The Dark River

She returned to the house, took a deep breath, and stepped back inside. Crawling like an animal, she moved down the hallway and headed up the narrow staircase. One part of her mind was clear while her lungs struggled to breathe. Killing the Free Runners with guns or knives would have attracted too much attention from the authorities. Instead the Tabula mercenaries had drugged the three men and set fire to the dilapidated house. Now they were watching the front door and the entrance to the garden to make sure no one escaped. The next morning, firemen would find what was left of the bodies in the smoldering ruins. The local council would sell the land to a speculator and the London papers would run the story in the back pages: Three Die in Illegal Dwelling.

Maya found Sebastian in an upstairs bedroom, grabbed his arms, and dragged him down the stairs to the garden. When she returned the third time, she could see flames flashing in the darkness, burning the floorboards beneath a parlor chair, reaching up the walls to touch the banisters. There was black smoke at the top of the stairs, and she was completely blind when she reached out and found Roland’s body in the garret bedroom. Pull and stop. Pull and stop again. Sight and sound disappeared and she became a small fragment of consciousness passing through the smoke.

Maya burst out the back door, let go of Roland’s body, and collapsed on the muddy soil of the garden. After several minutes of coughing and gasping for air, she sat up and rubbed her eyes. Jugger was still conscious, talking with slurred speech about the injections. Maya touched the chests of the two other Free Runners and felt them breathing. Still alive.

She was carrying the gun, but using it would be dangerous in this neighborhood. Hollis had once explained that there were so many handguns in Los Angeles that New Year’s Eve celebrations sounded like a firefight in a war zone. In London, the sound of a gun was an unusual occurrence. If she fired her revolver, half the people living around the square would hear it and immediately call the police.

The house continued to burn, and there was a flash of orange flame as the window curtains in Jugger’s bedroom caught fire. Standing up, Maya approached the back door and felt a wave of heat pushing through the cold night air. As her breathing returned to normal, she remembered overhearing a discussion between her father and Mother Blessing about silencers. Gun silencers were illegal in Europe, hard to find and awkward to carry. Sometimes it was easier to improvise a substitute.

Maya searched the backyard and found some overflowing rubbish bins near the wall. She rummaged through the garbage until she discovered an empty two-liter water bottle and a wad of pink rubbery material that looked like carpet padding. Maya stuffed bits of padding into the bottle, then inserted the gun barrel into the opening. An old roll of tape was on the steps near the back door, and she wound it tightly around the gun and the plastic bottle. Jugger was sitting up and staring at her from the other side of the yard.

“What…what are you doing?”

“Wake up your friends. We’re getting out of here.”

Clutching her improvised weapon, she climbed back over the wall, hurried down an alleyway, and approached the back of the delivery van. A side window was rolled halfway down to let out cigarette smoke, and she could hear the two men talking.

“How long do we have to wait?” the driver asked. “I’m getting hungry.”

The other man laughed. “Then go back into the house. Some meat cooking there…”

Maya stepped up to the driver’s window, raised the gun, and fired. The first bullet blew out the bottom of the plastic bottle and cracked through the glass. The gun made a sound like hands clapping-two quick shots, and then silence.

30

An hour before his flight reached Heathrow Airport, Hollis stepped into one of the airplane toilets and changed his clothes in the cramped space. He felt conspicuous returning to his seat wearing a navy blue shirt and pants, but people were groggy from the overnight flight and no one appeared to notice. His old clothes were stuffed into a small bag that would be left on the plane. Everything he needed to enter England undetected was inside a manila envelope that he carried under his arm.

During his last few days in New York, Hollis had received an e-mail from Linden telling him that his work was done and it was time to come to England. The French Harlequin wasn’t able to find a merchant ship that would illegally transport Hollis to Europe. It was possible that the Tabula had inserted Hollis’s biometric information into the security data bank that fed information to customs officials throughout the world. When Hollis arrived at Heathrow Airport, he might activate a security alert and be detained by the authorities. Linden told Hollis there was another way-an off-the-Grid way-to enter Britain, but that would require some skillful maneuvering at the terminal.