THE ELEVATOR COMES to a stop.
The door opens onto a brightly lit corridor. Numerous unidentified rooms occupy both sides of the long space, each of them protected by a solid metal door. But I know from personal experience these rooms are meant to house smuggled Chinese looking to be placed in any one of numerous Chinese restaurants between Albany and New York City—and now Lake Placid; all of them owned and operated by Rabuffo; all of them sweatshops.
Other spaces are for the production of crystal meth. And yet others for storage of the product. There are offices, conference rooms, a kitchen, a safe room made of metal and a special glass that’s impervious even to the most sophisticated of listening devices. It’s where we would hold our most sensitive meetings.
One more room, too.
The vault.
I stop when I come to the room.
It’s covered not with the usual solid metal door, but instead, a safety glass–paneled door not unlike the one located outside the elevator up top. Once more I punch in a long-ago-memorized code, and the door unlocks with a burst of released air and solid gunmetal tubing. The door automatically slides into the wall, exposing a massive solid stainless-steel walk-in vault.
I step into the vault’s narrow vestibule, feeling the weight of the gun behind me, even if the barrel is no longer touching me. Embedded into the solid steel vault wall beside the door is a retinal eye scanner, and below that, an eight-digit keypad.
“I think you know how to handle things from here, Doc,” Joel comments. “You’re doing great so far. As your lawyer, I advise you to keep it going.”
I’m guessing that’s supposed to be funny. Like I’m finding anything funny at this point. Like I don’t have a gun pointed at my back by a man whose hell bent on seeing me head back to prison as soon as he gets what he feels he has coming. If it weren’t for Chloe, I’d rather he shoot me dead.
Something dawns on me then. Yet another cold realization.
“You knew everyone would die, didn’t you, Joel?”
“What are you talking about, Doc?”
“You knew that by orchestrating the abduction of my daughter, I’d stop at nothing to get her back. Even if I had to dispose of a few people along the way. Who were your partners in all this? The major partners, I mean. Detective Giselle Fontaine, Chief Joe Walton, and my wife, Penny. All of them, dead. There were more minor players like Singh, Burt and Claudia Stevens, even Tom Bertram and Gary and who knows how many Lake Placid police. They all played a part, but they were more like tools. You didn’t really care whether they lived or died because you had every intention of stiffing them anyway.”
He smiles, like he’s proud of his handiwork.
“So how am I doing, Counselor?” I ask.
“Let me tell you something, Sid,” he says. “One of the reasons I like you, and that Rabuffo liked you, is you’re smart and ruthless. But then, smart and ruthless is a dangerous combination. Hitler was smart and ruthless. So was Dr. Joseph Mengele, but you gotta add crazy to that mix. Better that you were on our side than our sworn enemy.”
“And how would you describe our relationship now, Joel?”
“It’s complicated,” he says. “Now why don’t you be a good pal and open that vault.”
Exhaling a bitter breath, I turn to the eye scanner, and position my no longer swelled left eye over the device. A bright but painless beam connects with my retina. It rapidly shuffles side to side several times until an electronic “APRROVED” message appears on the readout directly below the scanner. I then punch in the eight-digit code that will open the vault door, which happens to be my birthday in reverse of all things.
The room fills with the mechanical noise of numerous locks releasing inside the vault. When the door slowly opens, the brightly lit interior is revealed. That’s when I make out the gunshot, and I feel the solid baseball bat–like connection to my lower abdomen. My knees buckle and a curtain of darkness falls.