The Second Life of Nick Mason (Nick Mason #1)(67)

Then a movement. On Mason’s left. A face, vaguely familiar to him in that fraction of a second, then pure reaction as he picked up the shotgun and fired. The blast was louder than any so far, a spike in each ear, as it sent buckshot and pebbles of glass at the man who had appeared at the driver’s-side window. Diana kept screaming as Mason put his foot down on the accelerator and the tires threw limestone dust high in the air behind them. The dead man slid off the windshield as the tires found purchase, the second man down on the ground somewhere behind them, as Mason weaved around the construction vehicles at impossible speed, sliced through the ponds of water, drove through the pass-through into the other section of the quarry, and then climbed the long, sloping shelf up to the access road, fighting every inch of the way to keep the car from falling off into the abyss below.

She had stopped screaming by the time Mason exploded through the gate. She had no breath to scream anymore. No strength. She had nothing left.

But Mason did.





32




Mason didn’t know where he was driving. He didn’t even know which direction. He was just getting away from the quarry as fast as he could. Drive the f*ck away, he told himself. Don’t stop until you’re somewhere safe.

Diana was slumped in the seat next to him. Her eyes were open, but they weren’t focused on anything at all. He grabbed her arm and shook it.

“Diana!”

She didn’t respond.

“Diana! Are you okay?”

As Mason made a quick turn, she was thrown against the side of the car. Then she fell back to the same position. She was still staring at nothing.

“Answer me! Are you okay?”

She inhaled a long breath, ragged and sputtering. Like a diver breaking through to the surface. “Let me out!”

“No.”

“Let me out! Let me out right now!” She grabbed his arm, her fingernails digging into his skin. “Pull this car over, God damn it!”

He jammed on the brakes and brought the car to a skidding stop on the side of the road. Diana was thrown forward in her seat, then came back hard. She grabbed at the door handle.

“Listen to me,” Mason said, reaching over and trying to pull her hand away from the handle. He looked outside, had no idea where they were. Still outside the city somewhere. A darkened warehouse on one side of the road, an empty field on the other. “Will you f*cking listen to me for one second?”

First she was comatose. Then she was clawing at the car door like an animal trying to escape its cage.

“You need to calm down,” he said.

She took a few more gasping breaths before she could speak again. “You want me to calm down?” she said. “I was just kidnapped, Nick. I was kidnapped and taken down a f*cking tunnel. And then you came and you . . . you . . .” She tried to find the right words. “You killed four people right in front of me! You killed four cops, Nick! I’ve got their blood on me!”

She showed him the sleeves of her shirt. The white fabric was sprinkled with bright red dots. He didn’t want to point out that the same blood was all over her face.

And he didn’t feel like telling her that he’d only killed two of them.

Eddie had killed the third.

As for the fourth . . . He flashed back on the fraction of a second he saw the cop standing there on the other side of his car window. He could see the man’s face and those cold gray eyes. He could see the man’s tactical vest. Then the explosion from the shotgun, aimed right at the man’s chest.

That cop was probably still alive.

He’d only seen the man once before, from a distance. But he knew exactly who it was. Sergeant Bloome.

“That’s their blood, Nick! And you’re telling me to calm down?”

“Fine,” Mason said, letting go of her arm. “If you want to get out, get out. They’ll find you and they’ll kill you. But at least you’ll be out of this car.”

She was still breathing like she couldn’t get enough air. Mason put the car back into gear and kept driving.

“There’s only one safe place for you right now,” Mason said, trying to put some calm into his voice. “And that’s with me.”

“Are you crazy? Every cop in this city will be looking for you.”

“No,” Mason said. “That’s the last thing they want. They arrest me, they start asking questions. They start asking questions, they’ll want to know what I was doing there. They’ll want to know what you were doing there. And they’ll really want to know what Bloome and his men were doing there without backup.”

“What was I doing there?” she said. “What did they want from me?”

“They want something I have,” Mason said. “And then they want us dead.”

Her breathing was finally settling back into a normal rhythm. But her hands were still shaking.

“Where do we go?”

“Not home, not the restaurant,” he said. “They’re not safe.”

“Then where?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

They were heading straight back to the city, so he turned and cut to the west until they were in the forest that ran along the canal. He turned onto a gravel road leading off into the trees, the branches scratching at both sides of the car. He came to a fork and went left, then to another fork and went right. All the way into the middle of the forest until the ground rose and the road ended in a clearing.