by Eva Hudson
“Same way Vinny did, same way I did,” Ingrid said, one eye on the track in front, the other on the mirror. They neared the end of the woods. “Now’s not the time,” Ingrid said, slipping the car back down to third, preparing to turn sharply behind one of the yard buildings. She looked at the path and registered the tire prints in the mud. It was too risky: all Donaho would need to do was follow their tracks.
“Where are you going?” Kristyn asked.
Ingrid had no idea.
45
The path joined the main gravel driveway and Ingrid headed toward the house at speed, looking for a turning or a hiding place. To her right were trees, to her left a rolling lawn. Ahead was the formal garden. There was nowhere.
The wheels spun on the gravel as Ingrid accelerated toward the house. The engine roared as she sped down the driveway, around the side of the Moorish flower beds, behind the enclosed kitchen garden and into the turning circle in front of the garage. Veering off onto the grass and behind the garage might have been an option if it wasn’t for the threat of Vinny making an appearance, so Ingrid drove straight past the garage, round the back of the house, and found herself on the wide drive that led to the main gates. She glanced at the fuel gauge. Just under half a tank. Well, that’s something. She checked her mirrors: Donaho had dropped out of view. It was possible, just possible, that if there was a fork in the driveway she could shake him: tires didn’t leave tracks on gravel. But lining both sides of the drive were regimented rows of linden trees. There was no fork, no turning.
The path curved away from the house, through the woods toward the wrought-iron gates. Ingrid pressed down on the accelerator as Kristyn panted loudly in her ear.
“Hang on,” Ingrid said. “I’m going to get us out of here.”
“How?”
Ingrid headed down a straight stretch of driveway, a couple of hundred yards long, through the trees toward the wrought-iron gates. The wheels spun on the gravel and Ingrid momentarily lost control of the steering before the gates came into view. The same gates that looked like they hadn’t been opened in a decade. The dog would not stop barking. Ingrid just kept her eyes front, her hands on the wheel.
“Fuck,” Kristyn said. “Fucking hell.”
Ingrid put her foot to the floor: if she hit the gates with enough speed, she’d break the lock, then she could turn onto the road and head for safety.
“Fuck,” the girl said again. “I think… I think the baby’s coming.”
Ingrid checked her mirrors. The Ford had turned into the straight path. Donaho was two hundred yards behind.
“Come on.” The speedometer nosed up from fifty-five to sixty; the gates were fifty yards away. She aimed at the center, hoping the padlock was so rusted it’d snap on impact.
“Oh dear God, please fucking help me.” She sounded desperate.
The dog kept on barking but Ingrid focused on the gates, imagining them flying off their hinges when the car struck them. Then, coming to her senses, she slammed on the brakes, sending the wheels skidding on the gravel.
Kristyn was thrown against the front seats, the dog slid back into the footwell. Ingrid’s forehead came within millimeters of the windshield. The Roadster’s fender crumpled into the ironwork.
“What the fuck!” Kristyn demanded.
What had she been thinking? This wasn’t the goddamn Dukes of Hazzard. The gates were heavy iron. They hadn’t been moved in years and the Mercedes was an old car, without airbags or crumple zones. I could have killed us.
Ingrid’s hand was trembling as she opened the door. She got out the car. Donaho was a hundred and fifty yards away. He saw her and slowed to a halt.
“Fuck,” Kristyn screamed. “You’ve got to help me.”
I am helping, she wanted to say. Right now there’s just me between you and a man who’s been hired to kill you.
Blood rushed in Ingrid’s ears, pumping hard and heavy like a war drum. She stood with her feet hip-width apart and kept her gaze fixed on the Ford. Kristyn screamed from inside the car. Ingrid wanted to help her, to say something at least, but she couldn’t take her eyes or her thoughts off Avery Donaho.
His engine was ticking over. His hands were on the steering wheel. He revved hard but the car was not in gear. A roar rather than a bite.
Ingrid could feel the pulse in her neck, the muscles below her ears tightening. She took a step forward, then another. She raised her hands, showing Donaho that she was not carrying a weapon. Come on, buddy, meet me halfway. My Gary Cooper to your John Wayne.
Ingrid heard a soft clunk: Donaho had put the car into gear and it started moving slowly down the path toward her. Ingrid’s windpipe tightened, her jaw locked. Something moved out of the corner of her eye. It was the dog getting out of the open driver’s door. Not now, boy. She made eye contact with Donaho, holding his gaze as he moved the Ford slowly down the drive.
Donaho took a hand off the steering wheel. He was changing gear. He was accelerating. He was coming straight for Ingrid, straight for Kristyn. Twenty miles per hour, thirty, forty. He was fifty yards away and still accelerating. Ingrid shoved her hand inside her jacket, pulled out her Glock 23 and took aim at the Ford. She pulled on the trigger and shattered the windshield. Donaho did not swerve.
Aim fast, shoot slow, she heard her father say. She looked again, braced her shoulders. The car was hurtling toward her. She fired again and blood colored the shattered windshield.
The Ford slowed but it was still going to smash into the Mercedes. Ingrid jumped out of the way, shoving the dog into the trees, turning back just as it rammed the Roadster hard against the gates. The airbag blew up inside the Ford, sending Donaho’s head back hard against the seat. Kristyn was screaming.
Ingrid holstered the gun. Her mouth hung open. She was unable to close it. For several moments she simply stood there, listening to Kristyn curse and shout. The dog lay down and whimpered.
Ingrid ran both hands through her hair, letting her palms rest on top of her head. It’s happened, she thought. It’s finally happened. I’ve killed someone.
“Fucking. Hell.” The girl had every reason to scream.
Her jaw still hanging loose, Ingrid approached the driver’s door of the Ford Focus. The airbag had started to deflate. Donaho’s head was tilted back, his eyes open, part of his skull missing.
Ingrid reached for the door handle and pulled slowly, not wanting Donaho’s body to fall out of the car. She stretched in, her face only inches from the man she had just killed, and turned the key in the ignition. The engine stopped. Ingrid withdrew from the vehicle and looked carefully at Donaho. She’d always known this day might come and had often imagined how it would feel.
A hired assassin who was trying to kill her and a pregnant girl? Ingrid thought she’d be able to live with the consequences.
“Oh my fuck.”
Ingrid snapped her concentration to Kristyn and rushed over to the Mercedes. Kristyn was lying on the rear seat, one arm clutching onto the driver’s headrest, the other digging into her own thigh. The look on her face was pure hatred. “Get this fucking thing out of me!”
Ingrid heard an engine. She stared through the gates as a car passed down the road, oblivious to the drama on the other side. Just an hour or so beforehand she had stood on the roadside, looking in. How long would it be before someone did the same and saw two crashed cars? How long before a Belgravia Set fan tweeted a picture? Then how long before the police turned up and found a dead body, killed by an unlicensed gun, on a movie star’s driveway? Ingrid’s jaw wouldn’t stop trembling.
“Oh God, oh God.”
If they come, they come. Ingrid climbed inside the car and placed a hand on Kristyn’s ankle. “Looks like this is where you’re going to have the baby.” She removed Kristyn’s underwear and helped her get as comfortable as possible. “You make as much noise as you need to.”
“Fuck. Off.”
And swear as much as you need to. Given how much his father swore, it was something the
kid was going to have to get used to.
“OK, I can see the head now. Come on, Kristyn, push.”
46
“You don’t want to hold him?”
“Keep him away from me.”
The boy was crying. A few weeks premature, but he was breathing and he was crying. That was a good sign. Ingrid held him to her chest. “Hey there fella,” she said. “One day you’re going to have quite a story to tell.” Ingrid looked at Kristyn. She was shaking. “Well done. You did great, amazing. You can be really, really proud of yourself, OK?”
The girl nodded. “I don’t even want to look at him. That’s what they told us at the agency. Don’t look, don’t hold, don’t bond.”
“Hey, that’s fine, but you know he’s kind of attached to you. I can’t take him anyplace until we cut the cord. They tell you about the placenta in Lamaze?”
“Uh-huh.”
“How long before, you know, before you have to…” Ingrid looked down at the white leather seat. It wasn’t very white any more.
“I feel sick. I’m gonna be sick.” Kristyn had turned even paler.
“It’s probably just a drop in blood pressure. It’ll pass.” Ingrid tried to sound authoritative and reassuring, but she was just guessing. It didn’t look like Kristyn had lost much blood. “You’re probably a little dehydrated. I can go back to the apartment above the garage and find you some water.”
The dog pushed his head through the gap between Ingrid’s legs and the open door.
“Look who’s come to say hello,” Ingrid said to the boy. He was going to need feeding. And washing. They were all going to need washing. Her new clothes were ruined. “Hey, stop that!” In the animal kingdom, Ingrid thought, they do eat the afterbirth. Maybe Cully was the best option they had for a clean-up operation. “Shoo.”
Ingrid pulled out the penknife from her jacket pocket and started to cut the umbilical cord.
“Stop.” Kristyn’s voice was breathless and quiet. “Wait. You gotta wait till it stops pulsing.”
“They taught you that?”
“Uh-huh.”
Ingrid held the boy, wiping his face with the hem of her top. He was mewling rather than crying, but as far as she could tell he seemed like a healthy little boy. If she had to guess, she’d say he was Tom’s son: a scrapper, a fighter, a little bit rough round the edges. Something inside her bloomed: whatever the boy needed, she was going to supply it. An evolutionary instinct.
“I think I’m going to pass out.”
Ingrid looked over at Kristyn and saw the placenta on the seat. Still holding the baby, she clambered over to Kristyn. The girl was exhausted. “We need to get you a doctor.”
“You can’t…” Kristyn was too out of breath to finish her sentence. “No ambulance. You promised.”
Ingrid didn’t remember promising any such thing. “It’s OK. I don’t want the authorities here any more than you do.”
Kristyn looked confused. “You are the authorities.”
If only that were true. At that moment, Special Agent Ingrid Skyberg knew she was nothing more than a liability to both the FBI and the State Department. A rogue operative who’d killed an unarmed man with an unlicensed gun. Four bullets to account for.
What the hell have I done?
“Hang in there. I’m going to get this fixed.” In the distance she heard a car engine. It wouldn’t be long before someone—a dog walker, a tourist or a neighbor—noticed the car crash behind Arding Manor’s grand gates. Anywhere else on the estate and she’d have more time. She looked down at the boy; blood was drying on his face. She needed to take him somewhere. Clean him up, get him checked over.
Ingrid pulled the phone out of her jacket pocket and turned it on.
The umbilical cord had stopped pulsing. While her phone booted up, she picked up the penknife and cut it, the unsharpened blade catching on the twisted, slippery fibers. The moment the boy was severed from his life support he started screaming.
“Shhh.”
Somewhere in the undergrowth the dog started barking, alarmed at the strange new wailing.
“Shhh. Shhh.” Someone was going to hear. Ingrid had to act.
The iPhone screen flickered into life. Three minutes of battery life. She scrambled out of the car, clamping the baby to her chest and tapped open her contacts. There was only one person she could call. She knew it would change everything. That it would be the end of her career. But when she looked at Donaho, the crumpled Mercedes, the exhausted girl and the newborn who needed her protection, she knew she had to make the call. She knew she had to make the sacrifice.
It was the first name on her list. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes and dialed. After two rings, he answered.
“Dobriy vyecher, Agent Skyberg. I thought we were keeping things casual.” The one thing Ingrid was sure of was that Nick Angelis would always take her calls. Especially after last night.
“Nick, can you track this call?”
“Starting the trace right now.” No theatrics: Nick was so good at his job because he understood when things were serious.
“I need a recovery team. A deep clean.”
“What are we talking about?”
“One body, two cars.” Ingrid paced up and down, trying hard not to look at Donaho’s slumped corpse. “And a weapon.”
“Is that a baby I can hear?”
“I need a doctor too.”
“Give me an hour.”
Ingrid exhaled so deeply she almost collapsed. Had she not been holding a baby less than five minutes old, she might well have sunk to her knees. “Shhh,” she said, pocketing the phone. “Shh, now.” The boy’s tiny lungs were reacting angrily to the need to breathe. She needed to get him away from the gates, out of earshot of anyone who might be passing. She licked the knuckle of her little finger and put it in his tiny mouth. He wasn’t interested: all he wanted to do was wail.
Ingrid bent down and peered inside the car. “Help is on its way.”
Kristyn nodded; she was too weak to be relieved.
“A doctor is going to be here in less than an hour to make sure you’re OK and check this guy out.”
“And him?” Kristyn said, her head jutting in the direction of the crumpled Ford through the rear window.
Ingrid sighed. “He doesn’t need a doctor.” The enormity of her actions briefly surged through her body, making her dizzy.
Park it. Box it up. Focus.
“Do you think you can move?”
“I, er… I don’t know.”
“I’m worried about people passing. Not many cars go along this road, but one of them might be driven by someone slowing down to try and see if Truman Cooper is in residence. You want to try and make it to the house with me?”
Kristyn didn’t know what to say. “I, er, oh God.”
She was weak. Ingrid didn’t want to leave her, but she had to find a way of silencing the baby, and in turn getting the dog to stop barking.
“Do you want to try? You can lean on me.”
“I don’t think I can. Not yet.”
The baby’s screaming got louder, tearing at Ingrid’s heart. She had to help him. “I think he needs feeding.”
Kristyn’s face made it clear breastfeeding the boy was not an option. “I… I…”
The girl’s head rolled to one side, her eyes tipped backwards. She passed out.
“Kristyn? Kristyn!” Ingrid scrambled across the back seat, clutching the baby to her chest. “Kristyn, come on now. Wake up.”
Ingrid tapped the girl’s cheeks with her bloodied hand. Her eyes flickered.
“That’s it. Come on now.”
Kristyn blinked. Her pupils narrowed. She could focus. Ingrid exhaled.
“Listen, you need fluids. I’m going to run to the garage, get you some water.” It was three hundred yards to the house, maybe four hundred to the garage. She could be back in a couple of minutes. “Did you have breakfast this morning?”
The girl shook her head.
“I’m going to get you some food. Lie down. I’ll be as quick as I can.” Ingrid closed the Mercedes’ door and looked around for the dog. She did a full three-sixty: he wasn’t anywhere. He’d run off into the woods and had disappeared.
Clamping the baby to her chest with both arms she jogged toward the house, away from Kristyn, away from Donaho. The rhythm of her footsteps was matched by the cadence of a phrase that tumbled around in her head: the Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. One life exchanged for another.
Leaving Kristyn was a risk, but getting her to testify was now secondary. The girl had just given birth on the back seat of a crashed car and her only company was a corpse. She was tough, tougher than most, and although $25,000 a year would help her live with everything she had been through, it didn’t stop Kristyn Bowers being one of the most vulnerable girls Ingrid had ever worked with. She was going to take care of her.
Ingrid reached the main house then ran round the side of the building to the back door, through the kitchen garden and up the path to the garage. The baby was still crying, a primal, hideous sound that scared her. Ingrid bounded up the stairwell to the apartment above the garage. When she neared the top she saw several strands of frayed duct tape dangling from the railing. Vinny was free.
She stopped and looked up. He wasn’t looming over her with a wrench, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t there. She felt inside her jacket for the Glock and proceeded slowly up the remaining steps.
She reached the top, her heart pounding. She scanned the room. She ran into the bedroom area. Not there either. She checked the sink: his nine-inch knife was gone.
Ingrid holstered the gun and knelt down to open the fridge under the kitchen worktop. She was hoping for a bottle of water but found a chocolate bar, TV dinners and a pack of yogurts.
“Shhh, shhh.” The baby’s cries were sounding increasingly painful. She needed to feed him, she needed to wash and dress him.
She opened the cupboard doors. Just ketchup, broken coffee mugs and a packet of Doritos. She took the chocolate and the chips, and looked for something for Kristyn to drink. But there were no cans of soda, no bottles of juice, nothing she could fill with water from the faucet.
