LEE CHILD. KILLING FLOOR

I found her right shoe three bays from the end. Then I found her blood. At the entry to the next bay, it was pooled on the floor, sticky, spreading. She was slumped at the back of the bay, on her back in the gloom, jammed between two towers of crates. Just sprawled there on the rubber floor. Blood was pouring out of her. Her gut was torn open. Somebody had jammed a knife in her and ripped it savagely upward under her ribs.

But she was alive. One pale hand was fluttering. Her lips were flecked with bright bubbles of blood. Her head was still, but her eyes were roving. I ran to her. Cradled her head. She gazed at me. Forced her mouth to work.

`Got to get in before Sunday,’ she whispered.

Then she died in my arms.

TWENTY-ONE

I studied chemistry in maybe seven different high schools. Didn’t learn much of it. Just came away with general impressions. One thing I remember is how you can throw some little extra thing into a glass tube and make everything blow up with a bang. Just some little powder, produces a result way bigger than it should.

That was how I felt about Molly. I’d never met her before. Never even heard of her. But I felt angry, way out of all proportion. I felt worse about her than I felt about Joe. What happened to Joe was in the line of his duty. Joe knew that. He would have accepted that. Joe and I knew about risk and duty right from the moment we first knew about anything at all. But Molly was different.

The other thing I remember from the chemistry lab is stuff about pressure. Pressure turns coal into diamonds. Pressure does things. It was doing things to me. I was angry and I was short of time. In my mind I was seeing Molly coming out of that jetway. Striding out, determined to find Joe’s

brother and help him. Smiling a wide smile of triumph. Holding up a briefcase of files she shouldn’t have copied. Risking a lot. For me. For Joe. That image in my mind was building up like massive pressure on some old geological seam. I had to decide how to use that pressure. I had to decide whether it was going to crush me or turn me into a diamond.

We were leaning on the front fender of Roscoe’s car in the airport short-term lot. Stunned and silent. Wednesday afternoon, nearly three o’clock. I had hold of Finlay’s arm. He had wanted to stay inside and get involved. He had said it was his duty. I had screamed at him that we didn’t have time. I had dragged him out of the terminal by force. I had marched him straight to the car, because I knew what we did in the next few moments was going to make the difference between winning and losing.

`We’ve got to go get Gray’s file,’ I said. `It’s the next best thing.’

Finlay shrugged. Gave up the struggle.

`It’s all we got,’ he said.

Roscoe nodded.

`Let’s go,’ she said.

She and I drove down together in her car. Finlay was in front of us all the way. She and I didn’t speak a single word. But Finlay was talking to himself through the whole trip. He was shouting and cursing. I could see his head jerking back and forth in his car. Cursing and shouting and yelling at his windshield.

Teale was waiting just inside the station house doors. Back against the reception counter. Stick clutched in his spotty old hand. He saw the three

of us coming in and limped away into the big open squad room. Sat down at a desk. The desk nearest to the file room door.

We walked past him into the rosewood office. Sat down to wait it out. I pulled Joe’s torn printout from my pocket and passed it across the desk. Finlay scanned it through.

`Not much, is it?’ he said. `What does the heading mean? E Unum Pluribus? That’s backwards, right?’

I nodded.

`Out of one comes many,’ I said. `I don’t get the significance.’