CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
When the sound of stampeding from overhead reached their heads, Owen Gallagher started tensing up. When he did, Miles nearly sprinted for him, but the man’s reflexes were very fast. He took a large step forward and when he did, Miles was sure he was going to drop that wire, and he was going to die.
Instead, it seemed Owen had more to say. Bringing up Rachel seemed to—for the time being—have saved Miles’ life.
“No! You…you stop right there. You know!” Owen yelled. “You know that those frauds weren't qualified to help her. She was sick and desperate, and she paid people who weren't qualified to do anything except make her feel temporarily less alone. And rob her blind."
"What about Song?" Miles said. "He was a man who spent five years in recovery before he ever tried to help anyone else. He never asked for money, now, did he?" He wasn’t really interested in an answer, but he was interested in stalling Owen until he could get some backup down here.
"No, but he gave her platitudes. She said so herself." Gallagher's voice remained level, but something in the set of his jaw had tightened. "He told her it was a spiritual problem. He told her to pray. She wasn't looking for prayer. She was looking for someone to actually see how bad it was."
"Maybe," Miles said. "Or maybe it was bad enough that no one could have reached her."
Gallagher didn't answer that. His grip on the wire had not changed, and his posture had not changed, and the water on the floor between them continued to sit perfectly still and perfectly flat.
Miles studied him. The gloves and the boots were planted carefully, the weight distributed in a way that suggested the surface beneath them had been tested and accounted for.
Gallagher was not afraid of the current in the abstract—Miles didn’t think so, anyway.
But he did seem to be afraid of the water or at least concerned about it.
He was afraid of what happened if something went wrong.
That was why the boots were the good ones.
That was why the gloves ran to the elbow.
He had built himself a margin of safety and he was standing inside it and had no intention of leaving it.
It was also why he didn't stay at his own crime scenes.
He had planned each one to end with the victim making contact, and then he had gone back to confirm it from a position of safety.
He had never stood in a flooded room holding a live wire, not until tonight.
He had built this situation as a last resort, and he was in it, and Miles could see the edges of his discomfort around the evenness of his expression.
He did not think Owen Gallagher would drop that wire.
"My partner is upstairs," Miles said. "She's clearing the theater right now.
Austin PD has the building. Even if you activate the transformer, the people you came here for are already gone.
" He let that settle for a moment. "You can drop the wire in this water and it accomplishes nothing. You might kill me and yourself, and that’s it. Or you can forget about this whole plan and walk away with three murders on your record instead of three murders and two more attempted. And if you cooperate and tell us about Kane, maybe we—”
“You…how do you know about him?”
“Because it’s my job to capture him,” Miles said. “I’ve seen all the others. I’ve seen how he corrupts them, Owen. And you can be the first. You can bring it to an end.”
Gallagher looked at the ceiling for a moment as if he could hear through it. "No," Owen said. "No…he's working for better things.. He wants to cleanse the world. He wants…"
Miles took a step forward. He placed his right foot just at the edge of the water line, his shoe touching the first dark inch of it.
Gallagher looked back at him fast. "Don't."
"You're not going to drop it," Miles said.
"I will."
"No," Miles said. "You won't. You've spent too long planning every detail of every one of these and you have never once been in the room when it happened.
You've never touched the current yourself.
That's not ideology. That's fear." He took a half-step more, his shoe now fully in the water.
He felt the cold of it through the leather.
"You're afraid of it, Owen. The same thing that killed Rachel.
You've been terrified of it the whole time and now Gabriel Kane has manipulated you into using it as a weapon. "
Something moved across Gallagher's face. It was not rage, and it was not grief. It was the expression of a man who had just heard something true that he had not intended to hear. Seeing this, Miles wondered if he had pushed a bit too hard.
Miles opened his mouth to say something else, but that’s when Gallagher’s arm dropped.
Miles was already moving. Not toward Gallagher, not laterally, but up.
He had seen the pipe above him when they'd first come through the door, an exposed utility run bolted to the ceiling joists three feet above his head.
It was old iron pipe that didn't flex and didn't give.
He got both hands around it as the wire left Gallagher's grip.
The split second that followed had a specific and terrible clarity to it: the pipe cold against his palms, his shoes off the wet concrete, his body hanging above the floor, and the wire turning in the air below him.
Gallagher stumbled in surprise, clearly not expecting such a move and likely also out of the very real terror Miles had just accused him of. He went forward and down, and when he hit the floor, he hit it face-first. Both hands went out and the water took him on both palms and both forearms.
Miles swung his body forward on the pipe, and when he was directly above Gallagher, he dropped his right foot and caught him across the side of the face with the flat of his sole.
It was hard enough to snap Gallagher's head sideways, hard enough to stop any attempt to push back up from the floor.
Gallagher went flat and stayed there, his cheek in the water, his arms still extended.
And more importantly…the exposed wire still clutched in his hand, now only a few inches away from the water.
Miles took a chance, knowing he had only a single second.
He swung slightly and released the pipe.
His feet cleared Gallagher’s body by no more than six inches.
He then instantly reached for the panel with both hands, still burning from the pipe.
He had no time to read what every switch was for, so he grabbed the two largest and pulled them down.
Then he started working at the others, using his entire palm to shut down the breaker switches.
As he did, he heard Gallagher groan. Miles turned his head just in time to see the wire touch the water.
The current hit him through his foot for less than a second, a sharp and total violence that ran from his toes to his shoulder.
But then it was gone. Apparently, whatever current had remained in the wire had been killed by one of the switches he'd switched off.
The right side of his body tingled a bit and there was a strange and distant pain in his leg, but that was all.
He stood in the dark basement with Gallagher still face down beneath him.
Gallagher had not moved. He was breathing, audibly and with effort, his face turned slightly to the side now. His right cheekbone had taken the kick squarely and the skin there was already swelling. His gloved hands were still flat on the concrete in front of him.
Miles crouched, put one knee on Gallagher's upper back to hold him, and got his wrists together. He worked his cuffs loose with both hands, the right of which was tingling more than he had realized until it was time to use it. He cuffed Gallagher and the man did not fight.
"Owen Gallagher," he said. His voice came out rougher than he'd intended. "You're under arrest for three murders…and that’s just the start."
Gallagher still said nothing. His body had gone slack under Miles's knee in a sad sort of acceptance—in the posture of a man who realized there was no more fight to live for.
Miles made a fist and opened it, trying to work out the last of that faint tingling sensation. It did fade, but it was replaced by a strange, phantom pain.
He thought about how much current had moved through him before the breaker went.
He thought about the fraction of time between when he'd felt it and when the lights had cut.
He had been less than a second from the wire hitting the water with him still connected to the panel.
Less than a second, possibly, from the floor going live with him standing in it.
But he was still here. Gallagher was still here, and hopefully, no one upstairs was dead. Thinking of that, he shook his head as if to clear it and then reached for his phone to call Vic.