by Zoe Sharp
And then cold, hard realities seeped in. Cold enough and hard enough to have me dropping the Beretta away from Rosalind’s startled face and stumbling back away from her until I had the support of the nearest wall. I found I was in the far corner of the small lobby area, but I didn’t remember getting there.
‘Don’t worry, Matt,’ I managed. ‘I said I could kill her, but I’m not going to.’ I shook my head. ‘She’s an evil bitch and I hope they electrocute or poison her, or whatever the hell it is they do to people over here who’ve committed murder, but that doesn’t mean I have to do their dirty work for them.’
Rosalind sagged against the outer glass, cradling her injured hand. Her face was wet with tears but she didn’t seem to be aware that she was crying again, from pain and shock this time, rather than frustration. I looked round, exhausted, and found my crutch was lying too far away for me to reach. Matt had to retrieve it for me. He helped Rosalind to her feet and the three of us finally made it into the store proper.
‘Where’s Ella, Rosalind?’ I demanded, more quietly now. For a moment I thought she wasn’t going to answer. Then she seemed to come out of her daze.
‘In the back,’ she said. ‘In the stockroom. I don’t know exactly. Reynolds didn’t say.’
‘Matt,’ I said, ‘find me something we can tie her with, would you?’
‘But she’s got a broken finger,’ he pointed out.
‘So? She was going to kill the pair of us.’
‘Oh…yeah. OK.’
‘And find me a swivel chair,’ I said. ‘Preferably one with castors on the bottom.’
He disappeared behind the counter and was soon back with a roll of brown packing tape and a typist’s chair with a high back and two sturdy-looking arms that came out from the underneath of the frame. One wheel squeaked slightly as he pushed it towards me.
I gave Rosalind a rough shove in the chest and she sat down heavily.
‘Oh,’ Matt said, surprise in his voice, and when I glanced at him he gave an embarrassed shrug. ‘I thought the chair was for you.’
I bit back a laugh, not sure if I’d be able to stop once I started, and kept the gun on her while Matt taped her in. The packing tape turned out not to be the no-noise type and every piece we ripped off the roll seemed horribly loud inside the empty store.
It only took a few minutes before we had Rosalind’s wrists and ankles bound with enough tape to ensure that, if we’d mailed her, she would have arrived intact in just about any country, anywhere in the world.
‘Now what do we do with her?’
‘We leave her,’ I said. ‘We have to find Ella.’
‘And what will you do then, Charlie?’ Rosalind threw at me, disdainful. ‘You might have gotten the jump on Reynolds once, but he won’t make the same mistake twice. He’s got someone with him – a professional – and he’ll be ready for you this time.’
‘Like you were, you mean,’ I said with more bravado than I felt. ‘We’ll take our chances.’ I glanced at Matt. ‘Tape her mouth.’
Matt stuck a last piece of the packing tape across Rosalind’s lips. I patted down her pockets, retrieving her mobile phone and a spare magazine for the Beretta out of her inside coat pocket.
‘Do we leave her here?’
I jerked my head towards the entrance. ‘Outside. I don’t want her causing any trouble.’
‘It’s freezing out there,’ Matt protested.
I looked at him. ‘Good,’ I said. ‘It should slow her down a bit.’
He grabbed Rosalind’s shoulders without further comment, wheeling her out through the lobby into the snowy car park. After a few moments he returned.
‘I stuck her round the side of the building so she won’t be seen from the road so easily,’ he said, still looking uncomfortable. He took a deep shaky breath. ‘Look, Charlie, shouldn’t we just call the police and let them handle this?’
He kept his voice low and his eyes skimmed nervously over me, the Beretta sagging by my side now. The gun itself weighed less than a kilo – thirty ounces, and the suppressor only another seven ounces. So why did they feel so heavy?
‘Call them,’ I said, nodding to the phone by the till on the counter. ‘But by the time they get here Ella could be dead.’
He looked at the phone for a moment, but made no moves towards it.
‘What can we do?’
‘We can find her and persuade Reynolds to hand her over,’ I said, matter-of-fact, calm, and with far more confidence than I could probably justify.
‘OK,’ he said, his face very white. ‘What do you want me to do?’
The counter was glass topped and held an array of hunting knives with wicked-looking serrated blades. ‘Pick a weapon,’ I said. ‘You might need it.’
Matt’s eyes strayed along the collection, but he shook his head. ‘I-I don’t think I could use one of those things,’ he said in a small voice. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘OK,’ I said. ‘Just stay close behind me and watch my back.’
My jacket seemed soaked through with sweat and I shrugged out of it, letting it drop onto the floor. I thumbed the magazine out of the Beretta and checked it. The standard M9 magazine held fifteen rounds and the spare was filled to capacity, too. Well, at least I wasn’t going to run out of ammunition. I shoved the spare magazine into the side pocket of my sweatpants.
The last thing I did was unscrew the suppressor from the end of the barrel and drop it onto the counter.
‘Don’t you need that?’ Matt asked. ‘I mean, to keep things quieter or something?’
I glanced at him. ‘I can do without the extra weight,’ I said.
He nodded, like that made sense to him.
‘OK,’ I said, dredging up a poor excuse for a smile. ‘Let’s get this over with.’
We moved towards the back of the store. Towards the doorway that led to the stockrooms and the gun range. Someone seemed to have moved it further away than it had been the last time I’d been there. My every step dragged and I could feel my breath rasping in my chest from the struggle with Rosalind. I was horribly out of shape, and I knew it.
Horribly vulnerable, and I knew that, too.
I’d told Matt that we could persuade Reynolds to hand over Ella, but that wasn’t true. He had nothing to gain by giving up his best bargaining tool. In reality, to get Ella back we were going to have to take her. And that could only mean a fight of some kind.
The first time Reynolds and I had clashed – at the Lucases’ house – I’d had the element of surprise and I’d physically overpowered him. I experienced that same tingle of regret, that I’d had his life balanced in my hands, literally, and hadn’t taken it.
The next time – in the apartment – he’d had all the advantages and the fact that I’d escaped relatively unscathed had been down to luck more than anything else.
This time I couldn’t afford to let him get close to me. I couldn’t afford to let anyone get close enough to tackle me, or I was going to go down and it was all going to be over. Not just for me, but for Ella as well.
Ella.
I’d killed before, but never in cold blood. The one time I’d set out to deliberately take a life, I’d faced my target and bottled out at the last moment, unable to complete what was, in effect, an execution. And somehow I’d clung to that very hesitation as though it were the final proof that I wasn’t quite the psychopath my father feared I had become.
Ella.
I could only hope that the prospect of saving the child would be the spur I needed now.
I moved forward cautiously, trying not to let my left foot scuff against the thin carpeting. All the time, I was aware that my heart rate was still too high, the thump of my blood making my hands tremble alarmingly. My head was starting to buzz as my system overdosed on adrenalin.
Not good. Not good at all.
We reached the door marked ‘Staff Only: No Unauthorized Entry’. I pushed it open and we went through.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Only
about half the lights in the front of the store had been on, and it was dimmer still in the stockroom, with the high storage racks looming off like narrow darkened alleyways to our left, and the row of solid gun safes to our right.
I was leaning heavily on the crutch to counterbalance the weight of the Beretta in my right hand. It was getting heavier all the time and the spare magazine in my pocket bumped annoyingly against my hip. I stopped and fished it out, handing it back to Matt.
He looked at it blankly for a moment. ‘Are you sure?’ he asked in a low voice.
I nodded. I was putting all my energy into focusing on what was to come and I didn’t have anything left over to formulate coherent words. Besides, how could I tell him that I doubted I’d have the strength to fire the rounds I’d got, never mind to reload?
I was going to have to make them count.
And then, from a doorway ahead of us, a man stepped out into view. He was dressed in a dark shirt with an open ski jacket over the top. He wasn’t particularly tall, quite slim, wearing gold-framed glasses. I recognised the size and the shape of him, rather than the face – Reynolds’ partner from the kidnap attempt at the Lucases’ place. The man who’d seen Reynolds captured and who had calmly abandoned him.
Cool, calculating, and not to be underestimated.
He came out with purpose, head already turned in our direction, gun in his right hand but held loosely, down by his side. Rosalind had called ahead. He knew we were coming, so we were not a surprise to him.
I saw his eyes flick to the space behind us, to where Rosalind should have been, covering the pair of us, herding us forwards. His eyes flew back to me, startled. He saw the Beretta in my hand and he started to bring his own gun up to fire, diving for the cover of the nearest wall of racking.
I stayed planted lump-like in the middle of the space between the racking and the gun safes. It felt as though I had a bloody great target painted on my chest. I had to stand and fight because I couldn’t run and hide. And I had to be totally ruthless because I couldn’t afford to let him get a second shot.
I swung the Beretta up, using my whole shoulder. The crutch was trapped tight into my armpit. I daren’t let go of it this time, but I released the handle to wrap my left hand round my weakened right, wedging my elbow hard into my ribs to stabilise my aim. As a shooter’s stance went, it wasn’t exactly pretty, but it was the best I could do.
I didn’t wait for the man with the glasses to complete his move, or give him a chance to drop the weapon, or shout a warning. I didn’t attempt to aim for an area of his body where I might wound rather than kill him, either. Most of the time, unless you’re looking at your target through a sniper’s scope, that’s a fallacy anyway. You shoot to stop, and if the other guy dies, well, at least it wasn’t you.
I was vaguely aware of a hot white flare from the end of the gun facing me, and some part of my brain registered the fact that he’d fired fractionally first. I was a stationary target, which was bad, but he was moving, which proved better.
The shot went wide to my left, close enough to my ear that I heard the highpitched whine as it passed, but that could just have been the outrageous noise of the report, bruising my ears. I sensed Matt flinch down behind me, but I didn’t have the mobility to duck myself.
As soon as I had the sights more or less levelled on the centre of my target’s mass, I pulled the Beretta’s trigger twice in quick succession, no finesse, feeling the vicious slap of the recoil through my palm. It exploded along my arm and up into my shoulder, a jolt that took my breath away. If I’d missed I wasn’t certain I could go again so soon.
I hadn’t missed. The man with the glasses stopped moving suddenly as the realisation that he’d been shot caught up with him. After the initial shock, the pain hit him hard and fast. He froze, as though by keeping quiet and still he could somehow evade it.
You can’t, friend. Trust me on this…
With a kind of disbelieving grunt, his fingers opened to let go the gun, and he folded both hands almost tenderly across his stomach.
He staggered backwards a pace. Then his knees gave out, twisting him so his back hit the gun safe nearest to him and he slid slowly down the face of it until his rump hit the floor. He was starting to gasp now. He sat there, legs splayed out in front of him, staring at nothing.
I didn’t so much lower the Beretta as simply stop making the effort to keep it raised. Without the support of my left hand, I could barely maintain my hold on the gun. The pistol grip was greasy with sweat. I grabbed the handle of my crutch so I could edge forwards. Matt was behind me like a shadow.
The man with the glasses looked up with difficulty as I reached him, like his head was suddenly too heavy for him to lift his chin. He gave a breathless little laugh.
‘Who’d have thought it?’ he murmured, wonder in his voice. He let his hands flop to inspect the blood that coated his palms, as though he couldn’t quite work out how it had got there. I saw that I’d managed to place both rounds into his stomach. One had just nicked the belt of his jeans so the leather had split and frayed. The other was slightly lower, and the blood that oozed from it was very dark, almost black. Probably from his liver, I noted with detached interest. Without a medic he didn’t have long.
His gun had fallen next to him, less than half a metre away from his thigh. Another Beretta. He seemed to have lost interest in shooting us, but I nudged it further out of his reach with the rubber tip of my crutch, just in case.
‘Where is she?’ I said.
The man’s face twisted. ‘Get me a doctor.’
‘Tell me where Ella is and you’ll get one.’
‘I need one now!’ His voice was scared but there was more to it than that. He had the air of ex-military about him, and I guessed that he’d been around firearms enough to know how badly he was hit. He swallowed, desperate not to plead with me but prepared to do it, all the same. ‘I-I can’t feel my legs.’
‘Where’s Ella?’ I repeated doggedly, shutting down the emotion that was struggling to rise, the sharp empathy with what he was going through. Behind me I heard the quiet hiss of Matt’s indrawn breath.
The man with the glasses held out a moment longer, his breathing quick and shallow, then caved. He indicated with a sideways flick of his eyes, further back into the stockroom. ‘Range,’ he said.
‘How many of you are there?’
‘Just me and Reynolds.’ He was panting now. He made a poor attempt at a smile, but there was a bitter edge to it. ‘She said that would be enough.’
I didn’t need to ask who ‘she’ was. I straightened, stepping awkwardly over his legs.
‘Hey,’ he said, wheezy. ‘What about that doctor?’
I glanced back at him without pity. ‘When we’ve got Ella, and she’s OK, we’ll call you one,’ I said. ‘And if she’s not OK, you’ll wish you were dead anyway.’
He tried to laugh again, but he was crying at the same time. The pain brought him up short, cut him off. ‘She should have finished you while she had the chance.’
I gave him a tight little smile of my own. Had everybody known but me?
‘Yeah,’ I murmured. ‘It’s a shame about that, isn’t it?’
As I hobbled away I sensed Matt hesitate next to the wounded man, torn over whether to help him or follow me. Eventually, Matt’s desire to find his daughter won out. He caught up with me within a couple of strides. I glanced at him as he reached me, just to see how he was holding up. He was staring.
‘What?’
‘How can you just leave him like that?’ he demanded in a rough whisper, gesturing backwards. ‘How can you just…?’ He tailed off, unsure what it was exactly that he wanted to ask.
You think this is easy?
I turned away, limped on. ‘You want your daughter back? This is the only way I can do it,’ I said thickly. ‘You saw what Reynolds was like with me. What do you think he’ll do to her?’
Matt didn’t answer. We’d reached the door to the range. I paused outsid
e it, swapped the Beretta to my other hand while I wiped my damp palm on my sweatpants. Never was a garment more aptly named. I touched Matt’s arm. He almost flinched.
‘If it all goes bad and you get the chance to grab Ella,’ I said, keeping my voice low even though I knew the range was soundproofed, ‘take her and get out – understand? Don’t wait for me.’ Because if Reynolds gets his hands on me again, I won’t be getting out…
Matt nodded, eyes so wide I could see the white of them all the way round the iris. He was scared witless, but he was holding it together for the sake of his child. If she remembered nothing else about him as she grew up, I thought fiercely, she ought to remember this.
The outer door into the range was on a strong self-closer, so nobody could accidentally leave it open. The last time I was there, the day I’d matched against Vaughan, it had just been part of the scenery. I hadn’t even noticed it. Now I could barely get the door open against its mechanical opposition. Matt had to lean in close and lend a hand.
Reynolds was waiting for us inside. How could he not be? As we pushed the inner door open I took in the whole scene in an instant, like the flash of a strobe, a snapshot.
He was standing on the other side of the small room at one of the firing points – the same one, coincidentally, where Vaughan had stood. Blond, good-looking and supremely self-confident, he was dressed in the same three-quarter-length tweed coat he’d worn that day on Boston Common and he was smiling the same friendly, open smile he’d given Simone at the Aquarium.
He was holding Ella so she was straddling his left hip with her little hands gripped so tight onto his coat it was like she was making fists in the rough material. He had his left arm around her body, supporting her, keeping her close. The very sight of him with his hands on her threw up a burst of white noise behind my eyes.
As we’d opened the door, Reynolds began to shift his stance, drawing his right foot back to present his left side – the side with Ella – as the target. He, too, had a semi-automatic pistol in his right hand and his grip on it was firm and strong. The gun was aimed at Ella’s head, the muzzle almost touching her downy cheek.
