Behind them, Zig and Roddy had their hands in the air, Seabass motioning to keep them up. It was Roddy who was moving slowly, his face ashen, lowering one arm to hold his bleeding stomach. Still, he was on his feet—alert, not disoriented. A good sign, Zig thought. No major blood vessels penetrated.
“He needs to rest—or at least sit,” Zig said, though all it got them was another shove from behind.
“Where’s the money now?” Reagan asked.
Elijah shook his head, eyeing yet another warehouse camera. Not here.
On their left, they passed an aisle filled with pallets of thermal burn creams and antimicrobial agents to be used on survivors of radiological or nuclear attacks. On their right was an aisle stocked with medical instruments—hacksaws and rongeurs, to file down bones during amputations—as well as stacked containers of sterile bred maggots to debride necrotic tissue and treat gangrene.
“At least get him some water,” Zig added, though it got drowned out by the loud mechanical hum that filled the air. It sounded like an engine, though Zig knew the source as he eyed the metal door dead ahead. An orange-and-black warning sign read:
Biohazard
No food or drink
to be stored in freezer
“The original scene of the crime,” Elijah said, motioning to the metal latch.
Reagan gave it a tug, and a cloud of cold air wafted through the plastic slats.
Five years ago, this was where arms dealer Salty and his daughter were reunited and ruthlessly murdered, their twenty-two million dollars stolen. The meeting was here because it was the only place in Grandma’s Pantry without cameras. It was no different today.
“Everybody in,” Reagan said, shoving Elijah through the slats, then grabbing Zig and doing the same. She was careful to hold him at arm’s length—never let anyone get close enough to whip their head back in a head butt.
“You do realize, she’s gonna slit your throat no matter what,” Zig warned Elijah as they stumbled inside, Roddy right behind him, a cold frost biting them in the face.
The freezer was big—the size of half a dozen lanes at a bowling alley—with bright white walls and a matching resin floor, giving it the feel of a high-tech lab. It was divided into three aisles, all of them lined with padlocked metal cages holding lots of vaccines for everything from chicken pox to Ebola to yellow fever. Along the back wall, a maze of blue pipes squiggled toward a massive fan—the cooling system for the freezer and the source of the loud hum that was now a steady roar.
“Stay,” Reagan warned, disappearing up the freezer’s far-right aisle, scanning the room to make sure they were alone.
“Elijah, y’hear me?” Zig whispered, puffs of cold air rolling from his lips. His ears already hurt from the cold. A digital thermometer on the wall read three degrees Fahrenheit. “No matter what, she will kill you.”
“That’s what I would do,” Roddy agreed, bent forward, eyes clamped in pain.
“You’d be surprised what people overlook when you give them money,” Elijah shot back.
“I can hear you!” Reagan shouted from the aisle.
“Is that what you did with Mint? You gave him money?” Zig asked. “He somehow figured out you were the one who stole the twenty-two million, and then you what? You started paying him hush money to keep him quiet? Or better yet, he started asking for even more, and that’s why you hired Zion to put a bullet in him.”
“How many bad TV shows did you have to watch to put together those sentences? I know you want to see me as a murderer—”
“You just shot two people!” Zig shouted.
“And I’ll have to live with that. But y’know what I’ll never lose sleep over? Salty Trebbiano’s dirty money. The man was a Nazi—I don’t have a single regret taking it. You judge me all you want, but back at the bar, what I told you was the truth: I am not the scumbag in this story—and neither is Archie Mint. Whatever else happened, even his affair, Archie always had my back. I’d never hurt him . . . I wasn’t sending him payoffs . . . and I certainly wouldn’t lay a hand, or hire anyone, to hurt him or Rashida.”