The pavement gave way to washboard gravel, then to crushed shale slick with red clay run-off. Thick hemlocks and black pines crowded the edge of the path, their branches heavy with wet sleet, scraping against the reinforced steel panels of the Suburban. Up ahead, perched on the highest crest of the ridge, the industrial silhouettes of the abandoned quarry rose like ancient skeletal remains against the darkening sky: rusted conveyor belts, corrugated tin sorting sheds, and the gaping black mouth of the deep open pit.
Two miles from the summit, Rachel leaned forward, pointing through the mist.
“Kill the sirens,” she commanded. “Lights off.”
Cole reached down, flicking the master emergency switches. The flashing reds and blues died instantly, plunging the vehicle into the gray gloom of the storm.
“There,” Rachel whispered.
Fifty yards ahead, tucked behind an overgrown slag heap, the white county transport van sat idling. Its rear double doors were thrown wide open. In the mud behind the vehicle, two sets of heavy boot prints and one set of dragging, narrow shoe impressions led directly toward the sorting shed perched on the rim of the quarry pit.
Cole pulled the SUV into the tree line, killing the engine. The only sounds were the ticking of the cooling manifold and the roar of the wind sweeping up from the five-hundred-foot vertical drop below.
“Tactical backup is fifteen minutes behind us, Rachel,” Cole said, reaching for his suppressed carbine from the locking rack. “State police tactical units are still negotiating the lower switchbacks. We hold the perimeter until they arrive.”
Rachel looked at him. Her eyes were completely steady, but behind the slate-gray irises burned a fire that had nothing to do with police procedure.
“In fifteen minutes, Victor will be at the bottom of that pit,” Rachel said. “And the only man who can tie Judge Croft and the state procurement board to the murder of four men at Bethlehem Steel will be dead. We don’t have fifteen minutes, Nathan. We have two.”
Without waiting for a counter-argument, Rachel drew her SIG Sauer P320 from its holster, checked the chamber with a single silent backward stroke of the slide, and stepped out into the freezing mud.
The wind bit through her clothes, but Rachel’s nervous system ignored the cold. She moved with low, predatory fluidness, using the rusted metal frames of discarded rock-crushers as visual cover. She stayed on the grass and loose shale, stepping only on the soft clay to eliminate the sound of snapping gravel.
Cole trailed five paces behind her, carbine at the low-ready, his eyes scanning the rusted catwalks above the sorting shed.
The sorting shed was an enormous open-sided structure made of corrugated steel panels, its roof half-collapsed from decades of heavy snow. Inside, the wind howled through the gaps, rattling loose sheet metal with an eerie, rhythmic metallic clapping.
Through the rusted iron framework, two voices drifted down through the storm.
“Please, Harlan!”
The voice belonged to Victor Vance, but it sounded completely broken, choked with hysterical terror. The cultured, arrogant billionaire who had sneered from the center of the school gymnasium had vanished.
“We can still fix this!” Victor begged, his words wet and ragged. “The Zurich accounts aren’t in the subpoena! I have six million dollars in non-traceable bearer bonds in a safety deposit box in Montreal! I’ll sign over the power of attorney right now! You can walk away from the bench, Harlan! You can leave the country before the grand jury convenes!”
A dry, harsh laugh cut through the wind.
Standing on the edge of the concrete precipice overlooking the black void of the quarry pit stood Judge Harlan Croft.
Croft was sixty-two years old, tall, wearing a heavy tweed shooting coat and waterproof leather hunting boots. In his right hand, resting comfortably against his hip, was a nickel-plated .44 Magnum revolver. Standing beside him was Sergeant Mark Higgins, the county deputy, holding a heavy pump-action Remington 870 shotgun across his tactical vest.
Victor Vance was on his knees in the mud, four feet from the edge.
His right hand was still tightly wrapped in the thick black electrical tape Rachel had used to secure the bomb transponder, though the device itself had been removed by the bomb squad. The surgical clamp was gone, but the flesh of his hand was swollen, blackened, and covered in dried blood. His slate overcoat was soaked through with red quarry clay, his gray hair plastered across his weeping face.
“You’re a fool, Victor,” Judge Croft said, his voice smooth, resonant, and devoid of pity. “You’ve always been a fool. You thought having money made you the master of this valley. But money is just paper. Power is the authority to decide who lives and who is buried in the state forest.”
