Dripping wet Shaw did so and muttered, “How’s it feel to be a dirty cop, Royce?”
“When I didn’t show with James I guess you knew all you needed to know.”
“No, I figured it out before.”
Royce cocked his head, unease settling across his features. “How?”
“It won’t matter to you.”
“Why?”
“Because you’ll be dead.”
Royce waved his pistol, regaining his confidence. “You really are a damn fool. Well, I’m sure you want to see little Katie, so let’s go. We’ll do you together. She’s in the submarine,” he added jauntily. “How about that? The man’s got his own bloody sub. Now that’s real power.”
Shaw brushed his hand against his belt, depressing a tiny dimple there that sent out a distress signal to Frank.
“But I will let you in on one thing, Royce.”
“Really? What’s that?” Royce said, sneering.
“Did you ever bother checking your watch? Because we put a bug on it.”
Royce shot a glance at the timepiece on his wrist.
The next instant he was clutching his chest where the hilt of the knife stuck out, the blood from his burst heart already flooding the chest cavity. He looked back at Shaw.
“Impressed now?” said Shaw.
As Royce dropped to the floor, Shaw was already past him heading to the sub. And Katie.
The belly of the Shiloh was a series of huge hangars, the thirty-five-ton submarine parked in dry dock in the center of one of them. Shaw watched the men standing guard. There were three of them, one even larger than Shaw with long black curly hair. A radio buzzed in the hand of the big man. He listened, said something Shaw couldn’t hear, and he and the two other men hurried off.
Shaw clambered on top of the sub, lifted the hatch, and dropped down inside. He searched as quickly as he could. When he saw the arm and legs of a woman sticking out from under a bench near the rear of the vessel, he felt his heart nearly stop. When he pulled the woman out and saw the blonde hair, he felt paralyzed. When he realized it wasn’t Katie he started breathing again. Then he saw the body bag and it all hit him again. He unzipped it with shaky fingers.
Then he heard another sound. The men were coming back.
CHAPTER 97
“TAKE HER OUT OF HERE NOW. And bury her in the
excavation pit for the orphanage,” Creel instructed the two men who held the body bag between them. “Put her in a box. I’ll arrange everything at the construction site. I’ll tell them it’s a time capsule. Where’s Royce?” he asked Caesar.
“Around here somewhere.”
One of the men said, “Do you want us to kill her first, Mr. Creel?”
“No, I want her to wake up and realize she’s been buried alive. They say there’s no greater fear in humankind. I want her to feel that horror.”
The body bag was loaded on the launch and the men set off.
Caesar said to Creel, “What now?”
“Now you disappear. Until the next time.”
“I don’t think so.”
They slowly turned. Shaw was standing there pointing a gun at them.