by Chris Ewan
The rear door slammed shut on Renner as the SUV hit the first big rut and rose high at the front like it was riding a wave.
It was a Japanese model with chunky tyres and a high ground clearance. The torque felt mighty. The engine was a beast.
Leaning way down to his right, peeping up over the dash, Wade flicked the headlamps to full beam and the meadow sprang into greyscale relief. The chalet was to his left. A door flew open at the front and he saw Adams step out with an axe in his hands. Dead ahead was a small timber building at the edge of the trees. Something glinted from a window. The glinting thing sparked.
A round thumped into the engine block. Then another punctured the windscreen.
‘What are you waiting for?’ Renner shouted. ‘Get us out of here.’
But Wade had never run from anything in his life. He was all about confrontation. His natural inclination was to go at a problem head on.
Which had to be better than rolling around on the back seat like a coward.
The big engine pushed the vehicle on. They were gaining speed. Gaining momentum.
The shooter wasn’t giving up. Rounds were still peppering the SUV, hitting every time.
Which was something Wade could appreciate. Because just like the shooter, he’d zeroed in on a target. He had a fixed trajectory.
Reaching up now, he grabbed for his seatbelt, whipping it across his chest, clicking it home. He raised his eyes one last time and saw the shooter, saw Kate, swinging away from the rifle in the glare of his headlamps, turning to run.
He didn’t stamp on the brake. He didn’t slow at all. He just lifted his hands from the wheel and covered his face, shouting a late warning to Renner as the SUV pitched up at the front and catapulted into a hail of timber and glass.
Chapter Seventy-Two
It was dark and cold and terrifying in the windowless rear of the van. Now that the storm had passed on, Becca was tormented by the eerie stillness outside, punctured only by the distant thud of what might have been gunfire. She kept listening for the footsteps she felt sure would come at any moment. Renner and Wade would return, they would open the doors and they would kill them. It was difficult to foresee another outcome.
Emily had toppled into Pete’s lap and fallen asleep a little while ago, which was a relief because her distressed mewling had been amplified by the van’s metal sidings, making their plight feel so much worse. Pete was resting with his head against the back of the driver’s seat. Hanson was closer, his chest lashed to a metal upright, his head bowed.
Unlike Hanson and Pete, Becca hadn’t been tied to anything. When Wade had finished threatening her, and Renner had extracted all the information he needed from Hanson, Wade had simply dropped her to the ground and moved off. Her hands were secured together behind her back, the skin twisted and chafed by the duct tape that had been wound round her wrists. Her knees and ankles were also bound and a swatch of tape had been pressed over her mouth, the top edge ruffling as she breathed through her nose.
Becca had worked at the gag for close to an hour before she’d managed to loosen it. Her tongue ached from the prodding and strain. She only had the slightest corner of it poked free, towards the upper left of her mouth, but it had been enough for her to talk and try to reassure Emily that everything would be OK.
She hated the gag most of all. She was a loudmouth, a performer, and she definitely liked the sound of her own voice, but Becca’s deepest, most primal fear was suffocating. She’d swallowed a boiled sweet once as a kid. She’d tripped on the stairs, rushing to see her parents, who were fetching down Christmas decorations from the loft. The sweet had lodged deep in her throat and shut off her breathing with the abruptness of a valve. Becca had hammered on the attic ladder and pointed to her mouth until her father rushed down and tried hooking the sweet out with his finger, lodging it even worse. He’d slapped her back. Then, in desperation, he’d swooped her up by the knees, turned her upside down and shaken her as hard as he could.
And the sweet had popped out, just like that. But the sensation of it stuck there, swelling her windpipe, had stayed with her ever since.
Which was why she’d flailed so wildly when Wade had applied the gag and most likely why he hadn’t pressed the tape down as well as he should have.
A mistake. A small one. And up until now, it had seemed like all it had given her was some reprieve from her panic and an opportunity to soothe a scared little girl.
But maybe, just maybe, it could give her something else, too.
Becca rolled on to her side, her chin striking the moulded metal floor. Her legs were half numbed, riddled with pins and needles. She tucked them beneath her and hobbled on to her knees towards Hanson.
He lifted his head to watch her approach, blinking darkly from behind his specs.
‘Take off your glasses,’ she puffed, through the slit in the tape.
He didn’t move.
‘Please. Trust me.’
He shook his head, mumbling from behind his gag. Becca could sympathise because she knew he was almost blind without them.
‘I think I can get us out of here.’
She didn’t know if she believed it. She didn’t know if Hanson did, either. But something about the way she looked at him, pleaded with him, made him begin to relent.
After a moment more of watching her, and glancing across at Pete and Emily, Hanson breathed out through his nose and let his shoulders drop, then he pitched his head forwards and shook it roughly until his spectacles slid down his nose, came loose from his ears and fell into his lap.
His eyes looked much bigger without his glasses, the skin around them swollen and pouched.
‘Move your glasses towards me. On to the floor.’
He wriggled his legs until the spectacles clattered to the ground.
‘Perfect.’
Becca turned sideways, twisting her neck and gazing over her shoulder until she had them lined up just right. She looked at Hanson one last time, then she lifted her big, sweet ass in the air and rocked backwards until she heard a crack.
*
The ground rushed up to meet Kate. She’d tripped and fallen into dirt and mulch. She pushed herself to her feet and stumbled into the woods, clutching at her side, branches swiping her face.
The barn was gone. It had been blown to matchsticks. The SUV had punched right through it, landed hard, then thumped into a tree.
The SUV’s bonnet was crumpled. The front doors were buckled. Airbags had deployed at the front and Wade’s face was buried in one of them. She couldn’t see Renner.
She kept running until she was forty or fifty metres away, hidden beneath the trees, then dropped to one knee and peered out from behind a thicket of underbrush.
Brake lights glowed fiercely at the back of the SUV. A tiny bulb was hanging down on a wire from the roof, lighting the splintered windscreen. Smoke drifted up from the engine. Something was ticking or dripping. Something was hissing.
Nobody moved.
Kate waited and watched for several long minutes. Beyond the SUV, the last vestiges of twilight faded away, the darkness closing in relentlessly, encroaching upon the wrecked vehicle as if it was a softly lit prop on a theatre stage.
Then Kate heard a pained groan and one of the airbags plumped and shifted around against the remains of the windscreen. There was a repeated thumping before the driver’s door was forced open and Wade staggered out into the smoking gloom. He swayed and cursed, the heel of one hand clasped to his forehead, a pistol swinging carelessly in the other. There was glass in his hair.
He peered into the trees. Had he seen her run? Could he see her now?
She wished she had the rifle still. She wished she hadn’t abandoned it as she’d turned to leap clear of the barn. Even with her chest hitching, even with the hot ache in her side, she could have made the shot.
Wade bent at the hip and looked under the SUV, searching, Kate guessed, for her body. Then he straightened again and weaved groggily before turning and break
ing into a halting jog, heading across the meadow in the direction of the chalet.
The blackness ate him up.
There was still no sign of Renner. There was no movement from the SUV at all.
Kate crept out from behind the brush and walked forwards very slowly. The area where the barn had stood looked like the site of a small aeroplane crash. The air reeked of hot metal, of burnt plastic and diesel and something chemical that clawed at her throat. She moved closer. Still the only movement was the swinging and slanting of the cabin bulb and the drifts of steam. Had Wade really gone or was he watching for her? Was he waiting her out?
Keeping low, she approached the open door and pushed an airbag to one side. And that was when she saw Renner, his head and shoulders wedged between the two front seats, his face glazed in blood, his mouth parted to reveal a jaw full of broken teeth. His eyes were closed. He was motionless.
His right arm was crooked and extended beyond his head, the wrist bent back by the swell of the airbag and the blown plastic of the dash. His fingers were resting on an automatic pistol.
Kate crouched, watching, but he didn’t rear up. Not even his eyelids flickered.
She reached in for the pistol. She lifted it carefully.
It was heavy. It was loaded.
Still Renner didn’t stir.
Kate backed away, heels digging into mud and debris, and looked into the blackness towards the chalet. The plan was never for her to go there. The plan was for her to stick to her strengths. Shooting. Running.
Miller had wanted them to come to him. Alone.
She turned with the gun in her fist and shed the big, clumsy overcoat as she sprinted for the mountain track.
Chapter Seventy-Three
Miller had broken away from the plan he’d agreed with Kate the moment he’d stepped outside the chalet. He’d heard the shots. He’d seen the collision. Then he’d stood in stunned silence, unsure what to do next.
His first instinct had been to rush over. He was afraid for Kate. He was sure she’d been hit. But then he’d glimpsed her through the scarlet wash of the SUV’s brake lights, scurrying into the woods.
It had seemed for many minutes afterwards as if the crash had been fatal, until Wade staggered out of the SUV with a gun in his hand. He’d peered into the darkness that had draped itself over the chalet and the meadow – straight at Miller, it had felt like – and had started to run.
Miller waited for Kate to shoot Wade in the back, but the shot never came. He was sixty, maybe seventy metres away when he vanished from the halo of dim red light surrounding the outer limits of the crash site.
Miller held the axe down by his side. Close range, in the chalet, it could be devastating. But out here it was useless.
He looked once more for Kate, squinting hard towards the glow and the wreckage at the bottom of the field, then ducked and stepped inside and locked the door behind him. It would have been dark as a cave without the flicker of the fire. Where to go? Upstairs or down? He knew he had to keep away from windows and doors. He knew to stay low. Should he hide and wait for Wade to find him, or should he guess where he’d come at him from?
There was a front and a back door to the chalet. There was also an external stone staircase that connected with an upstairs entrance.
Wade was brash and confident but he wasn’t stupid. So Miller guessed the front door was out. Wade would anticipate that Miller would have the front entrance secured, which he did, in a fashion, with a rope he’d strung up crossways at head height. Or throat height, if he was lucky.
Miller contemplated the stairs. There were six-inch nails poking up through the treads, hammered through from the crawl space beneath. The nails were spaced randomly, two or three to a tread. If Miller had to go up in a hurry, he had a gauntlet to run. If Wade tried the same thing, he’d likely pin his foot.
Miller was hoping Wade would come in from above. He wanted him to stalk around the bedrooms, find them empty, and be lured down on to the nails by the firelight. If he stepped on a nail, he might drop his gun, which was a big problem otherwise.
Miller needed Wade close to him – close enough for a swing of his axe. If Wade saw him first, he could shoot from distance. And although Timo had armed Miller with a hunting knife, it wasn’t something he could throw. The chances of him missing were too high.
So Wade had a major advantage.
If he saw Miller.
If he came inside.
Where was he now? Did he know Melanie was already gone? Had he doubled back in search of Kate?
Miller felt the urge to look out of a window, but knew he’d regret it if Wade was on the other side of the glass.
He closed his eyes and tried to think. He still had his eyes shut a second later when a window in the kitchen exploded inwards and a hand raked away the remaining glass fragments with the barrel of an automatic pistol. The pistol was waved around the room. It was followed by an elbow and an arm.
Miller dropped behind the couch before Wade’s head appeared. He listened to him squeezing through the opening, grunting, sweeping crockery and a toaster off the kitchen counter on to the floor.
He’d be encouraged by the fire. The logs were a long way from burned through. But he had to suspect some kind of ambush. He’d be busy asking himself what Miller’s move would be.
Miller’s move was to stay still and hide with the axe gripped tightly in front of him. He listened hard to the stillness in the room, to the breeze through the busted window, to the crackle of the logs in the grate. He heard the scrape of Wade’s boots against the floorboards. Heard the boards deflect under his weight.
The large rug in front of the fire was thin and frayed. It was ruffled in the middle. Miller wanted very much for Wade to come at him that way.
And he did, to begin with. His steps became muffled, the vibrations getting closer. Any second now and he’d pass right in front of the fire.
Except he didn’t, because there was a long pause, and then more vibrations and more clomping footsteps and it dawned on Miller that Wade was retracing his steps, heading back to the kitchen. Which was an outcome he couldn’t accept.
‘Hey!’
Miller shouted and sprang up from behind the couch and Wade spun very fast, raising his gun in the air. Wade flinched, as if perplexed, then advanced on Miller, closing the distance between them. A smile split his face and he twisted his arm a quarter turn until he was aiming the pistol at Miller sideways on.
Miller stepped out from behind the couch with the axe held in a two-handed grip, his bandaged left hand below the right, the blade above his shoulder by his ear, the flames glimmering in the corner of his vision.
‘You’re kidding me. An axe? What are you going to do, chop through my first six bullets, then come at me while I reload?’
Wade’s movements were loose and easy, despite the ugly welt on his forehead. He was pacing across the floorboards in his soaked tracksuit, mud and grass coating his white training shoes.
He stepped off the floorboards on to the rug. Took another step. One more.
Then stopped.
‘Why are you even doing this?’ Miller asked him. ‘What’s in it for you?’
‘Don’t start that crap.’ Wade extended his arm until his elbow was locked, one eye closed in a squint. ‘Although I guess you could say I’m making amends. Fixing an error I made before Mr Lane ever finds out about it.’
The pistol was centred on Miller’s chest and he could feel his skin tighten; could anticipate the impact, the bullet ripping through his lungs.
Wade relaxed a fraction more. He smiled a little wider.
‘Do you want to know what I had your wife say to me before I shot her?’
Miller’s stomach dropped. Suddenly, the axe seemed almost too heavy for him to hold.
‘I had her beg. I made her say “please”.’
There was a faint whistling in Miller’s ears. He wanted to launch himself at Wade, swing the axe and take off his head at his shoulders. But
he held back. Held on.
‘And now I’d like you to say it, too. Say “please”.’
Miller swallowed, and when he spoke, his voice was pitchy and wayward.
‘Why don’t you come nearer? Let me whisper it in your ear.’
Wade smiled some more.
‘You’ll say “please”.’ He lowered his gun and aimed at Miller’s knee. ‘But first, you’re going to tell me where your daughter is. I want to make sure I kill her right this time.’
He took another step forwards, into the centre of the rug, where his shin snagged a very fine wire. The rug seemed to shrink rapidly in the middle, the material rushing in from the edges to wrap around his foot. His leg jerked up and he jerked with it, the momentum twirling him round and off the ground.
The spring snare Timo had rigged up was locked on his lower leg, hoisting him off the floor until he was suspended upside down, legs thrashing, arms windmilling, letting a shot off into the ceiling.
Miller ducked and surged forwards, allowing the axe handle to drop through his hands, changing his grip, buzzing the thick wooden handle through the air and beating hard on Wade’s wrist until he heard a violent crack and the gun clattered on to the floorboards.
Wade yelled and snatched his hand to his body, bending at the waist, reaching up with his good hand to try and loosen the climbing rope that was tightened off around his ankle. The rug was getting in his way. It was blocking him.
Miller had to fight hard against the urge to strike down again with the axe handle on to Wade’s head. He could have bludgeoned him ferociously, vented all his fury.
But his eyes were drawn to the burning logs instead.
Chapter Seventy-Four
The pitted mountain track fell away beneath Kate’s feet. She was running into the black at a fast tempo, the ache in her side beginning to fade, her knees jarring on the uneven path. She pumped her arms with the gun in her fist and inhaled the misted air through her nostrils.
