Jessie followed her. As Justine watched the two women race up the staircases, Roni on the left and Jessie on the right, she heard a small explosion and the sound of glass shattering.
“This way,” Roni said. They ran into a corridor leading off to the right.
The children whimpered and cried as they all dashed past a number of bedrooms before reaching a master suite at the very end of the corridor. They bundled inside and Roni shut and locked the door.
Justine heard heavy footsteps on the stairs and the low indistinct sound of whispered instructions.
“They’re coming,” Roni said in a low voice. She ran to the front window. “I’m going to jump,” she said, looking down. “You need to throw the children down to me and then jump after them.”
Danny sniveled and Maria wept.
“We’ve got to do it, kids,” Beth whispered fiercely. “I bet it’s not even that high.”
Justine heard a door being kicked open further along the corridor. They were checking all the bedrooms.
“Come on,” she said, pulling Maria over to the window.
The girl resisted, but Justine was insistent. She knew they had no choice. If they didn’t get out in the next few seconds, all would be lost.
Jessie moved into position by the door and covered it using Taft’s Glock.
Roni holstered her pistol, opened the window and climbed onto the sill. She looked down one last time and dropped. Justine heard a thud and a groan, but when she looked down, Roni was on her feet and had her arms held up to catch the children.
Justine helped Maria onto the sill. “Just don’t look down,” she said.
Maria whimpered and Justine said an inward prayer for forgiveness as she pushed the girl clear. Maria cried out as she fell, but Roni caught her.
Gunshots erupted behind Justine. She turned to see Jessie’s gun smoking and two bullet holes in the door. Jessie signaled there were people on the other side. Justine could hear movement.
“Come on,” she said, trying to control her rising panic.
Beth helped her lift Danny onto the sill.
“Don’t be scared, Dan,” Beth said. “Maria’s done it.”
He turned to face the opening, and Justine pushed him. He squealed as he fell, but hit Roni as intended and the two of them tumbled into the snow.
“Go,” Justine told Beth. She clambered onto the sill and jumped without hesitation.
Jessie fired another couple shots through the door.
“Let’s go, Jess,” Justine said, urging her colleague over.
Justine heard a gunshot then a scream. She looked down to see Roni clutching her chest and staggering before she fell to the ground. Three masked men were dragging Beth, Danny and Maria away.
Jessie ran over, but there wasn’t a clear shot.
“We can’t go out that window,” she said. “We’ll be picked off as we hit the ground.”
She ran back to the door, stood to one side, flung it open and peered round the frame.
“It’s clear,” she said.
She waved Justine forward and the two of them hurried through the house. They met no resistance. All the rooms were empty. They ran down the stairs, Justine feeling a renewed wave of nausea as they passed Taft’s body. They got outside just in time to see Beth being bundled into an unmarked white van at the end of the drive. Before the side door was closed, Justine caught a glimpse of Maria and Danny inside, both held by masked men. The door slid shut and the van sped away.
Justine ran to the Nissan.
“It’s no good,” Jessie said, indicating the wheels of the SUV and the adjacent Suburban.
All four tires on both cars had been slashed. They’d be next to useless in normal conditions, but completely out of action in the snow.
Justine fell to her knees. Jack was dead, and now Beth and the children had been taken. The crushing weight of defeat bore down on her and made her feel as though she couldn’t breathe. Her whole body shuddered and shook. When she was finally able to draw breath, she started to weep and felt as though she might never stop.
Chapter 59
Drifting through darkness, I wondered if this was death. But where at first there was nothing, I suddenly saw her face: Justine. I came round to pain. I felt as though I’d been to hell and back. My ears were ringing, my head throbbing with pulsating waves of pressure. Acrid fumes had burned my sinuses and my lungs had been stripped raw. All I could taste was high explosive and smoke. Every muscle in my body ached as though pummeled by giant meat tenderizers. Even my bones felt sore. I had no idea whether I’d been blinded or if it was genuinely as dark as the grave.
Then there was sound and light. I turned my head to see Joshua Floyd holding up a windproof lighter. The flame seared my eyes and I looked away, turning toward a mass of tumbled rocks. Then it all came rushing back. We’d caught the edge of the first blast and it had flung us against the rockface at the base of the mountain. The explosion had dazed me, but Floyd was alert to the fact it had thrown us almost exactly to the place he’d been running for. He’d grabbed me and pushed me into a narrow opening in the rock I would never have noticed on my own. Together we had scrambled further into this cave a split second before the second explosion hit. The rocket blast had shaken the mountain and caved in the entrance to the tunnel, but the rock-fall had at least protected us from the flames. We’d felt their heat all around us. For a time the cave had become like an oven. The fierce temperature had done something odd to the air and, feeling suffocated, I’d blacked out. My last thought had been of Justine, and she was the first thought that had greeted me on waking.
I turned back to Floyd and we grinned at each other like a couple of idiots.
“I owe you,” I said.
“It was dumb luck,” he replied. “If I hadn’t found this place last night, we’d be a couple of briskets out there.”
“Dumb luck or design, I still owe you.”
“You OK?” he asked.
“I think so. You?”
“Probably about the same,” he replied. “That was intense.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Did Beth really send you?” he asked, groaning as he rolled onto his knees.
“Sort of,” I replied. “I was initially hired by a man claiming to be her father.”
“Her dad died years ago.”
“I didn’t know that. Turns out the guy posing as him was part of the group hunting you. So this is me making good.”
Floyd looked worried. “Are my family OK?”
“They’re fine. My colleagues have them somewhere safe. If we can get out of here, I intend to take you to them as soon as possible.”
Floyd nodded. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” I said. “The rescue mission didn’t start well.”
“We’re still alive, aren’t we?”
“Let’s keep it that way. Want to see if we can dig our way out?”
He nodded, put the lighter between two stones to keep it upright, and we crawled over to the tunnel mouth and started moving rocks.
“The intelligence reports suggested you were killed in the attack at the crash site,” I said. “There were believed to be no survivors.”
Floyd stopped digging and I saw him bow his head. Even though his face was lost in shadow, I could sense his pain.
“I lost a lot of friends. Brothers...” he trailed off.
“I’m sorry. I know that pain myself. Before I was a private investigator, I was in the Marines. I was a pilot too — I flew Sea Knights. I was shot down in Afghanistan. Most of the men I was carrying were killed.”
He lifted his head to look at me. “I keep playing things back. Could I have done anything differently?”
“I know that one too.” I had reached a heavy boulder. “Give me a hand, will you?”
Floyd shuffled over and the two of us strained to shift a piece of rock not much smaller than an oven. Our sinews stretched and our breathing grew labored as we dragged the obstacle clear of the tunnel and rolled it behind us onto the damp earth of the cave. We were rewarded with the appearance of a shaft of moonlight about the size of a human head.