Rachel opened the SUV door and stepped out into the biting wind, ignoring Cole’s frantic shout to stay behind cover. She walked to the very edge of the bridge’s wooden threshold, her bare hands at her sides, her cream cardigan soaked through with icy water.
Vince! Rachel called out. Her voice was not loud, but it possessed a strange, penetrating frequency that cut straight through the howling wind and the rushing roar of the river below.
Vince took two steps onto the far end of the bridge. His eyes were wide, glassy with panic and delirium, looking past Rachel at the dark shape of the federal vehicle behind her.
Rachel! Vince shouted, his voice cracking into a ragged, desperate laugh. You shouldn’t have come back here! Why couldn’t you just stay in that hospital in Virginia? Why couldn’t you just let it go?
David Ramirez is dead, Vince! Rachel said, taking a single, measured step forward onto the wooden planks. Marcus Miller lost both his legs at the hip! They were nineteen years old! They trusted that the equipment bolted to their vehicle was built to protect them!
It was business! Vince shrieked, swinging the road flare through the air like a madman. Thomas told me it was surplus! He told me the testing was just bureaucratic red tape! I didn’t know what was in those crates until the money was already in the accounts! What was I supposed to do, Rachel? Turn myself in? Go to federal prison for thirty years while Thomas bought another car lot?
You had a choice, Vince! Rachel said, her voice dropping into a register of profound, devastating sorrow. You always had a choice!
I chose to survive! Vince roared. Just like you did in the sand! You think you’re better than me because you wore a uniform? We’re the same blood, Rachel! We both do whatever it takes to stay alive!
With a violent flick of his wrist, Vince struck the igniter cap on the road flare.
A blinding, hissing burst of magnesium crimson light erupted from the flare, illuminating the gorge in violent, hellish shadows. The toxic pink smoke swirled in the freezing sleet.
The magnesium flare hissed with an ear-splitting, chemical crackle, spraying bright pink sparks into the black autumn drizzle. Crimson light washed over the rotting timber floorboards of Devil’s Gorge Bridge, turning the pools of dark, leaking industrial solvent into shimmering sheets of liquid fire before a single drop of real flame even touched them.
Rachel Morgan stood forty feet out on the narrow span. Beneath the soles of her wet shoes, the century-old steel cables hummed and vibrated against their granite anchor bolts, shuddering with every savage gust of wind that funneled through the gorge. Three hundred feet straight down, the swollen waters of the Blackwood River roared against jagged boulders like an open grave waiting for a feast.
Behind her, at the near edge of the trestle, Nathan Cole was crouched behind the armored engine block of the black Suburban. He had his suppressed carbine raised, the weapon’s barrel tracking through the pink magnesium fog, but his sight picture was ruined. The heavy vapor coming off the punctured chemical drum was rising in thick, oily waves, creating a thermal mirage in the damp night air.
Rachel, get back here! Cole’s voice was stripped of professional calm, laced with raw desperation. If that flare hits the run-off, the vapor density will detonate the air pocket above the timber before the wood even burns! You won’t have time to run!
Rachel did not retreat an inch. Her eyes remained locked on the man holding the sputtering red torch on the far side of the abyss.
Vince looked unhinged. The handsome, charismatic head coach who had accepted championship trophies on behalf of the Liberty Falls Patriots was gone. In his place stood an exhausted, cornered animal whose eyes rolled in wild terror under the dripping brim of his canvas hood. His hand shook so violently that red magnesium slag dropped onto the damp wood at his feet, sizzling loudly as it bit into wet cedar.
You think I’m bluffing, Rachel? Vince screamed over the roar of the river. You think because we slept under the same leaking roof in that trailer park when we were kids that I won’t drop this damn thing? Look around you! My life is over! The feds have the warehouse! Thomas is arrested! If I get into an armored van with your friends, I die in a concrete cage in Colorado! I won’t do it! I’d rather drop the whole mountain into the river!
