Second Shot

By the time the world righted itself, Lucas was through the door, still clutching Ella. Simone hurled herself after them, throwing the door open and disappearing through it. I vaguely heard the muffled sound of feet pounding up the stairs, lessening into near silence as the door closed almost quietly behind her. I turned and found Rosalind still crouched in her chair, seeming too dazed to react.

“Rosalind, what the fuck is going on?” I lurched to my feet, staggering as the room tilted for a moment before it steadied and I could go for the door myself.

“I don’t know,” she said. “She just went crazy, screaming at Greg over and over. Oh my God,” she spluttered, choking up. She got a grip, then said, more calmly, “You can shoot.” I glanced back, took in her white face. “Will you…?”

Shoot Sitnone? Or Lucas?

“If I have to,” I said, answering both questions. As I went through the doorway I threw a last parting shot over my shoulder: “Jakes is dead-the cops are on their way.”

I wanted to ask Rosalind what the hell had happened, who had killed Jakes and what on earth Simone had found out about Lucas that had suddenly turned her into a gun-wielding homicidal maniac. Ask? No, I wanted to scream and shout at the woman, to shake the answers loose.

I jammed my temper back in its box. There’d be time for that when the final body count was in. My job now was to make sure it stayed at one.

I went up the basement steps fast and through the ground floor of the house trying to pick up the trail. Lucas was running, apparently unarmed, carrying fifty-odd pounds of struggling four-year-old child to weigh him down. Logic said he should have made for the front of the house, for a vehicle and a means of escape, but in that brief snapshot I’d had of him in the basement, I’d seen fear written all over him. People who are afraid do not behave the way you expect them to. Yes, he’d been trained, and according to his record he’d seen action in some of the nastiest theaters of war in the world. But confronted by his daughter, with a gun, he’d reacted not like a soldier but… how?

Like a criminal? By taking a hostage, something to trade his own life for.

Or like a coward?

I turned away from the front of the house and moved towards one of the doors out onto the rear deck, which led down into the woods. If Lucas was looking for somewhere to run, somewhere to hide, instinct told me he would have chosen this direction.

I stepped out onto the deck and stopped, pressed up against the outside wall of the house and holding my breath to listen for some sign that I was right. It only took a moment before I heard it-the snap of breaking branches, a bitten-off cry, the sound of a child wailing.

I moved to the steps and jumped down into the fresh snow at their foot. The moon had risen now, shining strong enough to produce eerie shadows from the trunks of the trees. It was enough to light the ground and I could see that two sets of footprints led away from the house and into the trees. Wide-spaced prints with the deepened heel impression of people running. Lucas and Simone. I headed in the same direction, but it was impossible to follow the trail for long and I lost it within a few meters of getting into the tangle of close-knit trees.

“For God’s sake, give it up!” I shouted, to Lucas as much as to Simone, my voice stark and loud in the gathering gloom. “The cops will be here any moment.” And I hoped that they’d taken me seriously enough that it was true.

Nobody responded. I closed my eyes for a second, tried to get a lock onto the sounds of flight through the debris of fallen trees across the shrouded ground.

There!

My eyes snapped open and I started to run, heading away from the house on a diagonal course, heading up the slope with the ski run to my left. The trees turned into a forest very quickly, closing ranks as though to defy an easy trail.

Suddenly, up ahead, I saw the fleeting movement of shadow flitting between the narrow trunks. Adrenaline injected into my system, giving me a burst of speed. I closed the gap and saw that the figure was Lucas, still clinging to Ella. She’d stopped screaming now and I just prayed that was of her own accord. The thought that this man had hurt her brought a cold hard flame of fury into my chest.

“Lucas!” I snapped, bringing the Glock up straight and level. “Hold it right there or I swear I’ll shoot you in the spine.”

For a moment I thought he was going to ignore me but then he faltered, his coordination deserting him as the fear-induced strength dissipated, leaving him almost spent. I crabbed nearer, dusting through the snow at my feet, keeping the gun up, and could hear him sobbing for breath. He had no coat and it was desperately cold. He must have been almost done. But not quite.