Croft raised the heavy revolver, pointing the thick barrel directly at the center of Victor’s forehead.
“The federal investigators will find your body at the bottom of the limestone pit,” Croft continued with judicial calm. “They will conclude that you realized your empire was destroyed, stole Deputy Higgins’s transport vehicle during a violent escape attempt, and chose suicide over dying in a federal penitentiary. It’s a very neat, very clean ending to forty years of your corporate arrogance.”
“Harlan, please!” Victor wailed, bowing his head toward the mud. “I gave you everything! I paid for your daughter’s medical school! I bought the house on the lake!”
“And I protected your miserable counterfeit steel scheme for twenty years,” Croft replied, his thumb slowly drawing back the heavy hammer of the .44. The metallic click of the cylinder locking into place rang out clearly over the storm. “We are settled in full, Victor.”
“Drop the weapon, Harlan.”
The command was not shouted. It was delivered with the razor-sharp, lethal precision of a rifle crack.
Judge Croft froze.
Deputy Higgins spun around, his finger instinctively tightening on the trigger of his shotgun as he raised the weapon toward the shadows of the sorting shed.
Rachel Morgan stepped out from behind the heavy iron framework of a rock-crusher.
She stood forty feet away, perfectly balanced in the red mud, both hands locked around the textured grip of her SIG Sauer. The black muzzle was leveled squarely between Higgins’s eyes. Her eyes were hard as cut diamonds, utterly fearless, terrifying in their total focus.
Five paces to her left, Agent Nathan Cole stepped into the open, his suppressed carbine pressed firmly against his cheek, the green targeting laser painting a solid emerald dot over Judge Croft’s heart.
“Federal agents,” Cole announced, his voice booming through the corrugated shed. “Higgins, drop that shotgun right now or you die where you stand!”
Deputy Higgins’s eyes darted frantically between Rachel’s pistol and Cole’s military carbine. The young deputy was shaking, the bravado of his family’s corrupt lineage evaporating in the presence of two federal operators who held his life in their sights.
“Harlan…” Higgins stammered, his boots slipping on the wet clay. “Harlan, they’re here! The feds are here!”
“Shut up, Mark!” Croft snarled, though he did not lower his revolver from Victor’s head. His eyes flicked to Rachel, his lips curling into a sneer of pure venom. “Miss Morgan. The schoolteacher. You really don’t know when to leave things alone, do you?”
“Lower the hammer, Croft,” Rachel said, her voice dropping into a register of cold, absolute finality. “Step away from the old man.”
“Why should I?” Croft laughed, a bitter, barking sound. “You think you can shoot me before I pull this trigger? I’m forty feet away. One squeeze of my finger and your dear uncle drops five hundred feet into the limestone. His testimony dies with him.”
“His testimony doesn’t matter anymore, Harlan,” Rachel said, taking one slow, steady step forward through the mud.
Croft’s eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about?”
“Two hours ago, your chief administrative clerk in the county courthouse surrendered your personal safe to the FBI,” Rachel stated. “The federal receivership order signed this morning gave them access to all sealed county files. They found the escrow ledgers for the Huntingdon Industrial Development Authority. They found the bank transfers from Zurich to your daughter’s trust account. And most importantly…”
Rachel took another step, her weapon never wavering by a fraction of an inch.
“…they found the nineteen-ninety-four coroner’s report on the Bethlehem Steel explosion. The original report signed by Dr. Kenneth Vance before you had him replaced. The report that documented the severed safety valves and the explosive accelerant found in the plant’s main boiler.”
Judge Croft’s face lost every shred of color.
The confidence that had carried him through thirty years of uncontested authority vanished, replaced by the hollow, sick realization that the trap had snapped shut around his neck hours ago. He was not standing at the quarry to clean up a loose end; he was standing at the edge of his own execution.
“No…” Croft whispered. “That file was sealed under an executive judicial order.”
“A judicial order issued by a judge who is currently the subject of an active federal felony indictment,” Cole added, his finger resting lightly on the carbine’s trigger. “Drop the gun, Croft. It’s over. You’re going to stand trial for capital murder.”
“Never,” Croft hissed, his eyes wild with sudden, cornered madness. “I won’t spend my life in a federal penitentiary surrounded by the scumbags I sentenced! I built this county! I am the law in Liberty Falls!”
With a savage, desperate motion, Croft swung the heavy revolver away from Victor Vance’s head and aimed it directly at Rachel’s chest!
BANG!
