"You see that floor beneath your feet, Investigator?" he asked, nodding downward.
Victoria didn't look down. She knew what was under the concrete. The entire shed had been built directly over the old mechanical pumping shaft that once drained the deep pits.
"There's a steel grate under those iron plates," the Sheriff said. "A vertical drop of two hundred and forty feet into forty feet of sulfur water. No light. No air. Nothing but old cable and rusted pipe. It took a crew of eight men three weeks to pull a bulldozer out of that shaft back in nineteen seventy-eight. If a person were to fall through an unbolted service hatch... well, the county wouldn't even have the budget to deploy the dive team."
Halloway let out a ragged, trembling breath. "Sheriff... please. Let's just... let's just make her sign and get her out of the county. We don't need this. We don't need to do this."
"Shut up, Greg," Vance whispered, not taking his eyes off Victoria. "You made your bed when you pulled her over on that shoulder. Now we finish the work."
The Sheriff unscrewed the cap of a black fountain pen and set it down on top of the affidavit on the wooden spool.
"Halloway," the Sheriff commanded. "Unlock her right hand. Just the right. Hold her arm while she signs."
Halloway hesitated, his jaw working silently. He looked at Bobby, who was still standing by the half-open door, frozen, staring out at the bluffs as if wishing he could evaporate into the heat.
"I said unlock her hand, Greg!"
"Yes, sir," Halloway said. He pulled the heavy iron key ring from his pocket, the keys jangling with a sharp, frantic rattle.
Victoria did not move. Every nerve in her body went taut, humming like an overloaded transformer. Her left hand was still pinned against the small of her back by the rigid steel links, her fingers resting mere millimeters from the concealed ceramic key.
This was the window. The only window she would get.
Halloway stepped behind her. His breath was hot and sour on the back of her neck. He reached down with his left hand, grabbing the thick chain between the handcuffs to hold her wrists still, while his right hand pushed the metal key into the keyhole of her right cuff.
*Click.*
The ratchet on her right wrist slid open. The sudden release of pressure sent a rush of hot, tingling blood into her fingers, the pain so sharp she had to clamp her teeth together to keep from gasping.
Chương 12
"Keep her arm pinned," the Sheriff ordered, stepping back two paces, his hand dropping naturally to rest atop the walnut grip of his revolver. "Bring her hand to the table."
Halloway didn't have the chance.
The moment the steel parted from her right wrist, Victoria moved.
She didn't reach for the pen. She didn't lunge for the Sheriff's gun. Instead, using the entire momentum of her upper body, she threw her right elbow backward with explosive force, catching Halloway squarely in the throat.
The deputy made a wet, gagging sound, his windpipe collapsing under the blunt impact. He stumbled backward, his hands flying to his neck, his boots tangling in a coil of rusted hauling wire lying against the wall. He hit the cinder-block partition with a bone-jarring crack and slid to the floor, coughing violently, unable to draw air.
Victoria didn't stop. In the same fluid, unbroken motion, her right hand whipped behind her back, her fingers sinking into the waistband of her shorts, snapping the ceramic key free from its friction tape.
With practiced, blind muscle memory honed over thousands of tactical drills, she slid the tiny zirconium tooth into the left keyhole, twisted it forty-five degrees, and snapped the second cuff off her left wrist.
The steel bracelets fell to the concrete floor with a ringing, metallic crash.
Sheriff Vance’s reaction was instantaneous. For a man of his size, he moved with terrifying, predatory speed. His hand came off the grip of the Python, the heavy four-inch barrel clearing leather in a smooth, mechanical sweep.
"Don't move, Hale!" he roared, leveling the front sight straight between her eyes.
Victoria didn't freeze. She knew the mechanics of firearms; at four feet, a moving target had a six-to-ten percent higher survival probability if the line of sight was broken before the hammer dropped. She dropped her weight instantly, diving forward and to her left, slamming her shoulder directly into the weathered wooden cable spool.
The heavy pine circle tipped, its two-hundred-pound bulk crashing toward the Sheriff.
*BANG.*
The Python detonated in the enclosed bay. The muzzle flash was an orange fireball two feet long, the concussive blast slamming against Victoria's ears like physical fists, blowing out what little hearing she had left and replacing it with a high-pitched, screaming whine. The heavy .357 magnum hollow-point bullet tore through the edge of the wooden spool, spraying a shower of pine splinters and shredded paper across her bare shoulders, before burying itself three inches deep into the cinder block behind her.
The falling spool clipped the Sheriff’s knees, knocking his footing out from under him. He went down hard onto one hip, his heavy frame shaking the concrete floor, but he didn't drop the weapon. His gray eyes were wild, bloodshot, fixed on her through the drifting cloud of gunsmoke.
"Bobby!" the Sheriff bellowed, scrambling to raise the revolver again. "Block the door! Shoot her! Bobby, shoot her!"
At the entrance, Bobby Vance stood paralyzed.