The Second Life of Nick Mason (Nick Mason #1)(65)

Forward. Forward. Shoes splashing through another icy puddle. He couldn’t feel anything. It was all motion. Reaction.

“I said hands on your head!”

The unmistakable voice of a cop. This is how he’d been trained. He’s done it this way a thousand times. Even if he’s a f*cking mile below the ground, getting ready to gun down a man in cold blood, he’s still gonna do it the same way.

It’s a routine to him. It’s practically hardcoded into the man’s DNA. He’ll tell Mason to turn around next. To keep his hands on his head. To walk backward toward him until he’s close enough. Then to get down on his knees.

“Hear them,” said the voice in his ear, the signal almost gone. “I’m coming . . .”

But Mason knew Eddie couldn’t help him now. He reached up, clasped his hands across the top of his head, and kept walking. He started to see the quality of the light change as the walls on either side of the tunnel seemed to bow outward. There was a wide spot here, with another flight of stairs cut into the rock of one wall, accessing another high door. He saw all of this as the two shadows ahead of him resolved into a man wearing a long coat.

And Diana. She was on her feet, but otherwise half bent over and closed in on herself. Mason was maybe a hundred feet away. His eyes darted from one wall to the next, and things were starting to add up for him. A bulldozer sat idle on the left side. The widening of the tunnel had created a large room, where the dozer had been chewing away at one wall. Mason saw that the ground dropped off just beyond the dozer’s blade. He couldn’t tell how deep it went, but he imagined a pile of rocks and debris at the bottom, pushed over the edge by the machine.

The perfect place to put two bodies.

Bury them there, cover them with more debris. Nobody would ever think to dig it up. And within months this whole tunnel would be filling up with water.

This is why you made me walk all the way down here, Mason thought. You’re gonna stand me right at the edge of that pit before you kill me. Not only are you dirty cops, you’re dirty cops who don’t want blood on your hands.

“That’s close enough!” the man said.

Mason kept walking. Eighty feet away now. There had to be another man here. A cop would never do this alone. Mason needed to know where that second man was.

There. He saw that the other man had moved up onto the stairs for a better angle. He had his Mossberg 500 police-issue shotgun aimed right at Mason’s body mass.

The next sound, Mason thought. You can’t talk and shoot at the same time. The next time you open your f*cking mouth.

Wait for it.

“I said—”

Mason pulled the gun and fired. The sound exploded in that closed space, pressing in against his eardrums. He fired at the man with the shotgun first, with not much hope of hitting him from this distance. But he had to take that gun out first. Mason had already thrown himself against the wall as the shotgun blast obliterated everything else in the world. Water erupted where he had just been standing. Mason fired again at the shotgun, just to keep him pinned down, then at one of the lights above. He needed darkness. One shot, then two, and the light was out. Mason was already moving again—forward, not backward—as the shotgun went off again and he heard the wall crumbling just behind him. He rolled on his back and shot at the other light. It was out and now he was hidden. But he needed to keep moving. He threw himself forward again, staying prone, rising up just long enough to fire off two more shots at the shotgun. The man next to Diana found his range and put a bullet in the wall inches from his head.

Mason got up just long enough to throw himself across to the other side of the tunnel, hoping that the dark would be enough to hide him. He heard two pistol shots as he went down as flat as he could against the cables that ran along the right wall.

He caught his breath for a moment, wondering why the shotgun hadn’t gone off again. Six shots in one of those motherf*ckers and he’d heard only two. He looked up and saw the first man in the classic pose, two hands on his gun, aiming carefully. Diana had collapsed to the ground behind him.

The first man fired. Then again. But the man was backlit. He fired yet again and now Mason took dead aim, fired, and shot the man in the head.

He tucked himself back in against the wall as he heard the body fall.

He waited. He tried to listen, but he couldn’t imagine ever being able to hear again. He let a minute pass, then it was time to get up and move. He held the gun out in front of him as he took one step after another, keeping the gun steady. The second man was sitting on the stairs. He seemed to be lying back against the wall as if catching his breath. But as Mason came closer he saw that the shotgun had fallen down to the first step and that the man was holding on to his neck, blood running through his fingers and down onto his vest. He gave Mason a pleading look.

Mason shot him in the forehead, blowing off the top of his head. The blood flew high in the air, far enough to spray Diana’s face. She screamed.

Mason went over to her and tried to pick her up. She hit him with her fists and kicked him and kept screaming until he slapped her across the face.

“It’s me,” he said. “Diana, it’s me.”

Her eyes met his, but they were still unfocused. She was fighting to breathe.

He picked her up, but she collapsed against him. He pulled her up straight and held her for a moment, his arms wrapped tight around her.