A distant flash of head and tail lights flickered past through the trees, some late commuter headed home.
Amanda didn’t know which of them was more relieved.
‘See,’ she said, ‘this is exactly my point. Like two people decided to come to the middle of an industrial estate to get it on. Jesus, we barely know one another. And we look like we barely know one another. Any cop with half an eye open will spot that in a heartbeat. You already got a record?’
Caleb shrugged, staring out across the road and the drenched scrub of empty grass opposite, wringing his large hands.
‘Couple of assaults. A “B and E”.’
‘See? There you go. Some lookouts we’re going to be in fucking handcuffs because your boss can’t plan for shit. Fucking waste of time. Look at me,’ she opened her arms a moment to show off her outfit before hugging herself again. ‘We look like we should be on our way to a club. What’s wrong with this picture?’
‘Why didn’t you say something at the meeting?’
Amanda gave him a look.
The sound of a distant power saw rent the air. Burglar alarm circumnavigated, they were cutting their way in through the roof.
‘Why do you think?’ asked Amanda. ‘He wouldn’t listen to me. I tried talking to him after. Figured he wouldn’t take offence so long as I didn’t call him out in front of you lot. Dickhead still told me to fuck off. Now we’re sat here looking like a couple of idiots because he’s a fucking idiot.’
‘So, let’s hear it.’
‘What?’
‘Your better idea.’
‘Just the one? I can think of two off the top of my head. We either,’ she counted off on her fingers, ‘look like we work around here and we’re waiting for a bus or we hide in those bushes over there. Fuck, at least it’d be drier.’
‘Boss told us to stay here.’
‘Do everything he says, do you?’
‘He treats me alright.’
‘And if he told you to wear a tie just like his would you do it?’
Caleb laughed. ‘That thing’s fucking awful.’
‘There you go,’ she punched him on the arm. ‘Knew you’d warm up. That’s an awful fucking tie. When must he have got it, the seventies? And it probably still made him look shifty, like one of those guys on cop dramas who turn snitch.’
‘If the cops would let it near. Looks radioactive.’
The walkie-talkie under Caleb’s arm crackled and the man snapped out of his mirth to respond. ‘Yeah?’
‘Everything good out there?’ Skelton. ‘Thought I heard a car.’
‘All clear,’ Caleb responded.
‘Good. We’re bringing in the equipment. Couple more hours tops.’
‘Got you. We’ll keep on keeping an eye out.’
‘Don’t do anything we wouldn’t do.’
Amanda heard a snigger before it was cut off.
Caleb had the decency to look embarrassed. She liked him for that.
‘They’re doing this to get at me,’ he explained.
‘Yeah, I figured as much.’
‘I mean, I like women and everything—’
‘Look, you don’t have to explain. I get it. Jamison said you guys would ride me for a while. Just how teams do.’
‘Just want to meet the right girl, you know?’
‘Yes. I get it. No complaints here. You’re fine.’
Caleb nodded. She could hear the next topic coming a mile off.
‘So, Jamison. He, like, your father?’
Amanda shuddered at the word, hid her reaction behind another drag of her cigarette. ‘He took care of me when it counted. Helped me get rid of a body. Now he’s getting me work. Learning a trade, he calls it.’
A look crossed Caleb’s face, unable to decide whether or not she was messing with him. ‘So, is it true? About your dad being—’
‘Yup,’ she cut him off before he could get any further. ‘Every word.’ She nodded back toward the building. The loading bay doors would be open now, their truck backing up to unload the vault cutting equipment and, after that, start loading on the gold. ‘Your boss was one of my dad’s mates. Another reason for him not to listen to me. None of them give me the time of day. They reckon it’s like I cheated or something. But they all knew what he… what he used to… fuckers.’
Caleb nodded, looking away to give her a moment. She tried to pull herself together. Dad was five years at the bottom of the Thames now and she still hadn’t shaken the old bastard’s ghost. She was wondering if she ever would.
She could hear the question coming long before it arrived. She could hear it working its way up Caleb’s throat as he shifted in his seat. ‘So how did you—’
‘You want to get rich, Caleb?’
Nothing derails a person’s thoughts faster than money.
‘You got a job?’
‘Sure do.’ Amanda smiled. ‘This one. Arranged it with Jamison himself and he got the nod from Henderson. Way it went was, I said I reckoned Skelton was going to fail tonight but we manage it,’ she wagged a finger between the two of them, ‘we should get a bigger cut. So Jamison, he’s all “Skelton is the best in the business. I pulled all these strings so you could…” but I stuck at him until he agreed. Skelton fails tonight, we get a crack tomorrow. Come Monday, we’ll be walking away with more money than you’d know what to do with.’
She watched this sink in.
‘Look, I know he’s your boss and everything. You’ve got to respect him. But aren’t you doing that so one day it’s you at the top and everyone’s got to respect you? How about, here’s another idea: fuck that. You help me, we skip to that last part. Starting tomorrow.’
Was that the trace of a smile on those lips? Caleb leaned against the bus shelter wall, facing her.
‘Why do you think I was giving them the idea to do this on a bank holiday?’ she asked, leaning back, pleased with herself. ‘Gives us an extra day, doesn’t it?’
‘I’m not saying yes,’ said Caleb, ‘but suppose he doesn’t come out with that gold—’
‘He won’t. That inside man he had? He was an idiot. Missed out one important detail and it’s fucked them. I guarantee you, we’re going to be stuck out here all night and they’re going to come out empty-handed, talking about how they got fucked. They won’t regroup in time. Tuesday comes round, staff find they’ve been broken into, police everywhere, bang, job’s gone.’
‘But you’ve figured it out.’
‘I did some actual research. Know every detail. You’d think that would be common sense to these people but…’ she shrugged.
‘So you going to tell me or knacker yourself wanking off?’
She laughed, shocked and impressed at the balls on him. Felt good to laugh like that, she hadn’t in years. If ever.
‘It’s the vault,’ she explained. ‘More accurately it’s the cutter they brought. Not hot enough, see? They think they’re just cutting through stainless steel. But this one’s modified, security’s wise to it. They’ve put this layer of copper, see, between the plates like a sandwich.’ She demonstrated with her hands, holding the palms flat and peering through the gap between them. ‘See they melt away the steel, the copper melts faster and reseals the door quicker than they can cut.’
Caleb blinked like the news was a blow to the face. He was impressed. ‘So, what do we do that’s different?’
‘We come back in tomorrow. Won’t need as many men because we already know the burglar alarms are kaput, but we bring a burning bar. Magnesium flame. Cut through anything. Makes a lot of smoke, we’ll have to cut the smoke detectors but that’s not a problem. We load the lot in our van and away we go. We make a bit of money, a lot of respect and Skelton can be the one making out at the bus stop in his awful tie next time.’
‘And where we going to get a burning bar from? And a van?’
‘See that one parked over there?’
He looked. There was a lone van in the car park over the other side of the grass.
‘Don’t know if it’ll be here tomorrow,’ he mused.
‘I do. Because it’s mine. Equipment’s already loaded.’
‘Fucking hell.’
‘So, you in?’
‘Not planning on fucking me over are you?’
‘Not until I can figure out a way to get my hands round your throat. Shake on it?’ She held out a hand. Caleb took it. ‘Good. Now all that’s left is to sit back and watch these arseholes fail.’
* * *
‘You!’ Skelton was red in the face, one thick digit pointing as he stormed into Henderson’s office, huffing and snorting like a rhinoceros.
Amanda and Caleb leapt to their feet, adjusted their new clothes.
Caleb had just been adjusting to being there as they waited for Henderson to show, the first time he’d made it through the doors of the nightclub let alone been allowed up into the VIP area. Now he was looking like a chastised little boy.
‘You fucking fucked me.’
‘Skelton?’ Jamison called after him, running to catch up before anything could happen. ‘Skelton.’
The old man wasn’t going to reach them in time to intervene. Skelton was too angry to listen anyhow. Amanda prepared herself, trying to plan in her head what she’d do when he started swinging. She was never good at violence. It made her freeze up, filled her head with static.
Caleb took one smart step forward, fist already moving, unstoppable as a freight train. It caught Skelton straight in the face.
The man’s legs wobbled a moment before he fell backwards, blood streaming from his nose, eyes glassy looking for the brick wall he’d just run into.
The big man shook some life back into his fist. ‘Arsehole.’
Amanda grinned. She’d made a friend for life it seemed.
Who knew that in twenty-five years she’d be standing over his body?
* * *
Chapter 11
Amanda
The present – eighty-six hours to destination
Horror rose in Amanda like a tide, enveloping her triumph from the bottom up.
Reeves. It had to be.
She turned. Or tried to, her intentions breaking against her muscles like waves against rock. She was locked in place and it was only now that she realised that she’d felt Reeves taking control this whole time and not seen it for what it was.
Too late. It was all around her, threaded deep through her muscles like vines through stone, holding her in place, knelt over her friend, the murder weapon clutched in her hand.
She could sense the wrongness, the darkness, the sheer otherness of Reeves squirm in her mind.
It was the box all over again. The beating Caleb had given Reeves had only worked so long, now he’d regained some strength, was finding his way around Bridget’s wards. If she could just hold him off, fight back somehow, eventually he’d weaken and let her go.
Trying to stand, she managed no more than a shudder and a cough. Bile burned the back of her throat, felt hot on every panted breath. She hadn’t expected Reeves’ attack to be so subtle, so unlike the early experiences of her childhood when her father had forced her compliance with binding spells.
The second attempt to free herself was no better.
Reeves was finished with subtlety. Amanda felt her enemy coiling inside her, tense and strike. She heard herself wretch, her vision dimming, as Reeves swept through her, an overpowering blackness that left nothing in its wake; memories, feelings, habits shattered to splinters.
She could feel the weight of the tin in her hand, lifting for a second blow.
Teeth creaking in her gums, sweat stinging her eyes, she fought. Skin fought muscle fought bone, working against one another so hard she thought her arm would break.
She knew this. She’d spent her youth fighting like this.
But did you ever win?
She didn’t know if that was Reeves or her. Didn’t matter. Concentrate.
The tin trembled in the cold air, Amanda’s body hanging slack beneath it, like it was holding her up off the ground. There it stopped.
Steph and Skeebs slept on. That was Reeves too. Amanda could feel him holding them under, locking them in sleep.
Her vision blurred again. For a few moments she was fighting just to stay conscious. No knowing what would happen if she blacked out.
Why was she fighting?
The darkness had consumed so much. She couldn’t recall where she lived, her mother’s face, her favourite food. All that was left was a little shining pearl of will.
What was waiting for her if she won? Let Reeves have his way. Kill them. Unlock the chains. The end would come quick.
She’d be with her family again.
She brought the can down. It crashed into the floor by Caleb’s head, the impact jarring her arm up to the shoulder.
Joints glowing from the relief of it, spine cracking, tendons fit to snap, her arm rose again, this time coming down hard onto the meat of her thigh.
Pain blossomed, drove the darkness back and Amanda grabbed for the clarity that followed. The pain was hers to feel, Reeves wanted no part of it, retreated from it.
The pain was quickly replaced by anger, anger at Caleb. Why was he making her do this? After everything—
She hit herself again.
The hurt helped, clawing back more space inside herself, more room to manoeuvre, to fight back.
So she did it again.
She thought of Simon, thought of each of her kids, thought of Michaela, waiting for her.
Her right leg folded beneath her as she stood, deadened from the blows. She was drenched in sweat, trembling from effort, from the cold, from anger.
Blood was still spreading in the sleeping bag, a horrendous amount, soaking the material.
The prisoner was just as he’d always been, head dipped and arms stretched, his influence spreading like the bitter-smelling sweat from his pores.
Amanda shut her eyes as her gaze snagged on the tattoos again, feeling the tangled scrawl reaching inside her, scribbling over her thoughts. It was spiked again, unreadable.
She could still feel Reeves inside her, fighting for purchase.
The tin was still in her hand, the metal giving under her fingertips, buckled by the impacts, the label dark with sweat. She could feel that pull, like the tin and not her hand wanted to fly at Caleb’s head.
But she held it in place, her arm stiff and aching from the effort, her body wracked with twitches and tics. There had to be something she could do to drive Reeves from her completely.
The manacles hurt to look at, the symbols etched in the metal like holes in her sight, just as those on the blade had been. She forced herself to stare at them, teeth gritted and eyes watering. She’d recoiled from the blade before, there was something to that.
Caleb was bad. He’d beaten Reeves. Everything would be better once he was free.
The symbols held power. Reeves might be strong enough to slip his influence through and around them but to be in direct contact with them…
No. There was no telling for sure what it would do. Magic had its way of turning you about. What if her touching the symbols in some way negated them and gave Reeves even more scope for his powers?
Touch the symbols.
She managed a step away from Caleb’s body, her knee locked, muscles up and down her leg trembling with conflicting messages.
She had to stick with what she could trust. What could she trust?
Pain.
The air worked against her, thickening to tar as she forced herself toward the man in chains.
She fell to her knees before the prisoner, her leg screaming in protest. There were licks of pain all the way to her chest now, her breath hot as ash in her lungs. The label on the can peeled from the metal as she readjusted her grip.
The urge to bring it down on Caleb came back stronger than ever – to make sure the job was done. Amanda wouldn’t, couldn’t hold out forever.
Eyes rolling in her skull, steam hissing from b
etween her teeth, She sought an escape. But she knew what she had to do, the knowledge making her sick to the pit of her stomach. She could feel Reeves’s grin, daring her.
She’d fled when Caleb had done it, closed her ears to it. She’d spent years avoiding it, desperate not to be like her father and now…
She clenched her fist around the can, feeling the metal bend beneath her fingers as she fumbled at her coat pocket.
A couple of blows to the prisoner’s ribs, maybe another to the face that’s all it might take.
You played your hand too soon, she told Reeves. Tried when you were still too weak to overcome the symbols. Back down. Get out of my head.
Do you really think you can hurt me?
It was Reeves’ voice, cold and mocking and right in the centre of Amanda’s head.
No, she replied. I don’t think I can. She hadn’t been able to watch the violence Caleb had done in the train yard, she couldn’t do it herself now. Instead, she pulled the cigarette lighter from her pocket, brought it up to her wrist and hit the flint.
The pain was excruciating. The flame licked at her cuff, reddened her skin, reaching right into her nerve endings. She had to fight herself to keep the lighter in place.
She thought of her son, her husband, her daughters, fixed them in her mind, teeth gritted, sweating bullets, tears running down her face. She didn’t know how much longer she could—
Amanda gasped as she felt Reeves’ influence relinquish all at once. The carriage span around her, her feet struggling for balance. She snapped the lighter off and fell to the ground clutching at her burned wrist. The tin fell from her nerveless fingers.
A sigh escaped her chest like a punctured tyre. She groaned, half sobbed with the pain.
Steph and Skeebs burst awake, deep, lung-rattling gasps, kicking themselves upright against their sleeping bags.
Sparks gnawed at the edges of Amanda’s vision.
She could picture the scene. Caleb’s bag soaking through with gore, zipped up like a ready-made body bag. Amanda at his feet, the blood-stained murder weapon inches from her hand. And Reeves hanging over them, like a magician presenting his latest trick.
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