. His heavy hands caught the frayed steel cable dangling from the broken conveyor housing. The wire bit into his palms, the rusted strands slicing through his skin as he hung suspended over the eighty-foot pit, his boots kicking wildly in empty air.
"Bobby!" Vance roared, his voice cracking with absolute terror as he stared down at the dark, silent water beneath him. "Bobby, help me! Climb up here! Get the cable!"