Chapter 9
The duffel bag was gone.
"Marcus!" Seth hissed into the gloom, taking a half-step forward.
Evan caught the collar of Seth’s windbreaker, jerking him back into the shadow of a derailed hopper car. "Shut your mouth. Look at the mud."
Beneath the dome light, two distinct sets of footprints cut through the wet slag toward the heavy steel fire door at the base of Silo Two. One set belonged to Marcus’s expensive Italian wingtips—deep, skidding heel strikes where he had sprinted in terror.
The other set was already there, stamped into the dirt hours before the rain began: heavy, square-lugged vibram treads.
"They lured him," Seth whispered, his teeth beginning to chatter. "He didn't catch them. They were waiting."
Evan didn't answer. He moved across the open ground in a low, predatory crouch, his dress shoes soaking through with icy slurry. He reached the steel door of Silo Two.
The door was unlatched, held open three inches by a discarded wooden wedge.
From inside the concrete cylinder came a sound that froze the marrow in Evan’s spine.
It wasn't a gunshot. It wasn't the scream of a man being tortured.
It was the heavy, rhythmic groan of an electric transfer auger—metal helical blades grinding dry stone against steel—accompanied by a wet, muffled, rhythmic thumping.
And beneath the mechanical roar, a voice.
*“Evan! Seth! Oh God, somebody... please! I can't breathe! It’s on my chest!”*
Evan kicked the wooden wedge aside and stepped through the threshold, bringing the Glock up to eye level.
The interior of Silo Two was fifty feet across, open all the way to the conical steel roof high above. A single bare construction floodlight sat on the concrete floor, angled upward, casting grotesque, elongated shadows against the curved aggregate walls. The air was suffocating, thick with the choking, mineral dust of crushed agricultural lime and pulverized gravel.
In the center of the floor stood the discharge hopper: an inverted steel pyramid, twelve feet across at the lip, tapering down into an industrial funnel equipped with a heavy rotary slide-gate.
Marcus Kane was inside the hopper.
The dry limestone aggregate had already buried him to the mid-sternum. He was trapped in the center of the funnel, his arms pinned against his sides, his neck craned backward at a brutal angle to keep his mouth above the shifting grey dust. Every time the heavy overhead vibrator motor shuddered against the silo wall, another hundred pounds of dry, jagged gravel cascaded down from the overhead storage chutes, slipping like liquid cement around his ribs.
On the concrete deck ten feet away, Marcus’s leather duffel sat unzipped. Bundles of fifty-dollar bills lay scattered across the wet lime like autumn leaves.
"Marcus!" Seth lunged toward the hopper's steel ladder, his boots slipping on the dusty floor.
"Stop!" Marcus shrieked, spitting grey silt from his lips. The dust had caked in his eyebrows, in his hair, turning him into a living statue. "Don't touch the ladder! There's a trip line on the rungs! If you pull it, the overhead bin drops! The whole three tons!"
Seth froze on the bottom rung, his hands trembling violently.
The electric motor above them screamed, a rusted bearing whining like a buzzsaw. Another wave of crushed stone poured down from the overhead chute, hitting Marcus across the shoulders. He let out a strangled, bubbling grunt, his eyes bulging as the pressure compressed his lungs.
"My ribs..." Marcus wept, tears cutting clean black tracks through the white dust on his cheeks. "Evan... it’s crushing my ribs... I can't expand... I can't get air..."
Seth whipped his phone out of his fleece pocket, his thumb frantically punching the screen. "I’m calling Newford Search and Rescue. They have the pneumatic extraction collars. If they bring the vacuum truck from the fire hall, they can pull him out in ten minutes—"
Evan moved faster than Seth could register.
He didn't just grab the phone; he struck Seth across the face with the flat of his forearm, sending the athletic director stumbling back against a concrete support pillar. The phone went flying, skittering across the floor and dropping through an open floor grate into the flooded drainage sump ten feet below.
"Are you insane?" Seth screamed, clutching his swollen cheek, his eyes wild with disbelief. "He’s dying, Evan! He’s suffocating right in front of us!"
"Look where we are, you imbecile!" Evan snarled, stepping into Seth’s face, his coat splattered with grey slurry, his Glock trembling in his fist. "The old Erie culvert is ninety yards behind that back wall! Ninety yards! If you bring Newford Search and Rescue here with four engines, two ambulances, and sixteen volunteer firemen, where do you think they park their staging units?"
Seth stared at him, his chest heaving, his jaw hanging open.
"They park on the access culvert!" Evan roared, his voice bouncing off the concrete ceiling like pistol shots. "They run their heavy water lines across the ditch! A state trooper supervisor will be on site within five minutes to secure the perimeter! One K9 walks into that brush, catches the scent of Leo’s rotted sneakers through the mud, and we’re all in irons before dawn!"
"He’s going to die, Evan!"
"Then we dig him out ourselves!" Evan turned toward the hopper, his eyes darting across the rusted machinery. "The manual override! Julian told me every hopper in the county has an emergency manual slide-dog! Find the iron pipe! Jam the lower drive gears!"
The ground shuddered.
Above them, the overhead discharge chute groaned as another metric ton of aggregate settled. The limestone was acting like quicksand; every shallow breath Marcus took allowed the fine dust to pack tighter around his diaphragm, ratcheting down like an iron corset.
"Evan..." Marcus’s voice was fading, dropping to a dry, rattling whisper. "Please... I didn't tell him anything... I swear to God I didn't tell him... he was already here... he knew about the culvert... he knew about the watch Seth dropped..."
Evan climbed the short maintenance platform beside the funnel, keeping his boots clear of the rusted wire running along the top rail. He peered down into the hopper. The aggregate was up to Marcus’s collarbones now. Only his head and his purple, choking face remained visible above the grey expanse.
"Where is he, Marcus?" Evan demanded, leaning over the steel lip. "Who is he? Where did he go?"
"He said... he said the law couldn't touch you," Marcus wheezed, blood flecking his lips as the pressure fractured a rib. "He said... your money was too thick... the only way to get you... was to make you hide..."
"Who said that?" Evan grabbed Marcus by the hair, hauling his head back. "Give me a name!"
"Under the stairs..." Marcus choked out. "The lever..."
Seth was already beneath the platform, his flashlight sweeping across the greasy, spiderwebbed mechanical underbelly of the hopper. "I found it! Evan, the main worm-gear has a manual shear pin! There’s an iron pry-bar sitting on the junction box! If we drive it between the teeth, the chute jams!"
"Do it!" Evan shouted, dropping Marcus’s hair and jumping down from the platform.
The two men scrambled beneath the funnel, the air hot with the friction of the screaming electric motor. Above them, Marcus let out a long, high-pitched scream as more aggregate slid into the hopper, covering his chin.
