"WILL YOU ALL LISTEN TO ME FOR ONCE?" Nat screamed at the top of her lungs, so loud that her voice broke. She felt like the mouse that roared. "PARRAT IS GOING TO GET WILLIAMS OUT! THERE'S A TUNNEL UNDER THE FLOOR! SAUNDERS DIED FOR IT! I'LL SHOW IT TO YOU!"
Suddenly the pop pop pop of automatic gunfire crackled from the prison like an electrical current. The crowd exploded into movement. Cops and C.O.s ran for the prison from all directions.
"That's Parrat! He's inside!" Nat shouted amid the melee, and Mundy s eyes looked bewildered, then furious.
"I cannot effin' believe this!" he shouted, then he picked Nat up, threw her over his shoulders like a sack, and carted her to an empty police cruiser. He opened the back door and started to shove her into the backseat.
"No, lemme go, you gotta listen!" Nat writhed but she was losing the battle. Mundy stuffed her into the backseat, and when the car door almost slammed on her, she summoned all her courage and kicked him in the shins. Mundy hopped back for a split second, and she seized the moment to jump out of the car and take off toward the prison entrance. The trooper ran after her and clamped his hand on her arm.
"Don't you ever stop?." he asked, exasperated, and just then a shout came from the front of the prison. The crowd edged backward, suddenly hushed. Nat was too short to see anything, and Mundy shoved her behind his broad back, but she peeked out.
And witnessed a nightmare.
Chapter 43
“Say hello to the warden, everybody!" shouted a brawny inmate. He emerged from the prison and appeared in the spotlight, pressing a black Glock to his hostage's temple. The inmates dark eyes were slits, his mouth a scarred sneer. It had to be Richard Williams, his malevolence evident even in his T-shirt and blue scrubs. Williams shouted, "Don't nobody move a muscle, or Mr. Warden McCoy's gonna get his head shot clean off, right in front of y'all."
Nat watched, aghast. Warden McCoy, in a tie and jacket, had gone grim with fear. His blue eyes stayed glued to the gun at his temple. His mouth stretched in a grimace. Williams used the warden's body as a human shield, wrapping a tattooed arm around the other man's torso and walking him along in front of himself. The C.O.s, police, and firefighters on the driveway froze, a tableau of law enforcement personnel rendered instantly impotent. The car fire raged in the background.
"Now, here's what's gonna happen, folks. Ya'll's gonna stay cool. Me and my boys, we gonna take a little walk down to our car. If our driver gets hurt, or one of us gets hurt, these good people goin' down!' Williams pushed McCoy ahead of him down the driveway. A black sedan with an ADT security badge on the door idled halfway up the driveway. It couldn't get closer because of the fire trucks. The crowd of cops and C.O.s stood paralyzed, a captive audience to the thug's little show.
Williams continued. "We already lef' you one body, a CO. who let me outta my cell. Don't make me leave you any more. We don't want no more heroes tonight."
There was a new commotion at the entrance to the prison, and suddenly, someone else emerged from the doorway, behind Williams and Warden McCoy. It was Parrat, the pickup driver. He walked out in his fake-cop uniform, his gun to the soft cheek of another hostage. Nat gasped when she caught a glimpse of his victim.
Tanisa. The CO’s mouth stayed grimly closed, but her eyes had gone still with fright. The COs in the crowd stood riveted when they saw her. Parrat had Tanisa's arms pinned behind her back and he shoved her in front of him, The two of them walked closely behind Williams and the warden, like a horrifying parade.
A CO in the crowd shouted, "Let her be!"
Parrat didn't respond, but Tanisa did. "Shoot him!" she hollered, her voice ringing clear and strong.
"Bitch, shut up!" Parrat shouted, shoving his gun into Tanisa's ear. Nat felt her heart cry out.
Williams walked on, with McCoy in front, saying, "Now, now. Folks, stay cool, calm, and collected. Everything's gonna be all right. Just stay cool. We got one more comin' with us, then we outta here."
Nat looked at the prison entrance. Another figure was walking outside with a hostage. Graf stepped into the spotlight in his CO. uniform, his eyes cold as gunmetal and his revolver trained on Machik. A ripple of shock shot through the crowd at the sight.
A CO called out, "You're scum, Joe! You're worse than scum!'
Graf ignored him, and Nat was the only one not surprised at his treachery. The only trick was that Graf had Machik as a hostage. But that fit in, too. No one knew Machik was in on the conspiracy except for Graf and her. In effect, Graf was smuggling out a confederate, right under everyone's noses.
A second CO shouted, "You won't get away with it, Joe!"
Mundy stirred, and when he did, Nat felt something hit her hand. She looked down. There was a bulge in the back of Mundy's jacket, around his belt. A gun.
"Very good job, folks," Williams was saying. Warden McCoy looked terrified, the gun boring into his temple. "Y'all doin' a very good job, and I'm mighty proud of you. Don't nobody do nothin' stupid and we all gonna be all right."
Nat eyed the crowd. Nobody was moving. They couldn't take the chance. Williams was getting away. The warden's brow sweated in the lights. Anyone's movement could trigger the murder of the warden and Tanisa. Nat couldn't be seen behind Mundy's back. She was too short, and for once, it was an advantage. She had to do something. She stayed perfectly still except for her hand, which she slipped under the back of Mundy's jacket. If the trooper felt anything, he was too smart to let it show. The unfolding scene was proving her right. He must be letting her take it. She reached the handle of the gun and pulled. But it didn't come.
"Me and my friends gonna take these good people wit' us." Williams's voice grew closer. He must have been directly in front of Mundy. "We gonna drop em off, good as new, when we're clear. So stay cool and nobody gets hurt."
Nat tried the gun again but it didn't move. Was it stuck? No. It must have been in a holster. Her fingers found some kind of latch over the gun handle. She fumbled and felt a snap, unfastened it, and finally slid the gun free. It was warm from Mundy's body heat, and its barrel caught the dark light.
Okay, I'm not shooting anybody. The teachers can't do everything around here.
Nat took the gun and eased it slowly under Mundy's right hand, and she felt an almost physical tingle when he accepted it from her, betraying no movement.
Williams was saying, "Y'all stay—"
Suddenly Mundy swung his arm up and fired the gun. It exploded in an earsplitting pop pop pop, setting off a horrifying fusillade. The shooting happened in a sickening blur. A red hole exploded in Williams's temple. He crumpled. The attack startled Parrat, and Tanisa turned and elbowed him. He fell away and was instantly cut down by the cops in the crowd, his body spinning with the impact of the bullets.
Graf aimed for Mundy, but flew backward when he was shot himself, his gun spraying bullets. One hit Machik in the head and he went down, dropping on the spot. The crowd surged forward, almost knocking Nat over. She let them rush past, squeezing her eyes shut against what she had just seen. She couldn't believe that it had happened.
She half-stumbled and half-walked away, breathing in fresh air. She bent over and leaned on the huge, cold bumper of one of the fire trucks, praying to keep nausea at bay. In the next minute, she felt a large hand on her shoulder and turned around. It was Mundy, slipping the gun back into its holster.
"You okay, professor?" he asked.
"More or less." Nat smiled shakily. She couldn't believe it was finally over. "Okay, less."
"You did nice work. You got guts. Sorry I gave you such a hard time."
"S'okay." Nat didn't say I-told-you-so. It didn't feel like a victory after so much carnage.
"You wanna show me that tunnel?" Mundy threw a comforting arm around her shoulder.
Nat nodded, wiping away a tear that came from nowhere.
Chapter 44
Nat sat in her chair in the dingy interview room, recorded by the black videocamera and fueled by a cup of bad coffee, and explained to Trooper M
undy, Trooper Duffy, and an assistant D.A. everything that had happened since the last time she sat there. She included her discovery of the stop on the Underground Railroad, but they seemed less excited than she about the historical angle. After she had finished, the three of them left her in the interview room, to confer. She thought of calling a lawyer, but decided against it. She felt newly competent, happily.
Nat waited and took inventory. They'd put a Band-Aid on her forehead, and her neck hurt from when that man near the prison had pulled her down. She brushed off her pants, ripped at the knee. Her clogs were soaked, and she couldn't remember the last time her toes had been dry. She thought about Angus, but hadn't called him or her parents yet. This interview had gone on longer than she thought it would. She checked her watch just as the door opened and Mundy came back alone.
"Bad news," he said, closing the door softly behind him.
"I'm going up the river?"
"No." He smiled tiredly, then pulled out a chair and plunked down so hard it skidded. "We sent somebody out to pick up Jim Graf, from that construction company."
"Phoenix."
"Right." Mundy leaned on his heavy thigh and looked at her with his frank brown eyes. "He's dead. Hanged himself in the bathroom."
Nat felt it in her gut. She wondered how Agnes, Graf's secretary, would react. She reached for the coffee and took a cold gulp.
"He was going down and he knew it."
"That's awful." Nat set down the Styrofoam cup, and Mundy ran a hand through his hair.
"So where we go from here is that we'll start our investigation, verifying what you told us. I think it'll square with your story." He shook his head. "That tunnel sure was something else."
"It was." Nat couldn't believe it herself. A football-field-long tunnel, more a crawlspace than anything, that began from the new staff room and ended in the middle of the evergreens, away from the houses. The tunnel had been reinforced with two-by-fours, like the one she'd seen on the Underground Railroad, but less well made. Graf and his pals lacked the brains, and the heart, of those people.
"We also got troopers canvassing on the street, and two neighbors reported seeing a cop car parked there tonight. They always see cop cars around the prison, so they didn't report it."
"They didn't know it was Parrat, in the fake copmobile."
"Right." Mundy arched an eyebrow. "Quite a plan. Most bad guys aren't that smart."
"Williams was a smart bad guy. The CEO of bad guys."
Mundy chuckled, checking his pad. '"Course we're not bringing charges against you for Matty, or the attempt on Barb Saunders."
"How is she?"
"No change."
Nat felt a twinge.
"We'll be talking with the warden and his deputy, but we don't think they're involved at this point. Machik is as high up as it went."
"Not everybody would be. It was an unwieldy conspiracy to start out with, between bad guys and good guys. At least formerly good guys."
"But we can't prosecute the dead. So it's all over, at least the legalities.
"Somebody should follow up with Upchurch's aunt, Mrs. Rhoden. She deserves at least to be compensated for what happened to her nephew, as if that were possible."
"I got that."
Nat thought of Machik getting shot, and of Graf. Then Graf's cute little boy, skipping to his karate lesson, and his nice wife. "Don't these men consider their families when they do stuff like this?"
"Honestly, no. Families aren't as important to them as money. Speaking of which, I'm supposed to tell you that you do have some things to account for, young lady." Mundy checked his pad and slid a yellow pencil from his breast pocket. "You vandalized public property."
"What?"
"The propane tanks and the fence."
Nat scoffed. "Gimme a break."
"My hands are tied."
"Are you serious?"
"This is a charging decision by the D.A." Mundy made another check. "Also, they're charging you with criminal mischief."
Nat snorted. "For keying the pickup?"
Mundy blinked. "What?"
Oops. "What for?"
"Setting fire to the Neon."
Nat didn't object, and Mundy looked up, surprised.
"You okay with that?"
"I like thinking of myself as mischievous. It's my new thing." Nat stood up and brushed off her pants. "Anyway, this sounds like fines."
"A lot of fines."
"Then, can I go. I've heard enough." Nat didn't even want to fuss at him. She was tired and sad, and she'd fought hard enough, for long enough. "Can I use a phone? My parents must be freaking."
"Sure." Mundy stood up, pulled a cell phone from his pocket, and handed it to her. He added, "By the way, the media's already out front. I'm supposed to tell you that the D.A. would appreciate it very much if you didn't talk to the press. He'll draft a press release." Mundy eyed her with a dark twinkle, more straight man than trooper.
"Tell the D.A. that I would appreciate it very much if he waived my fines, in view of my service to the community."
"You're learning, prof." Mundy smiled, and so did Nat. She pressed her parents' phone number into the cell, as he patted her on the back. "Come on out when you're finished. I'll give you a ride home."
"Thanks." Nat called her parents at home, but they didn't answer, so she tried her dad's cell. It rang and rang. She was about to hang up when she heard his voice. "Dad? It's me, Nat."
"Where are you?" Her father sounded stressed. "We've been calling your cell."
"I'm fine. I'm at the police station again, but it's all over now."
"Nat, listen. We're at the hospital, at Penn. Can you come?"
"What? Why?"
"Paul had a heart attack."
Chapter 45
Nat entered the hospital room in intensive care where Paul lay still in a bed, his eyes closed and his color grayish. A transparent greenish tube ran from his nose, an IV snaked from his arm, and a white plastic clamp hooked up to a fingertip, connecting to a vital-sign monitor that showed an unmistakably erratic line of hills and valleys, in glowing blue. In a night of so many awful sights, this was the worst.
"Nat, come in," her father said, meeting her and enveloping her in a hug. His cheek scratched like sandpaper instead of being characteristically clean-shaven, and he didn't smell of his beloved Aramis. He released her, holding her off, his eyes a sad and shiny brown, until they traveled, bewildered, to her hair. "Why’d you change your hair?"
"It's a long story. What happened?" Nat looked past him to the bed, which was flanked by Junior and Tom on one side, and her mother and Hank on the other. They all looked red-eyed and exhausted.
"He was playing basketball with Hank, and he just went down." Her father's voice cracked with emotion, a sound Nat had never heard from him. "He had a defect in his heart, his aortic valve."
"But he's twenty-six," Nat said, as if her father didn't know.
"They must've missed it when he was little, and the cold medicine he was taking made it worse, somehow. The shortness of breath wasn't a cold, it was his heart. I don't understand it all." Her father scratched his head, heartbroken. "They had to repair the valve."
"He had heart surgery?" Nat was reeling. She'd missed the whole thing. She couldn't take her eyes from Paul, lying motionless, his hands at his sides. She felt awful for not having taken his condition seriously. She almost couldn't bring herself to ask the question. "He's gonna be okay, isn't he?"
"They don't know." Her father's shoulders slumped, soft in his blue dress shirt. "They said we'll know in a few hours if he's outta the woods."
"This isn't possible." Nat couldn't wrap her mind around it. Paul was the one with the most life, of all of them. "When did it happen?"
"Last night, around seven o'clock."
Nat thought back. She had been in bed with Angus. Her brother was collapsing on a basketball court while she was having sex. She pressed the thought away. "You've been here since then?"
"
Yeah. We slept in the chairs in the hall. It's against the rules, so they hate us."
Nat had recognized their coats when she'd hurried down the hall. "Don't they have a waiting room for intensive care?"
"It's too far from the room. Screw their rules." Her father smiled. "Come say hello to your mother." He led her to the bed, where her mother reached out and gave her a bony, still fragrant, hug.