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CHAPTER
THIRTY-THREE

Life, of course, rarely resembles a fairy tale. Popular fiction would have us believe that every cloud has a silver lining, every story a happily-ever-after. Gallant princes on white chargers routinely overcome the powers of evil for the love of enchanting, blue-eyed princesses in distress. Ordinary men beat extraordinary odds to save the world and get the girl, their victory marked by a crescendo of violins and a slick one-liner. And then she tells him he needn’t have bothered because he had her at “Hello,” and there isn’t a dry eye in the house.

Out here in the real world, though, clouds only exist to make rain, and only catastrophe makes the news.

It was the distant echo of an engine that foiled my happy ending, just as Erica put an end to her own.

I heard the sound as Rachel calmly closed the stairway door and took me by the hand to lead me from the garage. It rattled through the trees, barely audible above the roar of the rain on the driveway and the white noise of anxiety in my head. On any other day, my evaluation of its significance would have been immediate and instinctive. Today, though, it bypassed my subconscious and arrived in my frontal lobe as a curiosity, demanding analysis: its distance from the house and direction of travel, the cause and effect of an uninvited guest. A hundred yards along the winding driveway, or a mile and a half away, speeding across the heath? In the forest in a downpour, it’s impossible to tell. Indeed, the only question I failed to ask was whether I already knew the answer.

The answer, though, was unimportant, because it was the question that engaged my senses, occupied my conscious thoughts and pulled my gaze back over my shoulder. Such was the extent of my distraction that as the sound grew louder and my efforts to pinpoint it greater, I barely heard Rachel speak. I didn’t even notice when she stopped dead in her tracks and tightened her grip on my hand. It wasn’t until I blindly passed her by, and she pulled me up short at the end of her reach, and I caught the look of incredulous horror on her face that it occurred to me there might be a problem. By the time I turned around, it was already too late to avoid it.

I knew what was about to happen even before Erica. I’d seen the look on her face too many times, a look that preceded impulsive, unthinking violence. The hateful fury in her eyes was borne out by her purposeful stride, the tension in her wrist, the tight coil of her index finger as she raised my snubnosed .38 and aimed it at Rachel’s chest. I knew without question that she was going to fire.

“You fucking spineless bastard!” she screamed, squeezing the trigger as I whirled around and threw myself in front of Rachel. The gun roared once, twice...a powerful thump and searing heat in my upper right arm, and then shards of splintering pain as a third shot clipped my shoulder. Rachel drew herself in, ducked her head behind her arms and huddled, gasping, close to my chest as Erica’s fourth bullet whistled past my ear.

I screamed, clamping my eyes shut and gritting my teeth against the pain, throwing my hands behind my head and waiting for the final, decisive shot. For a split second, I even wondered whether I’d hear it.

I didn’t. What I heard was the tortured clatter and whine of a stressed turbodiesel and the rasping scrabble of locked-up tires. I heard Erica squeal as she skated to a stumbling halt. I heard doors thrown open, the crackle of a two-way radio and Ali Green’s voice shouting, “Erica! Put it down! Put it down now!”

I held my breath, searched the silence behind me for any sign of intent. Heard only rain.

“Erica, put the gun down. Put it down and talk to me, okay? Look...I’m unarmed.”

I looked. Twenty yards away, a white Ford Focus, Green crouched behind the open driver’s door, peering through the glass with her hands to the sky.

I could feel Erica behind me, hear her breathing now as it grew ragged with panic. And then, a reprieve; the slap of the gun against soaked denim as she dropped her aim.

“That’s it. All the way down, sweetheart. Drop it on the ground and back away.”

A metallic clatter as Erica released the gun; a sob and a graunching thud as she fell to her knees.

Green stood, mouthed the word
Quick
as she gestured to me to send Rachel across the driveway. “Good girl, Erica,” she shouted. “Just stay where you are.”

I gripped Rachel’s shoulders and tried to ease her away from me. “Go,” I told her. “Run. Get behind the car.”

I couldn’t move her; she clung to my shirt, her body rigid and trembling. “I don’t think I can,” she gasped.

“Yes, you can. I’ll be right behind you.”

She looked up at me, eyes wide with an almost apologetic fear. The rain mingled with the blood splashed across her face, a dozen vivid streams trickling over her pale cheeks and running down her neck, darkening her collar and soaking into the front of her jacket, collecting in a widening pool at her feet where it met the staccato drip from my arm. It flowed over and among the stones, jumped and danced with the raindrops; a thousand dark rivers, their pale extremities straying ever farther until the ground beneath us swam scarlet. And as the puddle grew, so, too, did the notion that this was too much blood, that it was somehow greater than the sum of my wounds.

The pain was intense, but it wasn’t overpowering; I could feel the tension in every nerve, every muscle in my body, and I knew I hadn’t overlooked some gaping hole or severed artery. And yet this insight offered no relief from the bitter dread churning in the pit of my stomach, because the blood was still flowing, and Rachel’s face had turned a ghostly white, and she was shaking her head and saying “I can’t” as she clutched at my arms for support. And as hard as I tried to convince myself otherwise, the front of her jacket grew darker by the second, a heavy, glistening stain spreading from a tear in the fabric at the center of her chest.

My pain was instantly forgotten, displaced by this morbid realization. I hooked my arms under hers, struggled for balance as her knees tried to buckle. An urgent “No” was all I could force from my mouth.

She held my stare as her breathing slowed, and her grip on my arms weakened and then, as the strength left her body, her legs folded beneath her, and she slumped between my arms to the crimson driveway, pulling me to my knees as she fell. I made some reflexive move to press my hand over the hole in her jacket but the blood was spreading from beneath her faster than it surged out over my fingers, and I knew I was powerless to stop it.

So, it seemed, did she. She tried to speak, but her efforts, like mine, were in vain; her words gave way to a faint gasp, carried out on a fine mist of blood. Instead, she simply took my hand and, with the slightest trace of a smile, eased it from her chest. In that moment, a single second stretched seemingly to eternity; she had no need for words. I read in the last defiant sparkle of her eyes everything she wanted me to know: sorrow and loss, anticipation and hope, fear, longing and love. And then, as suddenly and as finally as I came to understand all of these things, the light on them flickered out. Rachel’s gaze and her fingers slipped from my own, and her body settled to the ground.

I closed my eyes, and my mind fell silent. When I opened them, the spinning had stopped. There was no spiraling panic, no train of reason careening out of control. In that moment, I was completely alone.

Green broke the silence with a cry of “Shit!” as she bolted from the car. My ears flooded with sound: the crackle of the rain, the pounding of footsteps, a muffled male voice barking instructions into a radio. Distant sirens. The slamming of a car door. And above them all, the breathless whimper of a broken soul.

I craned my neck to see Erica rocking on her haunches, her chest heaving, her face contorted with horror. As I looked into her swollen, red eyes, she shook her head
no
and let out a tortured wail; grabbed handfuls of her hair and pulled her face down to hide behind her knees.

Green was with Rachel in a heartbeat, bumping and elbowing me and muttering “Come on, come on, come on,” as she worked to revive her.

“She’s gone,” I said.

She ignored me, her hands making a sickening squelch as she pumped Rachel’s chest. “Keep pressure on that arm,” she said. “The ambulance is on its way.” She raised her voice. “Erica, honey, listen to me.”

Erica glanced up from her lap, her fetal form shuddering uncontrollably. The gun lay on the ground behind her, well within her reach.

“I want you to do me a favor and lie down on your front for me, okay?”

Erica looked at me as if seeking my approval, though she surely knew that while there were still bullets in the gun and breath in my body, I wouldn’t allow her to be taken in for a debrief and a plea bargain. And if shock denied her the initiative, I was damn sure I could outpace Green in a twenty-foot lunge, with or without both arms.

As quickly as I plotted my trajectory, though, the matter was out of my hands. The voice from the car had become a shadowy figure at the corner of my eye, darting across the driveway while Erica’s eyes were lowered. He skirted the far end of the Transit, silently rolling his footsteps as he approached her from behind. He clutched a telescopic baton in his right hand, his left flung out to the side as though clinging for balance to an invisible rail. His face was bunched in concentration, his clean-shaven chin twitching as he chewed the inside of his lip. A mouse wouldn’t have heard him coming.

Erica, though, had no need to hear him; despite her hysteria, she reacted instantly to my shifting stare. She spun around to face him and was on her feet before he could blink, the gun dancing about in her outstretched hand. “Get the fuck back!” she screamed. The detective’s eyes bulged, and he skipped backward with a startled howl. “Get on the floor!”

“Oh, God...” Green clambered to her feet and stepped around me, planting a protective hand on the top of my head. “Erica!” she yelled. “Don’t be stupid! Put it down!”

“Get on your fucking knees,” Erica growled, the revolver inches from the man’s face.

“Kevin, do as she says.”

He dropped to his knees in front of her, staring wide-eyed into the barrel. “Please don’t,” he stuttered, dropping his baton.

“Erica, just calm down.” Green took a step toward her, body open, palms upturned. “He’s not going to hurt you, and you’re not going to hurt him. Just point the gun away from him, okay? He won’t make a move. Right, Kevin?”

Kevin nodded, his eyes pleading. “Right,” he whispered. “You’re all right.”

“This is the only chance you’ll get, Erica. Can you hear those sirens?” They were audibly closer. Monsoon or no, some sounds just don’t lie. “There’s an armed response coming. Men with guns. Do you understand?”

Almost doubled over, frantically gulping down lungfuls of air, she moved behind Kevin and pressed the revolver against the back of his head. “You’re not taking me away,” she sobbed.

“They’ll shoot you. If you don’t drop the gun, they’ll shoot you dead.” Green was rock-steady as she took a final step toward the weapon. “I mean it,” she said. “You need to give it to me now.”

Erica shook her head, and the gun with it. Her aim swayed every which way and for a brief moment, I thought she might buckle. She looked in turn at Green, at Kevin and at the revolver in her hand, and her panic began to subside. She relaxed her grip and slowly lowered her arm.

Green reached out to her. “There’s a good girl,” she said. “Just lay it on the ground and come here to me. Everything’s going to be okay.”

She almost did it; would have, had she not looked to me first for some kind of validation. She found none; what she got as I raised my left hand was a clear instruction. I folded my fingers to the shape of a pistol, pressed the barrel to my temple and with one shot erased the doubt from her mind.

I was a fool to expect her to obey. That she’d burned her bridges would be unquestionable even to the most ruined mind, but the survival instinct is engineered to withstand the power of suggestion. “I’m sorry,” she cried, drawing back the gun and whipping it down hard on the top of Kevin’s head, and as he crumpled to the ground with his hands clamped over his gushing scalp, she leveled it at Green’s face and screamed, “You’re not putting me back in a cage!”

With nowhere to go, Green simply turned away her head and closed her eyes, and I did the same as Erica squeezed the trigger.

CHAPTER
THIRTY-FOUR

It should have been an easy reprieve; a five-minute window of opportunity before the cavalry arrived. Five minutes to satisfy my lust for Erica’s blood and ensure that only the uninformed and the unsuspecting knew my name. Four fallen. One survivor. A deranged murderess, slain by her own hand. A clean slate for the price of a hole in my arm and a couple of dead coppers. Convenient? Without a doubt.

The mind, though, is a curious thing. A simple “No” was all it said; the whispered answer to a question I didn’t hear myself ask.

Ali Green had looked me in the eye and had cared whether I lived or died. She’d been prepared to step unquestioningly between me and a loaded gun. And I was willing to sacrifice her for the sake of my own convenience? Like hell I was.

My throw was scattershot, the handful of blood-soaked gravel exploding in the air and most of it missing Erica’s face, but it was enough to make her recoil. She clenched her fist and the hammer fell, the shot answered not by a fountain of blood and brain and skull but by the sharp crack of splintered garage roof tiles.

Green reacted instantly, snatching for the revolver with her left hand and driving the heel of her right into Erica’s nose, knocking her clean off her feet. She followed her down, kneeling hard on her chest and pinning her to the drive by her throat. “Let it go!” she barked, screwing her thumb into the base of Erica’s wrist and then squealing in pain as, in return, Erica sunk her five free talons into the detective’s face. Green released her stranglehold to pull the claws from her flesh, and then she was in trouble; with all of her weight on one hand, it only took a buck of Erica’s hips to throw her off balance.

Erica pitched her assailant sideways, kicking her leg up against Green’s head and slamming her to the ground. “Get off me,” she screeched, her wrist still held firm, the gun pointing aimlessly up at the sky as Green rolled onto her back and doubled her grip, elbows locked, fists clenched, knuckles white.

I found my feet, staggered upright as Erica raised herself to her knees and drilled her fingers into Green’s armpit, throwing her weight against her arms, growling dementedly as they began to tremble and bend. “Let me fucking go,” she cried.

I was behind her then. Her breath caught in her throat as I curled around her, enveloping her body. I felt her skin draw tight as I pressed my cheek to hers, hot and slick and smooth but for the faint trace of Kerry’s scar. “No more,” I said, and I pulled with the last of my strength.

Erica sucked in a startled gasp as I dragged her clear of Green. She threw her hand to my face, held it tight against her own as I staggered back against the side of the van. She stumbled free as I released her; watched in shock as my legs gave way and I spiraled to my knees. She shook her head and cried, “No!” and tried in vain to catch me.

“It’s over,” I rasped, grimacing against the pain. “Forget about her. You’ve got one shot left. Don’t waste it.” I could hear Green’s protests, feel her horrified stare boring into me as she lay motionless in the gravel, but I was way beyond concern for her approval. I’d made my choice; fate had one last shot at my atonement, its sole bearer the last woman standing.

She looked down at the gun, opened the hand that held it and gazed childlike and bewildered through her tears as though seeing it for the first time. And as righteous as I longed to feel in my vengeance, and as hard as my hands ached to tear a tunnel through her flesh and wrench the stolen life from inside her, my face flushed with shame, and my stomach turned sour at the thought of any more blood shed on my account. This, all of this, was down to me; Erica’s finger was on the trigger, but I couldn’t pretend I hadn’t put the gun in her hand. Deny as I might, I wanted only to see her go free, whatever the consequences to me. I didn’t want to watch her die, and she knew it.

I didn’t have to tell her to go; she saw it in my eyes, in the sadness with which they flickered toward the door of the van. Her nod of understanding was barely perceptible, but it speared the tension from my body, tipping me back onto my heels. “Sorry.” She sniffed, taking a shuddering breath and wiping the tears from her eyes. “I’m going now,” she said, turning the gun back to Green. “I won’t miss you again. If you try to stop me, I’ll shoot you in the face.” Then she pulled open the door and tossed in the gun and said, “Just like I did your mate.”

My heart stopped. Erica looked down at me, conspiracy drawing her lips into a sad half smile. “Bye,” she breathed. And then she was in the van and turning the key and crashing the gearbox and gunning the engine and gone.

“What the fuck did you just do?” Green scrambled to me on her hands and knees, panting, her face scratched and bleeding. “God, your arm...”

I held it out to her; my hand was coated crimson, my fingertips dripping blood at a bothersome rate. “It’s all right, I’ve got another one,” I said, but neither of us found it funny.

“Don’t try to stand,” she said, clambering to her feet and heading for her car.

I wanted to defy her, to get up and run screaming to the woods, to bury myself in the dirt and bleed quietly to death; anything not to face the catastrophe I’d brought about. But there was no chance. The driveway was spinning, and I didn’t know which way was backward. I had little of anything left in me.

I sat and watched the van bounce across the field, growing smaller and smaller until it finally melted into the trees. There are no logging trails or farm tracks out there; Erica would soon be on foot, and she was out of shape in every way. She was running blind, the territory alien to her. There’d be dogs here soon, and marksmen; trained hunters and killers, and none of them willing to take a chance with a cornered animal. I closed my eyes and prayed for her to find her way.

“Ambulance is going to be twenty minutes.” Green knelt down beside me, rummaging in a medikit she’d retrieved from the car. “Hold still,” she said. “Try to relax it for me.” She pulled a pinch of shirtsleeve free of my arm and pierced it with a pair of scissors; tilted her head from side to side and rolled her jaw, obviously in some discomfort as she peeled the fabric away from the wound.

“You okay?” I groaned, my voice suddenly weak.

“Yeah. Bit deaf, but I’ll live.” She wound a length of gauze around my arm, pulled it tight enough that it made me flinch, pinned it in place and tossed the bag in the general direction of Kevin, whom I could hear lazily vomiting behind me. Then, as she regarded her work with a curious mixture of pride and consternation, plucking a stray thread and fussily straightening the edges, she cleared her throat and quietly said, “Thanks to you.”