Page 122 of Rest In Pink

I turned to the factory. “Where do I go?”

He pointed to the right. “That door. Mickey says there will be red markers on the floor. As you go by, pick them up and bring them with you. Go in the direction they take you. He’ll count them to make sure you get them all so I can’t follow. If you don’t, he’ll—“

“Blow up something else,” I finished for him. I stepped toward him for one last kiss.

“No,” he said. “Mickey says he’s watching and we can’t have contact.”

“What a dick,” I said and turned and walked into the factory.

Chapter Fifty-Eight

I watched Liz disappear into the black hole that was a doorway. I’d turned the ringer off on my phone but it was buzzing. I briefly glanced at it and saw it was George. Probably wondering where the hell I was and to tell me about the explosions.

Then a text message popped up. I checked it. Rain:SAFE

I nodded, knowing that covered her and Molly, and put it back in the vest and thought about what Rain and I had seen inside the factory. Mickey could be luring Liz into dozens of places inside. He was smarter than I’d feared, not using the tower, which would be a trap. This was simple but effective.

I’d understood blowing up the pavilion. It was a diversion. But Day’s house where Molly and Rain were? And her mom’s, where Day had been staying? And then I realized he was going to make a clean sweep of it. The Blues. Which meant he wasn’t going to take the money and let Liz go. And Peri was in danger.

I made a quick call.

Then I went in.

Chapter Fifty-Nine

The factory was horrible, a nightmare place. They’d left the bigger pieces of machinery in the large open space beyond the door, probably the stuff that was too big to ship to Mexico on the cheap, and it had all burned, so steel beams rose up above me blackened with soot, streaked with rain, the lesser metals twisted and melted like slag, anything that wasn’t the stronger metal burned. The machines looked like monsters.

I took a few steps forward and almost panicked because I didn’t see a red marker. There were half a dozen doorways leading farther into the building. Which one? I took a few deep breaths to calm myself. I remembered how slowly Vince had scanned the building looking through the scope on his gun. So, I looked from left to right. Almost all the way to the right, just as my panic started to increase again, I saw a square of red in front of the second from the right doorway.

I walked forward. I knew Vince would follow. It wasn’t even a question. But how would he know which door? I got to the red and realized it was a post-it. A fucking post-it. Mickey had stopped by an office supply store on his way to start Armageddon.

I picked it up and stuffed it in my pocket and looked for the next one.

Mickey was somewhere ahead of me, through this open doorway. Once I went through there, Vince wouldn’t be able to find me.

This is why Gretel had bread crumbs,I thought. And here I was, bread-crumb-less.

The only thing I had that I could possibly drop were the five shiny silver buttons on my jeans. The jeans had been twenty-seven bucks at Walmart, and Vince loved them. He’d count the buttons as he popped them. I was just praying there would only be four notes because if we got to five, my pants would be around my ankles.

Mickey might notice that.

I twisted the bottom button until it came loose and dropped it, stepping right into the doorway as I did it, and walked forward into a corridor, dimly lit by the sun through the rafters above. There were doors on either side of the hallway, and I looked carefully, taking my time, twisting the second button from the bottom to get it off. No post-it until I was almost at the end, when the button finally came free. It was the last door on the left. I picked up the note, dropping the button at the same time.

I was in a room, not a corridor. It was fifty feet wide and across, full of more rusting monster machines and soot. Lots of soot. I knew Mickey had to be watching, so I moved along the brick wall, my eyes down, searching for another damn post-it. I made it almost the whole way across the room when I saw it, which was good. I picked it up and I was prepared to twist off a button when I heard:

“Lizzie Blue.”

I turned and saw him standing behind me. He stepped toward me and I took several steps backward into the next room. It was twenty feet square and a quick look showed me Mickey was now standing in the only doorway. I was trapped.

He was grinning at me, all that white hair wild around his shoulders, his eyes glittering, and he was pointing a gun at me.

I stopped twisting my button and held the case up in front of me, flat against me, over my heart as I backed up a few steps. “It’s Liz Danger,” I said. “Should I toss this to you?” Maybe I could hit him with it.

“Lizzie Blue,” he said, and I knew he was going to kill me.

“I’ve got the money,” I told him.

“Let me see the post-its.”