Page 74 of The Accomplice
No point in chancing a peek through the window. She was only likely to alert whoever was inside and maybe get blinded by their flashlight in the process.
There was only one way.
Go in hard and fast.
She reversed her grip on the flashlight, holding it now like a dagger in her left. The switch was on the base, and she could use her thumb to flick the power to the battery. She put her right hand over her left, her wrists on top of each other, keeping torch and aim aligned.
Bloch stood in front of the door. Gathered her breath. Rolled her shoulders. Cracked her neck. Put her foot through the door.
It gave easy. Bloch stepped over it, training her weapon around the dark room, following the flashlight beam with her sight.
Nothing in the corners.
No one straight ahead.
No one in the room at all.
She now saw the light was a pale green, and it was close to the floor. The flashlight illuminated what looked like a large white casket at one end of the room. Focusing on the light, she saw it was a power indicator. A white cable led from the casket to a plug.
It wasn’t a casket.
It was a chest freezer.
Satisfied there was no one in the building, Bloch put away her weapon and approached the freezer.
Why would anyone have a freezer in an abandoned building ? It didn’t look like it was new, but it wasn’t that old either. A layer of dust sat on top of it and as she got closer, she could hear the fans and motors purring.
Her hand reached out, almost by itself, and caught hold of the lever that sat in the center of the lid. Bloch didn’t want to look inside. But she knew she had to.
She had visions of Kate inside the freezer. Still in her nightdress, dead inside this cold tomb. Her eyes misty with frost. Her lips broken and frozen black. Ice has a way of capturing the dead in a moment of life. She had seen dead bodies before, in all kinds of places.
She was not religious, but she found herself mouthing a silent prayer as the lever tilted up. Bloch pulled and heard that sucking sound, that smacking vacuum noise made when the rubber seal is broken on a cool box.
There was no light inside the freezer.
But there was something inside. A solid block of ice. It wasn’t just normal ice formation – it looked as though thirty gallons of water had been tipped in to make sure whatever was inside was preserved.
The beam from her flashlight quivered as Bloch shone it inside.
She let out a breath. She recognized it instantly, even through the layers ice.
For a second, she thought she would lose it. She fought down her emotions, turned and ran to the door, the burner cell in her hand, calling Lake.
‘You okay in there ?’ he asked. ‘I’ve been going crazy out here.’
‘Take cover and stand back from the door. Way back. I’m going to open it.’
‘Understood,’ he said.
Bloch strode confidently to the painted steel door, drew her Magnum, and standing six feet away she took aim – relaxed her arms, shook out the tension, then aimed again and pulled the trigger. The sonic rip from the gun was almost deafening in the old warehouse and she could suddenly taste the dust sucked into the air from the shot. Where the steel door had been solid, now the lock face was gone. She kicked the door and it swung up, the remnants of the mechanism falling onto the floor.
‘Whatever it was you blew off the door went right through the fence over there,’ said Lake. ‘That gun big enough for ya ?’
She said, ‘Bring the crowbar.’
‘What’s going on ?’
‘We need to chip something out of a freezer.’
