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CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

At the sarabbed for the gun Valdez reacted to h for me to take him down I wondered if anyone heard the shot and, if they had, if it would raise any alarm Loud noises were the norm at an amusement park, and this one had come from an obvious construction site

We hit the pavement

I lifted, then slaun several times into the concrete, which caused it to clatter away Valdez shoved his way offone of the regling to craard Coleen, who still had notthe piece of iron at , eventually running out of real estate and hitting one of the walls Valdez lifted the iron bar and tried a vertical blohich I ed to avoid

I kicked him in the chest

Which sent hi back, but he found his balance and decided to just whirl the rebar at ht h, thankfully not with one of the sharp ends, which could have done soe Instead it was a horizontal smack

Which hurt like hell

I dropped to the ground

Valdez fled

I made myself stand

Adrenaline surged through o went numb I knew that was an illusion, but I embraced it I rushed over to Foster and freed his hands, bound by duct tape

“Deal with her,” I said

My eyes probed the shadows and I spotted the gun near another rubble pile, which I grabbed before racing after Valdez

I heard the wooden door through which we’d entered open, then bang shut I approached and passed through, back into the park, catching sight of Valdez weaving through the crowd The storm had blown itself out, but the warm air felt as if it were filled with invisible stea, the rain nothing more than a minor nuisance

Valdez was headed toward a carousel where the choice of routes varied He could go left or right No way could I take a shot He passed the carousel and banked left toward Cinderella Castle, lit to the night in all its glory A breezeway bisected the towering structure I realized that on the other side was the central hub and Walt Disney’s statue where all this had started Nate’s body would still be there, as would be police, and security Valdez seeht and stayed on this side of the castle, far away from any commotion on the other

We keptmore attractions

It’s a Small World The Haunted Mansion The Hall of Presidents We came back into Frontierland and he suddenly disappeared into one of the breezeways I’d seen earlier that connected over to Adventureland

I kept running, about thirty yards behind him

I passed through the breezeway and caught sight of Valdez as he zeroed in on the Jungle Cruise, entering a wooden pavilion that looked like some kind of African outpost, where a line had forhts and water on the other side of the olden-looking structure and heard the rev of engines as boats arrived and departed

I kept upas he vaulted a wooden railing He’d avoided the queues to the left and negotiated a part of the interior that had been roped off, not being utilized at the moment for crowd control I ducked under one of the black nylon straps and dodged the décor of tools and gear, heading to where I had last seen Valdez At the railing I saw hi “upriver,” deeper into the attraction The banner atop the boat’s canopy identified it as the Nile Nellie Another boat was being loaded with visitors to my left More people waited to be off-loaded in boats behind it I doubted any of these craft were built for speed, so overtaking Valdez did not seem an option I rushed over to one of the safari-suited attendants

“That boat that just left,” I said to hiet to it?” He tossed me a puzzled look so I decided to et to that boat Now”

On the run over I’d tucked the gun beneathit to rab the young man’s attention He pointed across the narroay

“The river winds in a big circle back to here Through those woods and you’ll get to the boats anywhere theythe track”

“Is there a way out of the park through this ride?”

He nodded “Beyond the fake jungle is a service road, near the railroad tracks, that leads out But you’d have to get off the boat”

Valdez surely wouldn’t know that, but hethe way

I couldn’t allow him to escape

A narroharf cordoned off the boats as they arrived at the pavilion A wooden ay, about two planks wide, stretched across the water to the “jungle” on the far side I sidestepped the visitors, hopped onto one of the boats that had just emptied, balanced myself on the benches, then leaped off on the other side, finding the ay and rushing toward the foliage I pushedup a short incline a tall trees, and realized this was a ber privacy during the experience I could hear boats churning along beyond the greenery, their engines alternating between bursts of speed and slow cruising

I crested the bere was thicker along the edges, which made sense as that would be the most noticeable part to the people on the boats Here, on the other side of the sight line, concealed trails led in all directions, service routes like the corridors back in the Pirate ride I could hear water falling and the guides as they entertained people in their boats over PA systems

I spotted the Nile Nellie

A man was tossed over the side near the bow He hit the water with a splash and I saw that Valdez was now driving the boat, revving its engine and picking up speed But, as I’d assumed, there were li to steer the craft closer to shore, but it stayed out in the center of the “river,” surely tracked like those in the Pirate ride

I heard a commotion behind me

Men yelling and others saying, “He went up that way”

Apparently security had arrived Perhaps even the police, too, given what had happened earlier

In just a few moments they would find me