“I said sit down!”
Her guard stood up, chucking down his cigarette and reaching for the machine gun. Amy looked at him blankly, trying desperately not to think about the gun. The consequences of what she had done starting hitting home but she couldn’t turn back now. To return was death, and the spectre of the panic loomed up behind her.
“How hard did he hit you? Sit down, you dozy cow.”
She was a foot away from the flimsy rail preventing a fall and she could see the sudden drop beyond. From her vantage, she could also see the wide-open door of the barn—and the dark figure lurking in the corner. Zook was watching her.
She took another step.
The guard grabbed her arm. “I said sit the fuck down.” She resisted reacting, every muscle in her body tense.
Owain walked through the door.
The guard let go of her and stalked over to the gap in the rail, and the ladder below. “Oi! You can’t come in here!”
It would be so easy to push. Her hand jerked at her side and she thought about rushing him, shoving hard with both hands and watching him fall. But it was a long way down and she couldn’t guarantee what he might break, whether his head would survive the fall intact, whether he would still be breathing at the bottom.
It was one thing to shoot in self-defence. It was another to push a man to his certain death.
Owain saw her. He didn’t call out but he raised a hand, like a schoolboy asking a question. “You know where I can take a leak?”
The man on the balcony laughed, but Zook moved like the lightning outside, streaking up behind him.
“Look out!” The shout came from her mouth and Owain turned.
He almost let Zook run straight into him, but at the last possible second dived to the side, rolling and coming up like a gold-medal gymnast. He sprinted for the loft ladder and started scrambling up it.
The guard at the top pointed his gun down.
Amy screamed and charged him.
He looked up just as she barrelled him over, toppling him backwards onto the stacks of cocaine.
He aimed his gun at her.
She grabbed the nearest thing and swung it. The flat of the spade connected with his head and he toppled like a collapsing sandcastle at high tide.
Amy dropped the spade and ran back to the platform edge. Owain was halfway up the ladder, but Zook was clawing at his ankles, desperate to drag him down.
The ladder was tied on with fraying rope and Amy looked desperately around the loft for something to cut it. Her eyes landed on the machine gun, but everything in her recoiled against it. Not again. Never again.
Knives. Gangsters carry knives.
She ran up to the unconscious gangster and rummaged in his pockets, withdrawing a switchblade with a red enamel handle. Like Damage’s.
She struggled to open the knife and started sawing at the rope. Owain reached for the top rung just as the first rope gave.
The ladder swung violently to the right and Owain leapt for the platform, hanging by one hand off the edge. Amy shifted out of the way and he hauled himself up onto the wood.
But Zook kept climbing.
Amy frantically cut at the next rope. It frayed and frayed...a few more strands...
Zook’s hand grabbed the platform.
The rope snapped.
The ladder teetered, falling away from the platform, but Zook held on. His burning dark eyes fixed her in their gaze. “Don’t you dare defy me.”
Amy stuck the knife into his hand.
Zook yowled, a human cry, and let go. The ladder fell, twisting in the air, and Zook jumped clear of it and tumbled into a stack of hay bales.
Amy didn’t wait to see if he lived, tearing out the satellite modem and iPad and hurriedly setting them up.
“Did you just...that was Rawlings.” Owain sounded like he was concussed, or stoned. And both of those were her excuses right now.
“He’s the bad guy,” Amy said simply, desperately searching for a signal. “I’ll tell you on the way home.”
The modem refused to connect. She smacked it with her fist. Nothing. Outside the thunder rumbled, mocking her with its power. “There’s no signal. Owain, your phone?”
He pulled it out. “Nothing.”
Amy looked around for options. And her eyes landed on the hayloft hatch.
“The satellite receiver needs to go on the roof.”
Owain looked at her as if she had completely lost her mind. “On the roof? How?”
She dragged him towards the hatch. “You are going to climb on the roof and place the receiver. It’s our only chance of getting a signal.”
Owain shook his head violently. “No. No way. I have this fear...heights...”
“I am agoraphobic and in a barn! I just left my house for the first time in ten years. Man up!”
He was pale as skimmed milk, and trembling. Amy recognised the signs of an impending panic attack and grabbed hold of his arms. “Owain, you have to do this. It’s the only way we can call for help.”
“I can’t—”
The front of the barn exploded.
Chapter Forty-Eight: Barnstormer
Jason wasn’t exactly expecting that.
The modest pile of hay that he and Cerys had soaked in diesel was burning away merrily, but the discoloured mulch in front of the barn door was roaring with flames. The ground was soaked in old diesel and the fire started licking at anything within a few feet, the torrential rain doing nothing to douse it.
The gathered gang members leapt back with shouts of horror.
And Mickey threw the first stone. “You fucker, Williams! Burning down my fucking barn!”
Jason didn’t see the first punch, but a fight erupted in front of him. It put the worst Saturday-night St. Mary’s Street brawls to shame, men in headlocks with boys screaming in their ears and bits of wood grabbed from the mud to swing into some poor sod’s ribs. They were sliding about like it was a maul at the Millennium Stadium, splattered with mud and blood and fury.
Jason instinctively tried to shield his sister from the carnage.
“Out of the way!” she said, shoving him aside. “Owain’s inside that barn!”
Jason seized hold of her arm and held fast. “You are not going in there.”
“What? I should just let him burn? Amy too?”
Amy’s inside. Instantly, he wanted to run in and find her, carry her out of the burning building and cradle her close until the fire was out and the dust had settled.
But he had to think. That was how he was going to save her, by thinking it through and not by setting himself on fire.
A figure with a tarp over his head ran through the flames, screaming. Jason ran to him instinctively and threw him down into the mud, rolling him over and over until he was only smouldering.
When the tarp came off, there was Zook.
Their eyes met and Zook reached up to throttle him, red blistered fingers clawing at the bandages around Jason’s throat, yearning for him to bleed.
Jason knocked his hands away and kicked him into a puddle. They had to stop this fight and get Owain and Amy out.
A hand landed on his shoulder. Jason turned to deck the man who’d grabbed him—and found Bryn.
“What did you do?”
“Just help me fix it,” he pleaded. He had enough blame to carry. “Zook, he’s...”
Behind him, the ruckus suddenly fell to silence. A taut, chilling silence.
Jason turned and pushed aside a couple of slack-jawed boys to see Mickey lying on the floor, bleeding, and Stuart pointing a gun at his head.
“You ain’t got the guts, cupcake,” Mickey spat out, blood spattering his chin.
Stuart cocked the gun and grinned. “Are you feeling lucky, punk
?”
Before he’d thought it through, Jason stepped forward. “Don’t do it, Stuart.”
The gun momentarily swung at Jason, before returning to Mickey. “Stay out of this, Carr. You were right, weren’t you? Mickey did for my boy.”
An angry murmur ran through the bruised and bleeding crowd, directed at Jason and Mickey. At each other. Their rage was echoed by the thunder, the sky torn apart by the storm directly overhead.
They were ready to start throwing punches again, and in the violence of that moment, Stuart would pull the trigger. Jason knew that for certain.
“You’re being played, Stuart.”
The boy glanced up at Jason again. “What? No! Fuck off. This isn’t your business.”
“Zook played both of you.”
At the name, both Stuart and Mickey looked at Jason. But Mickey started laughing, the mad cackle that had earned him his moniker, with bloody water streaming down his chin.
Stuart stepped forward, waving the gun angrily at him. “Shut up, clown! Shut up!”
“Zook worked for me!” Mickey crowed. “We were playing Stuart all right.”
“He’s pointing a gun at your head, you stupid fucker.” The pieces were sliding together before Jason’s eyes, and the words kept spilling out. “You think you know why they were invited here tonight—to wipe them out, to put them in their place. But it was meant for both of you, Irish. He meant to take the best of both gangs and force the two of you to kill each other. Or for Stuart to shoot you and do the time. He meant to rule without you.”
Stuart’s gun waivered. “You’re lying. Zook is my man.”
The fire behind them roared, the front of the barn glowing red like the mouth of hell, billows of smoke filling the air. The heat was a palpable presence at Jason’s back—he didn’t have much time.
“Are you prepared to serve life for him? Let the bastards get what they deserve for Damage.” Jason smiled. “I know you, Stuart. You may be a tough son of a bitch, but you don’t kill a man in cold blood. Not like this, not because some jerk-off copper wants you to.”
Stuart howled and pointed his gun at the barn. He fired without aim, bullets spraying across the roof like a shower of silver rain.
Cerys screamed.
Someone on the roof. The figure staggered, then vanished.
The front of the barn was thick with steam and smoke, the boys on the ground choking and coughing, screaming as they were scalded. The gangs grabbed their own and hauled them away from the barn. In the chaos, Jason couldn’t find Zook—where was the bastard? The silage stack started to smoulder, the black plastic blistering and melting away.
Jason ran towards the flames.
Bryn grabbed him by the T-shirt and yanked him back. “The hayloft,” he shouted, voice rough with smoke.
They ran.
* * *
The signal connected.
“Owain, bless you.” Amy quickly dialled 999. The floor beneath her was uncomfortably warm and she was afraid the barn would collapse at any second. But fear wouldn’t own her—not when death was real and present in the room. There were worse things than fear.
“Fire, police, ambulance,” she said quickly, and then coughed. She couldn’t see a foot in front of her. “Hurry.” She rattled off the address and hung up, abandoning her iPad to look for Owain.
When he wasn’t forthcoming, she crossed the platform and kicked the stupid-ass henchman who had tried to kill her. He came to with a moan and she kicked him again for good measure.
“The barn is on fire,” she informed him shortly. “Climb down the ladder if you want to live.”
Dopey and scared, he did as commanded, disappearing out the hatch in under a minute. She watched him go, estimating their escape time as he landed and staggered off to find his own.
Amy called up, “Owain? Come on!”
She stepped back. Owain dropped down onto the platform, the whole thing trembling with the impact.
“I got the call out. We have to go.”
But Owain listed to the side, not hearing her, and his palm was placed flat to his side. She was sure Cerys’s hoodie hadn’t been red, that ugly splodge that was spreading...
“I think I’ve been shot,” he said.
She surged forward and took hold of him, holding him up with all the strength in her body and trying to stop him falling. He was a dead weight in her arms, the skin of his face pale as crisp winter’s frost.
Amy tried to think. To plan. All she wanted to do was curl up under her blankets and hide from reality, the rising panic in her chest. Her arms trembled with the effort of holding him, but if she didn’t do something, they would both die. Die in this barn, cremated alive.
“The ladder. We have to get down the ladder.”
“Can’t. Amy...”
“Shut up.”
She manoeuvred him closer, like a large, awkward scarecrow. “You have to climb down.”
“I don’t...falling...”
He was bleeding too much, blood soaking through the hoodie and slopping on the floor. The warm red liquid bubbled on the wood. They had to go now.
Amy tore Jason’s belt from her waist and tied it round Owain. “You have to just get on it. Just step onto the ladder.”
He managed one step, with most of his weight on her screaming arms, and then another. She rested his hands on the top of the ladder and grabbed the frayed rope that had been holding the other ladder in place.
It caught on the wood and she was forced to look down. The barn was red, like the heart of a star, pulsing and glowing with each new thing it claimed as its own. The whole barn shifted, the wood cracking and groaning beneath her feet.
She ran back to Owain and looped the rope around the ladder and through his belt, trying to remember the surgical knot her sister had taught her.
“Amy!”
She looked down to see a figure at the bottom. She couldn’t make out the face, but she knew it was Jason calling.
“Catch him!” she yelled back.
Owain was semi-conscious. Amy slapped him.
“You put your feet on the sides of the ladder. I saw it on YouTube. Come on!”
He awkwardly shuffled his feet into something like the right position. It would have to do.
“Let go.”
He didn’t move. But his grip loosened as his eyes fell closed, and Amy pushed his hands off the top. He started to slide, but too slow, and she shoved at his shoulders with all of her might.
Owain fell.
He slid at speed, before falling away three feet from the bottom and landing on top of Jason and another figure behind him.
Amy didn’t hesitate. She climbed out onto the ladder and she didn’t look down. She knew how big a drop it was—she’d just seen Owain fall down it—and she needed all her courage to make this climb.
Then she saw the roof.
The fire was stealing across the old slats, eating them up like a ravenous red beast, and he was coming for her. She stepped down—and missed. She hung for a couple of seconds, trying to quell the rapid beating of her heart, to force away the surge of raw panic blasting through her veins.
“You can do this!”
Jason. He believed in her. She would survive.
Amy put her foot on the rung and took another step.
The fire found her ladder.
In a second, it was alight. The old rope popped and crackled, and then it was gone.
The ladder fell away. And Amy fell with it.
Life was in slow motion, eternal seconds as the white-hot wood arced through the air like a shooting star, and then she was falling.
She wouldn’t die crushed beneath a ladder.
Amy jumped.
Chapter Forty-Nine: Siren Song
; Cerys was crying. He hated that sound.
For his part, Jason couldn’t feel anything at all. Bryn had told him not to move Amy, just hold her neck in line with her body and wait. Her skin was warm against his cold hands, and her face and arms were an angry red in contrast to her usual icy paleness.
And she was still. It was so strange to see her still.
Cerys was talking, a soothing prattle that made little sense as she pressed her weight on top of the oozing gap in Owain’s flesh. Bryn had gone, to make sure he could hail the first ambulance.
That left him and Amy.
Her right leg was bent at an angle he’d never thought possible, and Jason fought against the roll of nausea in his stomach. He’d tried to catch her. As soon as he saw the ladder drop, he’d tried to get under her, to break her fall.
But the fire had blinded him, the image still burning behind his eyelids, and she’d half landed against his right shoulder, knocking him flat.
He’d rolled her carefully onto the grass, but she was already unconscious, pale beneath the red, raw burns on her face.
Now he had only to wait. Was this how Amy had felt, watching on her monitors as Lewis had beaten him, those lackeys strangled him?
He had never been so grateful to hear the sound of sirens. The ambulance careered over the field, blue lights still flashing, before skidding to a halt in the mud. At some point, the rain had stopped, relinquishing its fight against the fire as its human counterparts screeched past them to the back of the barn.
The paramedics tumbled out, torn between the two victims. Jason was mute, unable to choose between them. He wanted them to save Amy, but Owain was his friend.
“He’s been shot,” Cerys said, her voice eerily calm. “And she fell from the top of that barn. They’re both breathing but unconscious.”
The paramedics decided to divide and conquer. Jason managed to splutter out the gist of what happened, and inform them that Amy had taken a handful of diazepam before this misadventure.
The paramedic dutifully recorded all this information, while checking her vital signs and sticking a needle in her arm. Amy stirred at that and Jason struggled to keep her still.
Code Runner (Amy Lane Mysteries Book 2) Page 28
