Page 65 of Statler

“Instead, we found…”

Pipes used the power cutter he held, as a probe, tapping the blade down into the wide slice he’d already made.

There was a thunk.

A hollow thunk.

“What the…?” Statler sat back on his heels. “That sounds like it could be…steel decking?”

“Only one way to find out,” Dizzy nodded. “Keep cutting. Pipes?”

They all popped their ear-plugs in and Pipes started up his tool again,

He widened the cut before going off from his original trajectory at a ninety-degree angle, making another turn, then one more, until the two-foot by two-foot square of concrete he’d been working on, had been fully liberated.

Without being asked, Tonka—with his uncommon strength—knelt down, threaded his fingers around the slab, and lifted it free, setting it aside.

They all gazed into the shallow hole.

Statler whistled. “Shit. It is steel decking.”

He said out loud exactly what everyone had to be thinking.

“Why would material that’s used between floors be positioned under a slab that’s supposedly on the ground?”

Blue was the first to pose a theory. “Maybe the owner wanted a crawl space?” She didn’t look convinced.

Sherbert was shaking his head. “Or a basement?” he threw out, also with a healthy dose of speculation.

“How about a secret basement that’s hidden under a legit factory,” Hazard added cannily, “where guns can be manufactured without anyone being the wiser.”

Well, hello.

Statler’s heart beat a little faster.

It was the only thing that made any sense.

Stat stared down at the metal that they’d soon remove to reveal the answer, while Blue spoke again.

“Brilliant. Flazer wants to increase his production, and that small room you told us about at the current facility, boss? It’s probably no longer big enough to suit his needs,” Blue pondered. “Which means he could be creating a new facility, here. One that’s more secure, and probably a hell of a lot bigger.”

Statler nodded. It was time to find out.

“Cut the decking,” he told Pipes.

“Gladly.”

Now the guy was smiling, and Statler knew why. They were about to uncover some pretty solid proof that Flazer was, indeed, involved in the illegal arms-manufacturing that the whistle-blower, Holden, had revealed to the FBI.

Pipes went to work, and with the diamond blade on his tool, he was able to easily cut a slightly smaller hole through the material they hadn’t been expecting to find.

On the final cut, the metal square fell with a crash.

Fell a long way down.

That’s no crawl space.

“Blue. Safety harness,” Statler ordered without turning his eyes away. “The hole is big enough for you to fit through. We’ll lower you down, and you can tell us what you see.”