Second Shot

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 farther 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 last 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 forwards 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 adrenaline.

Not good. Not good at all.

We reached the door marked “Staff Only: No Unauthorized Entry.” I pushed it open and we went through.

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.