The two questions merged in her mind as she heard the chant of ‘seventy-eight’.
She stepped forward and found herself swathed in the glow of a street lamp. She quickly stepped back out of it, feeling more vulnerable in the light.
‘Sixty-six.’
‘Sixty-five.’
Would they be expecting her to run? Was that her best opportunity for escape? To just run as fast as she could? Her mind reasoned that, if it were possible to escape that easily, they would not be giving her such a head start.
‘Forty-nine.’
‘Forty-eight.’
‘What do I do? What do I do?’ she whispered into the darkness.
Her instinct was to shout for help but the only people here were trying to hurt her.
Please, someone help me, she prayed silently as her knees began to tremble.
The numbers were disappearing too quickly.
‘Thirty-two.’
She had less than a minute to work out how to save her own life.
She took another few steps forward. Her brain had numbed with fear. No decision made sense to her. Nowhere felt safe.
‘Twenty-three.’
She jumped as something rustled beside her. Bloody wildlife. Something was scurrying around her. A mechanical snap sounded to her left. Metal cracking. Something howled in pain, filling the silence between chants. Stacey wondered if some poor animal had been caught in a trap that had been meant for her.
‘Nineteen.’
She realised that she couldn’t step too far away from the lights for fear that she’d be caught by one of those traps.
‘Ten.’
She had to think quickly. Had to work out what to do, where to hide.
Three successive shots rang out in the distance.
And she had just run out of time.
ONE HUNDRED TWO
The main building loomed up in the distance as the shots rang out.
Kim guessed that meant they were on the move.
She lowered herself to the ground and crawled towards the building. One single light illuminated from the second window along.
Kim wondered if both Fiona and Stacey had been held in this building. Fiona had chosen to run as quickly as she could and had somehow managed to get one hundred metres away from the perimeter fence before being snared in an animal trap.
Kim moved carefully, wondering how many of those things were lying around.
She surveyed the area as voices began to disperse in different directions.
She pushed her back against the wall, forcing herself further into the shadows, to think.
If Stacey had been set free from the building and she’d heard the countdown in the distance, would she have chosen to run as fast as she could, or hide?
Kim tried to put herself into Stacey’s mindset and adopt her logical, pragmatic approach while factoring in the terror her colleague would be feeling. If Stacey understood the situation and knew the reason for her presence, she would also understand the countdown. Would she realise there was no possible way to get to safety, leaving little reason to run? Or would panic and instinct have taken over, causing her to move quickly?
Would she also consider that beyond this collection of buildings the dense blackness would be no friend to her?
‘Stacey, what did you do?’ she whispered, moving towards the doorway of the building.
A shadow moved across the open window. Just a head. Kim considered storming in and putting her hands around the throat of the first person she met. But that wouldn’t help Stacey. Not when there were bastards armed with guns trying to kill her.
She ducked and moved away from the window. They’d keep.
Kim crawled slowly. The whole area was awash with shafts, traps and hazards. Each move she made, she expected to feel the teeth of a trap clamp around some part of her body.
She crawled past the open mouth of a tin building shaped like a semicircle.
Her left hand hit something protruding from the grass.
It was leather.
She looked closer.
It was an ankle boot.
She picked it up.
It was Stacey’s.
Damn it, Kim thought. What if the bastards had already got her?
Kim raised her arm to launch the boot in frustration and then paused, as she had a sudden thought.
ONE HUNDRED THREE
Stacey rubbed at her arms furiously against the terror and the cold. She had tried to keep count since the three shots had sounded. She was guessing it had been just a couple of minutes.
Her only chance was to buy time ‒ for what, she still had no idea, but the thought of running around the place with a target on her back sickened her. If she was going to die, she wasn’t going to provide sport for a bunch of cruel, despicable racist bastards first. They could find her and shoot her on the spot. She would not be their fucking animal.
In an effort to get out of sight as quickly as possible she had ducked into a corrugated iron structure formed into a semicircle. She had quickly moved through its tunnel-like interior towards the thick blackness at the end.
The wet grass was soaking through her woollen tights and her skirt but she couldn’t stand. She could only make herself smaller if she was on the ground.
She brought her knees up to her face and looped her bound wrists over the top.
Her cheek rested against her knee, and she closed her eyes. There was no change in the level of darkness.
Had it only been today that she’d stepped out of the station to retrieve a laptop she’d had no business having in the first place?
If she’d thought there was a case there, she should have passed it on to real detectives. They would have put it all together much quicker, and they wouldn’t be sitting here curled in a ball, waiting to die.
She hated the self-pitying thoughts that were filling her mind but she knew her one little attempt at being clever would go completely unnoticed. She had left the simple sign in the vain hope that anyone was looking. Her one ankle boot pointing to her location. Realistically she knew no one would find it, but it had helped for just a second to do something.
She cursed herself for hiding but her brain had offered no other solutions. Hunters with guns put her at a definite disadvantage.
She cried out as a sudden gust of wind caught a loose piece of the corrugated metal roof. It flapped three times, raising her heartbeat with every rap. She pulled her arms tighter around her legs to still their trembling.
A hand grabbed her stockinged foot.
The terror rushed to her mouth and she let out a scream.
A hand clamped over her mouth.
Stacey shook her head and kicked out. Fuck hiding. Now she’d run. She wasn’t ready to die.
‘Stacey, it’s me,’ she heard, whispered into her ear.
The words stunned her into stillness; she knew who it sounded like but it couldn’t be. There was no way. Not possible.
She began to shake her head.
‘It’s me, Stace. I’ve got you,’ she heard.
‘Boss?’ she said, against the palm.
The hand loosened, and the boss’s face appeared before her own.
‘Listen, there’s no time to explain but I got your message. The boot pointing this way.’
Stacey felt the tears gather in her eyes.
Her boss. Here. For her.
Hot tears spilled from her eyes. Somehow, this determined, ballsy woman had put it all together and found her. Never had she been so grateful for anything in her life.
‘Boss…’
‘Now, we gotta get going. The armed response team is here. They’re closing in but we’re at the centre of the site. We need to try and move out. Got it?’
Stacey nodded, still processing the fact she was no longer alone. Hope began to rise inside her, chewing away at the inevitability of death. Maybe she would make it out alive.
‘Once we’re out of here we stay low and head east, okay?’
Stacey nodded. She would follow any instruction she was given but there was so much that she wanted, needed to say.
‘Boss, listen…’
‘Not now, Stace,’ Kim said. ‘We’ll talk later.’
She watched as her boss stood and then offered her hand. Stacey held out her bound wrists, and Kim pulled her up.
‘We’ll have to leave them for now. Can you move okay?’
Stacey nodded.
They tiptoed towards the entrance to the tunnel-like building. Her boss paused at the end and turned.
The shape and structure reminded her of Netherton canal tunnel. Her father had taken her there for Sunday afternoon walks, and she had never admitted to him just how scared she was of the one-and-three-quarter-mile trek but she had always been relieved to see the pinprick of light appear at the other end.
‘You ready?’
Stacey nodded and they both lowered themselves to the ground.
‘There are animal traps,’ she whispered, remembering the poor animal’s cries.
‘I know,’ her boss said.
‘What’s that?’ Stacey asked, looking into the distance.
They paused as the figure came closer.
‘Shit, it’s Bryant,’ the boss said, as she started to wave.
Suddenly Stacey realised she wasn’t waving at all. She was signalling for him to get down.
Bryant slowed.
The boss waved again. Get down.
He shook his head, not understanding, and still advancing towards them.
‘Bryant, don’t—’
Her words were cut short as a single shot sounded.
And in slow motion, Bryant finally folded to the ground.
ONE HUNDRED FOUR
Dawson turned to Riggs, the officer in charge of the Armed Response Unit.
‘How much longer?’ he asked, fighting the urge to break through the fence and get looking himself.
As he and Gibbs had reached the western edge of the site they had run right into six armed officers entering the site. Despite their protests they had been frog-marched to safety.
‘You know the drill, sergeant,’ Riggs said, humourlessly. ‘There are protocols to be—’
He stopped speaking and held up his hand as he listened to something in his earpiece.
Dawson fought the frustration. Quite frankly he didn’t give a fuck about protocols when it came to people he cared about.
And shots were still being fired. His eyes roamed to the rear of the Audi where the rear seats had been removed and a gun case fitted. Right now he wanted to knock this guy out and just grab the keys.
‘We’ve pulled out seven individuals so far,’ Riggs said, lowering his hand. ‘I have one officer already injured in a trap and—’
‘How far are your guys out?’ Dawson interrupted, caring less about Riggs’s team member than his own. Stacey was the one they were all after.
‘About four hundred metres from the centre.’
‘Can’t they go any quicker?’ Dawson asked, running his hand through his hair.
‘Absolutely ‒ and then miss one and someone gets killed. We don’t even know how many are in there.’
His answers were not helping Dawson’s mounting anxiety.
There was something very wrong happening in that compound. And his colleagues were right in the middle of it.
Gibbs put a hand on his arm.
‘Dawson, we can’t…’
‘Listen to your pal, mate, and step away,’ Riggs said. ‘I can see the look in your eyes, and I dare you to try it.’
Dawson squared up. ‘Oh yeah,’ he said.
A hint of a smile touched the dour lips.
‘Listen, buddy, I’ve got enough heroes in there already. My team is in there too, and you do anything to compromise their safety, I’ll shoot you myself.’
ONE HUNDRED FIVE
Kim’s vision narrowed as her heart thumped within her chest. Little else mattered as she crawled along the ground. A nettle stung her right wrist and gravel dug into her stomach but her focus was on her colleague.
‘Bryant,’ she whispered urgently, as she neared the area where he’d dropped. She felt around in the shadows.
‘Bryant,’ she repeated.
‘He’s down here, boss,’ Stacey hissed to her right. Kim scrabbled over a row of tall grasses and peered down.
‘I heard him,’ Stacey said.
‘Bryant,’ she called down into the pit.
‘Here, guv,’ he called.
The relief washed over her.
‘You hurt?’
‘Just my pride,’ he called back.
That would mend, she thought to herself as she took a moment to analyse the situation. Armed officers were closing in all the time but their progress was slow. There were people in that building who could get away. And one of them had just taken a shot at her friend.
‘How far down are you?’
‘Ten, fifteen feet,’ he said.
‘Throw up your pocketknife,’ she instructed.
She heard fumbling.
‘Coming up,’ he called.
The pocketknife flew into the air and landed about five inches from her knee. She grabbed Stacey’s wrists. Two cuts and the cable wrap was released.
‘Get that high-vis vest off,’ she said to Stacey, as she began removing her own bulletproof vest.
‘No, boss, no…’
‘You’d better not be doing what I think you’re doing,’ Bryant called up.
Kim ignored it as she balled up the fluorescent vest and threw it far into the bushes, out of sight.
‘Put it on,’ Kim barked to the constable.
Stacey shuffled into the bulletproof garment.
Kim knew she was leaving herself vulnerable without the protection of the vest but she could keep moving. If Stacey and Bryant were discovered by the hunters, they would be trapped.
‘Put your legs over the edge,’ she instructed. ‘Bryant, get ready to catch her.’
It was the only thing she could do. She couldn’t risk Stacey’s safety, and she couldn’t get Bryant out.
They would be safer together, out of sight.
‘Guv, you need to get down…’
‘Ready?’ Kim asked Stacey, while gently edging her forward.
Stacey nodded before pushing herself over the edge.
She heard a groan from them both.
‘Okay?’ she called down.
‘Yeah, guv. You need to—’
Kim didn’t hear the rest of his sentence as she was already crawling away.
ONE HUNDRED SIX
Kim paused behind a brittle brown grass mound and estimated that she was halfway between where she’d left Bryant and Stacey and the building where the light still shone.
The fifty metres she’d got left to travel was undulating grass without cover. Once she moved from her present position she would be on land that was open and exposed.
She listened keenly. A rustle to her left brought the tension to her jaw.
She wasn’t alone.
And the good guys weren’t here yet.
She stayed still. Every muscle now wanted to defy the instruction from her brain.
The sound was moving towards her. But it was higher. They were walking.
She silently edged from the gravel path onto the grass.
Crunch.
In almost any situation, Kim had always felt that attack was the best form of defence.
She thrust out her hand and grabbed at an ankle, pulled it towards her, forcefully. The figure fell backwards to the ground.
She rounded on it immediately.
The form had fallen into the glow of the street lamp.
She looked down into a face she knew very well.
ONE HUNDRED SEVEN
For just a few moments, Stacey felt safe, crammed against Bryant in the three feet square space.
‘Do you hear that, Stace?’ Bryant whispered above her head.
She listened keenly. ‘What?’
Stacey felt the panic surge back into her body. It hadn’t been too far away. Whether she was with Bryant or not, they were trapped in the pit until someone came to get them.
‘But they can’t know we’re here, can they?’ she asked.
‘Stace…’ he asked in the darkness. ‘What’s that smell?’
‘What smell?’ she asked, before the penny finally dropped in her mind. ‘Oh no, Floda… he rubbed something all over…’
Her words trailed away as she felt Bryant’s hands already touching her in the darkness.
‘Your arms, they’re sticky,’ he said, sliding down the wall. ‘And your tights. What the…’ He quieted for a second. ‘Fuck, Stace. It’s blood.’
‘Oh no, oh no, oh no,’ she said, touching her shirt sleeve and raising her fingers to her nose. ‘What am I gonna do. They’re going to come straight for me.’
‘Stace, you’ve got to take them off. Now.’
She began to protest. ‘Are you having a?…’
‘We have to throw the clothes out of the pit,’ Bryant said, urgently.
‘But won’t that just bring them right to us?’
‘They’re coming this way anyway. Because the clothing is in here, the dogs will come right to it. It’s what they’re trained to do. If the hunters realise we’re down here, we are literally fish in a barrel. We need to confuse the dogs. Divert them from this blast pit.’
He paused to think as Stacey visualised the scene up top. She hadn’t yet moved around the small space and was still against the wall that she’d half slid and half fallen down. Opposite were the bushes where she’d heard the spring of the animal trap.
‘Stace, you gotta take ’em off,’ Bryant growled.
She nodded and then realised he couldn’t see her. ‘I know,’ she said, beginning to remove the bulletproof vest. He had daubed her shirt, skirt and tights. They would all have to come off. She knew she would be naked except for her underwear. She pushed the thought away. Against the thought of getting mauled by dogs or shot, she’d cope.
‘If you put your foot on my hand, I can give you a bit more height and then you can launch them out as far as you can away from us.’
‘Okay,’ she breathed as the shirt dropped to the ground. The November air bit into her bare skin immediately.
Dead Souls: A gripping serial killer thriller with a shocking twist (Detective Kim Stone Crime Thriller Series Book 6) Page 30
