Chapter 12 - Below Zero
I didn't waste time cutting Dave loose. I charged the side pedestrian door of Unit 44, raising the heavy steel wrench and smashing it against the deadbolt handle.
The latch sheared after three blows. I shoved the heavy insulated door inward and slipped into the darkness.
The blast of air that met me was twenty below zero.
My wet jacket began to stiffen instantly, frost forming along the creases of my denim sleeves.
The facility was a massive, decommissioned meat-packing freezer, fifty feet high, filled with towering rows of empty industrial steel racking. Heavy frosted plastic strip curtains hung between the storage zones, swaying gently in the violent airflow from the overhead blast evaporators.
"Emily!" my voice echoed off the insulated aluminum walls, sounding hollow and flat.
"Mark."
The voice came from the center aisle, calm and entirely without fear.
Mrs. Harris stepped through the frozen vinyl curtains. She had traded her yellow gardening gloves for heavy insulated fleece mittens, wearing a dark wool coat. In her right hand was a small, black .380 automatic pistol.
"You really should have stayed on the other side of that fence, dear," she said, her voice sounding as sweet and polite as if she were offering me a cup of tea.
"Where is she?" I growled, raising the wrench. "Where is my daughter?"
"She's resting," Mrs. Harris said smoothly. "She was quite tired after such a noisy day. Kids don't handle stress the way we used to."
"You touched her, and I'll kill you with my bare hands."
"I haven't hurt her," she replied, tilting her head toward the locked blast freezer at the rear of the room. "Not yet. But Sarah is another story. Sarah was always too righteous for her own good. She couldn't just let her brother make a quiet living."
Behind her, the frost-covered glass window of the inner freezer revealed two silhouettes strapped to steel folding chairs.
One was Sarah, her head slumped forward.
The other was Emily.
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And standing directly behind them, holding a heavy wrench over an ammonia control valve, was Luke.
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