Frank planted his foot on the ground once more, and looked to his left again. “Long way down,” he said.
Then he made his move.
Shirley had slipped through the trees, negotiated a stile half submerged in a snowdrift, and was now round back of the barn, if barn was what it was. She’d had in mind a wooden structure, and this was brick; but that aside, it ticked the right boxes, smelling bad and being nowhere. There were voices, too; a low mumbling exchange whose words she couldn’t make out. Didn’t sound like Louisa, but Louisa, if Shirley were honest, had never been top of her search list. If Frank Harkness were in the area, that was different. Harkness hadn’t actually pulled the trigger on Marcus, but he’d aimed and loaded the gun. And Shirley didn’t have a gun herself, but if Harkness was using this would-be barn as a hideout, she wasn’t going to let him walk away.
Somewhere inside her, a voice, not unlike Marcus’s, was pointing out what a bad idea this was.
And given time, she’d have listened. That was the thing about Marcus: he could be convincing, when he wasn’t pouring his life savings into the nearest fruit machine. And he knew a thing or two about action, having spent the upward-trajectory part of his career kicking down doors and shouting threats. So he’d have thought twice about wandering into a potential combat zone with nothing in his hands except that tingly feeling you get when your fingers are freezing.
On the other hand, consider the source. Marcus was dead, which, if it didn’t nullify every opinion he’d ever had, made him easier to ignore.
At least find a stick.
She looked around. No sticks as such, but the stile had a loose plank, which she made looser without much difficulty. If it was a little unwieldy in her hands—too short, too thick—imagine how much more so it would be in your face. That was a rejoinder to Marcus, who’d just sighed, unless it had been the wind in the trees. The voices inside the barn had continued uninterrupted. Just a quiet burble, as if a strategy were being discussed, or orders delivered. And meanwhile snow was falling, and here she was, on her own, with a chunk of wood in her hand. The sensible thing would be to stay hidden until whoever it was emerged, and if it were the Annex C team, as identified by J.K. Coe, to track them from a distance until she was able to reconnect with the others.
And not, for example, try to get the drop on them before they realised she was here.
Because that would be a good way to get killed. One Shirley; at least two bad guys. Not impossible odds, but unlikely to attract the clever money. On the other hand she still had accelerants surfing through her veins, and even without that stimulus, recognised the moment for what it was; one of those that never failed to light her candle. Brief bulletins from her past flashed to mind: capsizing a klieg light onto a parked van; firing a volley of bullets into a derelict building. Standing with her back to a church door while a crowd pressed forward, nearly crushing her to death. Anything could have happened to her by now. Those were only some of the things that had. And you never knew what was coming next.
And besides, a blaze of glory would do her fine. It wasn’t like there’d be universal grief if she never came back. A few Hoxton bartenders would miss her, along with some coke-dealing bouncers, but Shirley had been sharing her bed with an unslept-in space for too long, and there’d be no one waiting up for her key in the door. And anyway: shut up. Frank Harkness might be a badass, but Shirley was no girl guide. And there were times when an inability to manage anger had an upside.
Okay, Marcus, she whispered. Partner. Let’s see how much dust we kick up this time.
Stubby length of wood in her hand, Shirley edged round the barn towards the front.
The ground had been harder than it looked, but she was off it now. She’d been expecting a kick in the ribs but he’d been relatively gentle, if you didn’t count the punch in the head. Instead he’d produced a gun and crouched next to her, barreling it into her neck. From a distance, you’d assume she’d tripped and he was offering aid.
“Where’s the kid?”
Emma shook her head.
“We both know how this goes. You don’t want to tell me, and I don’t want to hurt you. But at least one of those things will happen. Let’s not make it both.”
She thought that was pretty good for what sounded like a second language.
Her hands were pressed against the cold earth. She tried to grasp a handful, because every weapon counts, but it was too hard, too compact.
He said, “Let’s try this. You decided to split up. You were going for help? So I know they’re back there, the way you came. Take me to them. This can all be over really fast.”
She shook her head.
He said, “It’s only the boy we’re after. I don’t even have to kill him. Just convince him he made a mistake in pretending he saw something, whatever it was. You want to hear something funny? I don’t even know what. Not my business.”
It would all have sounded a lot more reasonable without the gun poking into her neck.
“What do you say?”
She shook her head.
He sighed, and dropped the relatively gentle approach, banging the side of her head with the weapon so that Emma saw flashes: lightning brightening the trees, as if an angel were passing. But the light faded, and no heavenly messenger arrived. Pity. A flaming sword would have been nice.
“I can keep this up for longer than you,” he said. “Nobody’s coming. Don’t kid yourself about that. The place is deserted.”
Emma’s mouth had filled for some reason. Head trauma. Side effect. Little phrases, mostly relevant. She wanted to spit, but had to swallow. It didn’t taste like blood.
“One more time. Where is he?”
It was probably worth being hit again.
In the event, it didn’t feel like it.
The way Anton saw it, the clock wasn’t so much running as sprinting—if they didn’t find the kid soon, it wouldn’t be a matter of keeping him quiet so much as buying his memoirs in paperback.
One kid, two women. It shouldn’t have turned into Stalingrad.
He was in his second barn, and finding no sign of recent habitation. The first had been occupied, but only by a local woman and some of her cows: she’d been perturbed to see him, but not because he was a strange man on a violent mission; rather because it was snowing and he looked lost. Did he need feeding? For a moment, the possibility of a different life had floated before Anton, as if a doorway had appeared in the snow: he could step through it and enter a different existence. But none of that was really in the cards, so he just said something about needing to get back, and crossed that barn off his list.
And now he was in this one, and it didn’t look so different except for being empty. It contained an animal smell, though, as if it too had recently sheltered cows. He wondered where they were now. And then reached for his phone to check in with Lars, but stopped halfway.
A noise outside, round back.
He eased his gun free instead, and stood with his back to the wall by the side of the open doors.
Louisa said, “Okay, time to go.”
Lucas stood in the doorway of the shed, and looked out on the world as if it had just got bigger.
“Aren’t we waiting here?”
It seemed safe to him because they’d spent hours here. Anywhere you slept unharmed became sanctuary. But if the men looking for them had any kind of plan, it would involve checking places off a list, and they’d only be looking in those places they hadn’t searched yet. Louisa could have told him this, but didn’t think it would help. What Lucas needed was instructions; the knowledge that somebody else was in charge.