Page 183 of Slack Tide Kill

The gap between them shrank. Mercer turned. He wasn't laughing anymore.

"She said I wasn't her son," he called back, half a sob, and the pain cut Sally to her core. "That I was a mistake. I didn't even exist."

"She hated Reg, Jack! Not you."

"She was supposed to be my mother!" Mercer's face became savage. "How could a mother do that? To her own son? How could a father?"

"So you took … DCI Mayhew? To show her what family … really means?"

Mercer laughed again. "I know what you're doing, Sally. It's very clever. But you can't stop this now."

"I can't stop the marsh flooding! Scots Float is done. Dymchurch too. But I can stop you blowing the reactor."

Mercer's head tilted. Like he was puzzled. Then he nodded. "Blowing it? Not so clever after all, then. Goodbye, Sally. I've enjoyed our time together."

He ran. Faster now. While Sally had nothing left. Her head pounded black and red, her knees buckling with every slow step forward. There had to be something. Another handhold, something to claw him back with.

'Blowing it?' he'd said. Like he was surprised.

What did that mean?

She thought back. Everything she'd said was true. The bombs he'd already triggered. The bomb yet to come. It was all true. But his van was left behind. There couldn't be a bomb at the reactor, surely, not with their security.

So maybe it wasn't a bomb…

No. Her stream of thought crashed. She was back in the sweaty caravan with Gerald Spate, dismissing Reactor Logistics as a waste of time, just pocket money for electrics and plumbing.

Roarke Rook going back again and again, when he had faster ways of making money. It couldn't just be for the CCTV. It was something else.

The truth crashed home.

It answered everything. Something that might take years, changes made by small degrees so nobody noticed. Something Roarke Rook could build for his 'uncle', with no bomb materials needed to pass through security, nothing but the standard tools of a maintenance man.

The air fled her lungs. Her next step faltered and she sank to both knees, waves smashing into her belly and chest as the truth dawned.

Mercer had planned it meticulously. He'd made a bid for order over chaos in his delivery mechanism, using the land as it laid around them. Something that wasn't haphazard like a bomb; a method that was certain, like a drug needled directly into the bloodstream, impossible to miss.

She forced herself back to her feet and put everything she had into driving air out of her lungs.

75 ORDER

"The Boils!" Sally boomed.

Mercer's shadow stopped cold. It gave her the strength to push on.

"The Boils," she repeated. "The old outflow … for coolant water. That's why you needed Reactor Logistics. Why you sent Roarke Rook again and again. Not for a bomb. To plumb the process water to the … Boils!"

Mercer turned slowly. His face was a ghost-like blot in the maelstrom of waves and wind, gray as the grave.

"There's got to be ... a valve, right?" she kept on. "That's where you're going! You trigger that, it'll kill the marsh … as surely as you killed Tom Richter." Her throat was raw from shouting now, her head spun from the effort, but she kept coming.

Mercer raised both hands and began a slow clap. "Very good," came his gravelly voice. "But too late. Say farewell to the marsh, Officer Rogers."

He ran on.

Sally barely had the strength to stand. She had nothing left. There was no way to stop him now. Except…

She laughed. Loud, high and wild.