Conspiracy Girl (18 page)

Before I can think about what I’m doing, I walk towards her and put my hand on her shoulder. She glances up at me with a startled look.

‘Don’t keep saying sorry. Let’s just get through this, OK?’

She nods. Her eyes are still red and her shoulder feels so slender beneath my hand that all I want to do is hold her. In the same way Nic evoked the world’s sympathy when she was plastered
across the front pages of every newspaper, she evokes some instinct in me that makes me want to protect her. My focus falls to her lips and I have to force myself to step away before I do something
stupid like kiss her.
Boundaries
, I remind myself. When will I ever learn?

‘Come on,’ I say gruffly, leading the way back to the kitchen, snatching up my bag as I go. There’s a utility room off to the side where I know my grandma keeps a stash of old
boots and coats. There’s another blizzard coming and we have ten miles to cover cross-country.

We’re just trying on boots when Nic’s head flies up. I cross to the door and glance down the hallway and out through the side window. A black SUV is coming up the track, doing at
least sixty miles an hour, bouncing over the ruts.

Shit. I turn back and slam into Nic, who is standing with one boot on and the other in her hand, staring over my shoulder, her eyes wide.

‘We gotta go,’ I tell her, taking her hand and dragging her into the kitchen. We can’t hide in the house. They’ll find us. We need to make a break for the woods.
That’s my turf. I know I can lose them in the woods.

From the front I hear the squeal of tyres and then doors slamming. Shit. I yank open the back door and Nic lets out a small whimper of protest. I turn back, seeing that she only has the one boot
on still. She leans against my arm and tugs on the other one. It’s only then I realise we don’t have jackets. I think mine is still in the car. Damn.

I glance towards the utility room – is there time to grab some? But no, my instinct is to keep moving, to get Nic somewhere safe. Adrenaline floods my body. My mind is already ten steps
ahead, picturing their moves, evaluating our best chances. They’ll circle the house, one going to the front and one to the back. They’re already probably doing that. We need to
move.

The barn is two hundred feet off. That’s the best route. If we can get behind the barn it’s only another two hundred feet to the woods. The snow is at mid-calf height, which will
slow us down. I make a decision.

‘I’m going to distract them,’ I tell Nic. ‘You’re going to make a run for the barn.’ I ignore her look of disbelief. ‘Go around it and wait for me
behind the log pile.’

Nic glances at the gun I’ve drawn, then looks at me with eyes filled with terror. I smile at her. ‘It’s going to be fine. Run on my signal, OK?’

She looks like she’s about to argue but then we hear a crunch as a foot presses down on compacted snow and she nods at me.

I edge towards the side of the house where the sound was coming from and then, looking back over my shoulder at Nic, I nod. She takes a breath and starts to run, but it’s more of a
dragging walk as the snow is so deep. I pray I’ve done the right thing, but there’s no going back now. I wait, crouched low, focusing my hearing on the area just to my right. I tuck my
gun into my jeans, not wanting to use it because I don’t have a silencer and don’t want to alert the other one to my whereabouts.

Three. Two. One. I breathe out and roll forwards. He’s right there in front of me and I’ve managed to take him by surprise. I barely catch a glimpse of his face, because I’m
focused purely on the gun in his hand. All I notice is that he’s white, about six-two, with pocked skin and his lips drawn back over his teeth. I smack his arm hard, hitting the elbow joint
and hearing a loud crack. He drops his gun with a bellow and I ram my fist into his solar plexus. He doubles over with a gasp, sucking in air like a fish on a line, and I use the leverage of his
weight to smash my other fist into his face. Blood spurts all over the ground.

He throws himself forward then, enraged and showering us both with blood. His fist slams against my shoulder. When I stagger back, he grabs for his gun. I dive for it too and for a moment
we’re locked in a struggle, the gun twisting in our hands. Pressed up against each other I catch a glimpse of his face, the startling blue of his eyes, and the only thoughts that come into my
head are that it’s neither Miles nor McCrory and that he’s fighting like someone trained in hand-to-hand combat, like a commando. But I’m a mixed martial arts pro. No contest. I
snap his fingers back and he lets out a scream, twisting away. Without warning, the gun goes off.

I fall to my knees, buckling under the guy’s weight. The gun falls into the snow as I heave him off me. The top of his skull has been blown away and I stare for a few seconds in shock at
the jagged bits of bone and globs of brain spattering the snow, bile rising up my throat.

Breathing heavily, I pick up the gun. I want to search his body for a wallet, for some sign of who he might be, but there’s no time. The other one will have heard something. He
doesn’t look like FBI, though. Didn’t fight like one either. This guy fought dirty. As I step back, something catches my eye and I lean down and tug aside the collar of his jacket. His
neck bears the faded ink of a homemade tattoo.

A gunshot makes me jerk around, my heart exploding in my chest.
Nic.
I beat a path through the snow, sprinting around the house, following the sound. Adrenaline mixes with fear in a way
I’ve never felt before. I’ve always been able to keep my head, to make rational decisions in the face of extreme danger, but as images of Nic wounded or dead fly through my mind I lose
all sense of reason. I sprint across the open ground without even stopping to glance sideways or to check it’s clear.
Please God, let her be OK
.

A gunshot rends the iron-grey sky, and I feel the whip of a bullet zipping past my ear. Cowering lower as I run, I point my gun in the vague direction of the shooter and fire back.

Another bullet smacks into the side of the barn just as I throw myself behind it. I do a rough calculation. The shooter is at the north-west edge of the house, on the front veranda. I sprint
towards the woodpile and find Nic hunched down behind it. She’s clutching a piece of wood in her hands, holding it like a baseball bat. As soon as she sees me, though, she drops it.

‘Are you OK?’ I pant.

She’s staring at me in undisguised horror and I realise I must have blood on my face. ‘It’s not mine,’ I tell her, even as her hand comes up to touch my face.

‘I’m OK,’ I say, snatching her hand and pulling her to her feet. ‘Come on!’

I push her forwards, towards the treeline in the distance, counting down the distance. Twenty metres before the fence I yell at Nic to keep going and I turn around and drop to my knees behind a
decaying old log. Nic stops and turns to look at me over her shoulder. I yell at her to keep running and she staggers forwards, uncertain, before upping her pace and struggling on through the
snow.

I turn back to the barn and watch as a shadow slips around the side. He’s sheltered by the woodpile. I don’t have a direct shot, but I fire anyway. Chips of wood fly up and the
bullet makes a thwacking sound as it embeds in the side of the barn. I count down how many bullets are left. Two. I have to make them both count. There’s no time to reach into my bag and pull
out the other gun.

I glance quickly behind me. Nic is about to climb the fence. I fire off the last of the bullets to cover her and when I see her tumble to the other side and then pick herself up and start
running again towards the treeline I breathe a sigh of relief.

Now it’s my turn. There’s nothing for it but to run and hope to God they’re a lousy shot.

With every stride I’m expecting to feel the thud of a bullet in my back, but there’s nothing, only the sound of my breath rasping in my ears. I leap the fence in a single bound and
catch Nic up just as she makes the trees. My throat is raw from the cold air and my lungs are burning.

Taking Nic by the arm, I pull her into the safety of the woods. The snow isn’t as thick here, and the silence is absolute, as though the world is holding its breath.

Glancing over my shoulder, I see a dark figure edging out from behind the wood shed and coming in our direction.

We’ve been lost out here in the woods for hours but Finn keeps pulling me on, his hand in mine, his voice yelling in my ear. I barely feel his hand or hear him any more
though. I’m numb and feel like I’m floating somewhere outside of my body. Snow swirls around us, burying our tracks. We may as well be entombed in a white coffin. We ran for at least an
hour before the snow got too thick and too blinding and our pace dropped to a slow plod. I don’t think we’re being followed any more but my brain is fuzzy and I stopped thinking clearly
long ago.

Just as I’m on the verge of collapsing, Finn yanks on my arm. ‘I see it!’ he shouts over the wind, tugging me through the now knee-high snow. I do my best to pick my legs up
and push on through the drifts, following in his footsteps even as they dissolve into whiteness.

‘Come on,’ Finn shouts over the howling wind, his hand gripping mine.

I squint but can’t see anything – the snow is flying like glass-tipped darts into my eyes. My lungs burn from the freezing air. I wonder if Finn is hallucinating – the whole
world is just white, speared through with the solid dark shadows of trees. We’re walking through static. But then it rises up in front of us – a squat log cabin looking like the rotting
carcass of some long-dead animal, black decayed bones sticking out of the ground.

Finn has to kick a snow drift out the way to reveal the door and I slump against a mound of white, sheltered by the overhang of the roof, and close my eyes. I’m so tired I could fall
asleep right where I am, but a voice in my head screams at me to keep my eyes open, to stay awake. But I just can’t. Sleep has its arms wrapped tight around me and is pulling me down. I
realise that I’m no longer cold. In fact, I feel toasty warm. I’ve even stopped shivering. The voice in my head screams louder, telling me to snap out of it and in the same instant the
voice in my head becomes Finn’s. And my body starts shaking. I force my eyes open, though it feels as if they are stitched shut.

Finn’s face is pressed close to mine, his expression fierce, he has hold of me by the shoulders and is shaking me hard, shouting at me. I can barely hear him over the sound of the wind but
it sounds like he’s telling me to move. He hauls me to my feet, his hands fisted in my sweater, and drags me forward.

And then I’m inside the cabin and the roar of the wind drops away and in the sudden quiet all the other noises seem amplified – my breathing is loud and jagged and Finn’s
curses echo off the walls as he leans all his weight against the door, trying to close it even as snow starts to drift in and pile up around the frame.

I’m propped against the wall, unable to move, watching him through a dark haze as though he’s standing in a pinpoint of light at the end of a tunnel. I want to help him but I
can’t move a muscle. With the door finally secured, Finn turns around and takes in the small, dank cabin. I do the same, but only half-consciously. All I register are two single wooden bed
frames, a wooden trunk over in the corner beside a fireplace, a threadbare rug and some kitchen cabinets, the doors hanging off them.

Finn throws a glance in my direction and yells something at me which I don’t understand. He sounds far away again and I’m feeling dizzy. I slide down the wall until I’m huddled
with my knees to my chest and then I start to shiver, violently. It comes out of nowhere. One moment I’m fine, the next I’m shaking so hard my teeth feel like they’re about to
shatter and my whole body locks as though I’m having a seizure. I clutch my numb hands as best I can around my body and tuck my chin into my chest, feeling another inviting pull down into
darkness.

Finn calls my name and through my half-closed eyes I watch him kick apart the bed frame. For a moment I wonder what he is doing. We need to sleep on those. But then I realise there are no
mattresses. He smashes his heel down again and again on it until the wood splinters, though I still can’t hear it, watching dazedly as it breaks apart. Grabbing the pieces, he tosses them
into the fireplace that’s littered with dirt, leaves and drifts of snow.

When he’s made a big-enough pile he drops to his knees and roots through his rucksack, pulling out a lighter. I think his hands are shaking . . . but after a while – I don’t
know how long – he manages to get a flame. He sets it to the rug which he’s tossed on top of the wood. It catches instantly and goes up with a whoosh that makes him scoot backwards and
me close my eyes again. The wood starts to crackle and I open my eyes to see dancing flames shooting towards the chimney. It looks like a mirage and I stare at the orange flames, my vision
swimming.

And then everything goes black and when I come round again I realise that Finn has moved. He’s on his knees in front of me, blocking the fire. With an effort, I focus on his face. I note
the snowflakes dusting his hair, the frost caught in his eyelashes and the serious set of his mouth – and then somehow I’m on my feet. With his arm under my shoulders Finn half carries
me towards the fire. He leaves me standing there, swaying, inches from the flames, my whole body wracked with tremors, and I wonder what he is doing. A moment later he is back, his hands gripping
the bottom of my sweater.

‘We’ve got to get out of these clothes,’ Finn says. ‘We need to get warm.’

I see then that Finn too is shivering hard, having to grit his teeth together to stop them from chattering. I nod, glancing down at my sweatshirt which is sticking to me like a second skin. I
start trying to lift it, but my fingers are so numb they feel like claws and I can’t get them to work properly. Finn tears off his sweater and T-shirt and I catch a glimpse of his chest
– the ridges of muscle contracted hard against the cold, his skin coated in goosebumps – before he wraps a blanket around his shoulders. Seeing me struggling he reaches out to help, his
eyes meeting mine briefly before he looks away.