“He went over?” Luke asked, intent.
“Yeah. He’d managed to fishtail the car two or three times before he hit the edge, so it both slowed the car and sent him down at a slight angle. I got to the edge to see that part of a dead tree and part of a crumbling ledge were the only things holding that car in place, about thirty feet down. I yelled at him not to move, then went back to my Jeep and got the hook from my winch. I had to move carefully, because it was still raining and I could feel the mud moving underneath every step I took.”
He drew a breath. “There was no way in hell to stop that car from falling except for a minute or two. Not long enough to try to attach the hook to the car, to anything solid. So I hooked it around me, and when I got to the car, which thankfully had stopped with the driver’s side facing up, I was able to ease the door open.
“Simon hadn’t lost his head even though he looked terrified. He’d already unhooked his seat belt. I grabbed his wrist and held on as hard as he did. He started to slide out of the car—and that’s when the slope let go. We were both sitting on our asses in the mud, watching that car tumbling all the way to the floor of the quarry. There was barely enough left to put in a wheelbarrow.”
“Wow,” Sam said.
“It was close,” Jonah admitted. “I was just wondering if we were going to try to climb back up holding on to that slippery cable when Sarah got there. We held on, and she operated the winch to pull us slowly back to the top.” Jonah shook his head. “No question he’d be dead if I hadn’t been able to get down to him.”
Sam made a quick note under Simon Church’s name, simply SAVED FROM CAR CRASH.
“Okay,” she said. “Amy Grimes. What happened?”
Jonah shook his head. “One of those unthinking teenage things. It was about a year ago. Amy had a different boyfriend then, and they decided to have a nice, romantic little picnic. In a pasture. Normally, that time of the year, that pasture is empty because the farmer is about to cut hay.
“On that day, however, I got a frantic call from the farmer, whose place I had left as part of a regular, routine patrol no more than five minutes before. His meanest bull, one that would as soon trample you to death as look at you, had kicked its way out of the stable it was in and had taken off through the pasture. He was just going to let the animal run, burn off his temper, but he caught a glimpse of color at the far end of the pasture and realized somebody was inside the fence. He was too far away to do anything, but he knew I’d been headed in that direction, so he called me.”
Jonah paused. “Just as I got there, the boyfriend was bailing out over the fence. Amy was frozen, absolutely couldn’t move. And that bull was headed right for her. The farmer had told me to shoot him if I had to. I had to.”
“One shot put him down?” Lucas asked matter-of-factly.
“Two. Two quick rounds, which, luckily, I knew where to aim. He was moving so fast that he was dead in midgallop. Flipped over forward. One hoof grazed Amy’s arm. That’s how close it had been.”
Sam let out a low whistle, but all she wrote under Amy’s name was BULL ATTACK.
“Keep going,” Lucas said. “Judge Carson?”
“Few years back, when I was first appointed, we had something of a meth problem in the area, and that was a problem we definitely didn’t need. I didn’t want it to take hold, and that meant we had to stop it. My department was aggressive, and I called in outside help, experienced drug enforcement officers to work with my people in locating and taking out the labs. One meth lab blew up before we could get there, killing the three inside. But we were able to capture the lieutenant of the wannabe drug kingpin of the area.”
“And he was willing to talk,” Sam guessed.
“That was the plan. We kept him in protective custody right in the courthouse until Judge Carson could charge him and—Serenity being a small town with not much on the docket—hear his testimony at the same time. Judge was fine with it, lawyers were fine with it, even the dealer was fine with it.
“His boss, however, wasn’t. He must have gotten in through one of the windows, because he didn’t go through security downstairs. Had a silenced automatic and shot two of my officers outside the courtroom doors. Didn’t kill them, luckily. His lieutenant wasn’t so lucky. The first shot was to the head, second to the heart. He was rumored to be a crack shot. The rumors hadn’t lied. His next shot would have been the judge.”
“So you stopped him,” Lucas said.
Jonah nodded. “It took three shots to bring him down, and he still managed to wound the judge in the arm. But he didn’t kill him.”
Silent now, Samantha wrote underneath Judge Carson’s name ARMED DRUG DEALER.
“Next,” Lucas said. “Luna Lang.”
“She used to own a little cottage, couple of years before she met Dave. Hired a contractor for some electrical repairs. I honestly don’t know if he screwed it up or it was just an old house and something sparked the wrong way. I heard the town fire alarm go off, got the radio call, and I was closer than either the fire trucks or EMS. When I got there that night, the place was already an inferno. I could hear the fire engines, but I knew they wouldn’t get there in time. I went in. Luna had managed to make it as far as the downstairs hallway, so I didn’t have to go far. But just as I carried her out, the whole roof caved in. The house was a total loss.”
Sam stared at him. “I bet it’s hell for you to get life insurance.”
He managed a faint smile. “Luckily I have no dependents, and my pension would take care of cremation and any bills left.”
Sam looked as if she wanted to ask more questions but in the end just shook her head, wrote HOUSE FIRE under Luna’s name, and went on. “Sean Messina?”
“He was hiking up in the woods not too far from here. Hunting season, so he had his gun and his dog. Never actually figured out how it happened, but somehow he managed to shoot himself. I was also in the woods, about a quarter mile away, but I was looking for some illegal traps the hunting fairies set each season.”
Sam blinked, then smiled. “Ah. You’re not sure who’s doing it.”
“Oh, I’m sure. I just can’t catch the bastard. Anyway, I was hunting for traps, and springing and collecting those I found when I heard the shot. Sean’s dog deserves some of the credit; he came bursting out of the brush near me barking his head off. Led me back to Sean, who was bleeding like a stuck pig.”
“So you saved him,” Lucas said.
“Well, I was barely in range to use my radio and have them send our EMS unit. Until they came, I used basic first aid.” Jonah shrugged. “They said he would have bled to death if I hadn’t known what I was doing.”
Silently, Sam wrote HUNTING ACCIDENT under Sean Messina’s name.
“Okay,” Lucas said. “How did you save Nessa Tyler’s life?”
FIFTEEN
Nessa was beginning to think the dirt wall she followed was never going to end. When she paused to rest, which seemed often to her, she could no longer hear the breathing of the other people. She’d thought that was scary enough, but the absence of it, the sheer aloneness she felt in that damp, so-dark place, was more terrifying than anything she’d ever known before.
She felt like she’d walked miles. Her feet had gone so cold they were numb, but she had a pretty good idea how scratched up they must be by now, even as careful as she’d been.
But then Nessa realized that the wall she’d been following had been straight for a long time, much longer than any room would need. For the first time, she had a sense of something above her head, as if she could reach up and touch more dirt if only she were a few inches taller. A few more yards, and she could have sworn she could make out a faint light ahead. Very faint, not like daylight exactly—more like dusk.
The final few yards were a climb, or felt like it, though she didn’t realize until she at last reached the mouth of the shaft that she had climbed from God only knew how deeply underground.