“The chopper’s on the way.” The man’s voice was gruff. “Get her up, and we’ll meet it outside. We need to be out of here in five.”
Another man entered, waving his flashlight around the tunnel as if taking it in for the first time. “What are you doing here?” He growled the question. “Why are you in the mine? It stinks and it’s dark. Gives me the creeps.”
“That’s the point. Nobody’s going to look for them here. The town is crawling with cops. The whole county and probably the state by now. We get out of here at night. They’ll think the helicopter is part of the search.”
“We need to keep a low profile, and this operation has already put us on the radar”—he glared at the other two men—“thanks to you guys.”
The first man reached down and helped Erin lift Mom to her feet.
“Keep pressure on the wound, Mom.”
Without the flashlight beaming in her face, she got a better look at the new man who’d complained about the mine. Shock and anger rocked through her.
He grinned at her as if appreciating that she recognized he was the man who’d tried to kill them with rolling logs. According to Detective Munson, he’d been involved with the accident in Seattle as well. Had he also been the one to shoot Newt?
“Lucky for you, my instructions have changed. The boss wants you back in Boston to make a big splash. A big point.” He grabbed Erin’s arm and tore her away from her mother. To the other man, he said, “Carry her. We need to get out of here, and if they aren’t alive by the time we get back to Boston, then we might join them.”
Mom spit at him. “Ricky Flannagan, you can just kill me now.”
Ricky ... the explosives expert who took out the bridge the night Missy was taken, and likely the dam here in Big Rapids.
“Mom, please . . .” Erin was holding out hope they would be saved.
Mom’s accent seemed to shift as she spoke to Ricky. “You were just a kid back then.”
Back when? When Grandpa Byrne killed someone’s son?
“He was family.”
“Not by blood,” Mom said.
Erin understood that mob loyalty ran deep and was thicker than blood.
“It’s been years,” Mom continued. “Years. Why hold a grudge for so long?”
Erin was surprised to hear her mother practically begging for their lives. She probably understood far better than Erin the terror that awaited them.
Still, Erin had seen inside criminal minds.
Evil wouldn’t let her forget.
“If it was up to me, you’d already be dead,” Finn said. “But my father wants to make an example of you two, but not before we get the hidden money.”
“Money?” Erin looked at her mother. “What money?”