Seth finally lifted his head and looked at Taylor. I’ve never known anyone look so utterly trapped. “Why do you follow him?” I blurted.
Seth kept his eyes on Taylor but he answered my question. “Because he’s my dad,” he said hopelessly.
I thought back to what Earl had told us about Colt’s life. His wife had died while he was in jail. So not only had Seth grown up without a dad from...what, the age of seven? He’d also had to go through losing his mom, all on his own. For twenty years, all he’d heard from his dad’s far-right buddies was how his dad was this legendary figure, practically a folk hero. When his dad finally got out of jail and asked for his loyalty, of course Seth had grabbed at that last chance to be a family. I thought about how much I loved my dad. Wouldn’t I have done the same?
“Just tell us what’s going on,” I said more gently. “What were you stealing?”
I wasn’t expecting him to give me a straight answer. But Taylor’s tear-filled eyes did what no amount of threats from Corrigan could have. Seth finally weakened. “Gold,” he said.
“What?” It was ridiculous. Gold? In our tiny bank?
Seth let out a long sigh. “Back in the Eighties, the government wanted to make sure they still had cash reserves after a Soviet nuclear attack. So they hid stashes of gold bullion in remote locations around the country. Fifty million per location. No one is meant to know where they are. Not even the bank managers. They tell the bank it’s part of some Federal program to reinforce their vault, get them to close for a weekend, dig up the vault floor and bury the gold underneath.”
“How did your dad know the gold was there?” asked Corrigan.
“One of the construction workers who hid the gold was sent to jail,” said Seth. “Became friends with my dad. And eventually, he talked.”
Suddenly, it all made sense. That’s why they’d broken into the mining company: drills to get into the vault, jackhammers to dig up the floor. But: “What are the explosives for?”
Seth looked at me, his face blank. “What explosives?”
I exchanged looks with Corrigan. Whatever they were for, Colt hadn’t shared that part with his son.
“And him?” asked Corrigan, pointing at the guy in the tan jacket. “Why is he so important?”
“He’s a helicopter pilot,” said Seth. “He was meant to fly us out of here.”
It was a near-perfect crime. With the phone lines down and the cell tower destroyed, Colt and his men would be long gone before the state police even heard about the robbery. And with fifty million dollars, Colt could build a far-right militia that went far beyond Colorado. The thought of that man in control of an army made me want to throw up.
Corrigan drew me close. “It’ll be okay,” he said. He lowered his voice so that Seth couldn’t hear him. “Colt and his men didn’t even wear masks. We know who they are! Even if they do escape, the FBI will hunt them down. Colt is going back to jail.”
I nodded again but...something didn’t feel right. Colt was smart. Why had he and his men been so careless, these last few days, when they could have easily hidden their faces?
Corrigan pulled me into a hug. “We got lucky,” he said firmly. “Everyone’s going to be okay. For four gunshot wounds, that’s pretty amazing.” He looked at Taylor, worried. “How are you holding up?”
Taylor took a deep breath. The poor girl was too emotionally worn out to speak, but she bravely gave him a thumbs-up.
Corrigan took my hands in his and pulled me close. “I need to talk to you,” he told me. I’d never heard his voice so solemn. But there was a thread of tension there, too: God, yes, he really needed to talk to me. I nodded and looked around for somewhere private. “Let’s go—”
“Can someone get me some more gauze?” asked Adele, turning from a patient. “Got my hands full.”
“I’ll get it,” I said. I made an apologetic face at Corrigan. He nodded, but kept hold of my hands and only reluctantly let them go when our arms were at full extension.
Normally it would be a nurse’s job to run back and forth with supplies, but we were way beyond titles and stations now: everyone was helping out. I was a long, long way from my cozy burrow of the OR...but for the first time, I felt as if I was part of a team.
I pushed open the door to the supply room and stopped dead in my tracks. There were two bullet holes in the wall. Krista was lying on the floor, two bullet wounds in her chest and a lake of blood on the floor around her.
I fell to my knees beside her. “HELP! SOMEBODY HELP ME!”