Landon flips to it and sees the name Harriet circled in pencil. “Who was she?”
“Not a who, but a where.” John swerves again to overtake a car. “It refers to Mount Harriet—the old name of Dempsey Hill. The plantations there were your sustenance; they kept your family alive in the early days.” He enters the highway and accelerates. “Your current home in Clacton is not your family plot, but one that was transferred to you under the protection of another faction.
“In other words,” John turns briefly to him, “your real family plot has been in Dempsey Hill all along.”
Landon’s expression sours at the revelation. “FourBees…”
John retrieves a folder from the dashboard and hands it to him. “Inside you’ll find an old record of a Seer who transferred the Clacton property to you. He had acquired the final site in Mount Harriet through Hoo Ah Kay, who had earlier won it from a “certain destitute young man who chalked up a prodigious amount of debt”. We matched them against the clues from your diaries and found out it was you. A clever move to safeguard the property. Do you remember the name Origen?”
Landon looks despondently out of the window and shakes his head.
“Your time is up, Landon.”
“I know.”
“And you’re getting all chummed up with her?”
“She said she’ll work something out!”
Unbelievable. John looks away and snorts the ingenuous remark.
“Don’t get all self-righteous on me, John.” Landon drives a finger in his direction. “She told me all about Internment and that you’re as much a killer as she is.”
John alternates between braking and accelerating as he weaves through the traffic and overtakes one vehicle after another.
“You’re all the same, aren’t you?” says Landon. “And that you’re going to take me to a safe place to milk me dry and then murder me?”
John says nothing.
“Where’re you taking me?”
“Away from her.”
“Cut the crap, John,” Landon seethes. “Where exactly are you taking me?”
John realises there is no better way of putting it. “Some place safe.”
An invective slips out of Landon in a bitter laugh. “You’re not a bodyguard.”
“I never said I was one.”
“So you’re going to kill me?”
“No.”
“But you are going to let them milk me?”
“Possibly.”
Landon throws back his head in despair and closes his eyes. “Just how are they going to milk me, John?”
No response.
“HOW THE HELL ARE THEY GOING TO MILK ME?”
“I don’t know.” John relents. “I’m only tasked to keep you alive.”
“You’re one big walking lie, John.”
“I withheld some truth.” John’s tone is calm, icy. He checks the rear-view mirror and veers hard to the left, causing Landon to lurch. “But that doesn’t make me a liar.”
“Yeah?” A vein surfaces just beneath the skin of Landon’s neck. “So you think I’m the hare between two hounds? You think I can’t bail if I have to? Where in all your shitty lies can I find a single bit of truth, huh?”
John watches him from the corner of his eye. “Take your hand off the door handle.”
“Answer the question, John. Tell me one truthful thing you’ve uttered.”
“My sick daughter,” says John.
Landon suddenly feels beaten. He throws himself into the seat and draws his hands miserably across his face. “For two centuries I’ve been running from some invisible threat and I’m so darn tired of it. If you’re going to kill me just do it now and be done with it.”
John whips out a small holstered pistol from the side of his seat and hands it to him. “A token of trust. Strap it to your ankle. It’s cocked and ready to go. Safety’s where your right thumb is.”
“What if you’re ordered to dispose of me after I’m milked dry?”
“I gave my word to keep you alive.”
“Over your daughter’s life?”
John pauses in calculation, all the while checking his rear-view mirror and veering evasively. “I’ll work something out, Landon. I promise.”
“Oh, hell,” Landon exclaims wretchedly. “That’s what she said too!”
A sudden jolt yanks his head backwards, and with it comes a crash of metal and plastic. He strains over his shoulder just in time to catch a tailing vehicle drive headlong into their bumper. The impact briefly sends the rear of their car skidding.
They are ascending a highway ramp. From the pitched roofs of waterfront condominiums on the right and the luminous blue observation wheel on the left Landon knows they are now travelling west along the East Coast highway. Another bump sends the car swerving dangerously close to the rushing barriers on the left. They smell burning rubber.
“What the fu—” Landon whips back front. “Why didn’t you see that?”
“Watching it the whole time,” says John. “It’s been tailing us since we left.”
Landon braces his arms against the dashboard. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Didn’t want to frighten you.”
John is leaning so far forwards that his chin is almost touching the steering wheel. The tailing vehicle—a large pick-up truck— accelerates and pulls abreast, and Landon finds Hannah in its driver seat, her predatory gaze bearing down on them.
The truck suddenly swings left and ploughs into their side, sending the side-view mirror spinning off into the night. The right wheel protests in a scream of grinding metal.
“Hold on to something.” John swings his car right and brings it hard into the truck. Hannah counters the move by turning into John and equalising the force of the impact.
John wrestles the steering but fails to keep the car in the lane as another jarring impact sends it into the side barriers. Metal grinds concrete and sparks fly beautifully. Another jolt shatters the window and John cowers at the shower of crystalline chips. “You get the point now?” he snarls at Landon, his expression now livid and ferociously leonine, like a rabid vampire. “This her way of working something out?”
“Just shut up and drive!”
Hannah pulls the truck farther apart to gain momentum, and bears it down on their car so hard that the impact tilts John’s car and leaves it limping momentarily on two wheels before falling back on its suspension. Once more the truck peels away and swings round for another collision. John turns the wheel this way and that to counteract the centrifugal forces. But this time the impact drives the car up the barrier and crushes its left corner. The steering becomes sluggish as blow has cripples the right wheel.
“Roll down your window!” John instructs and leans hard into his seat.
“What for?”
“Just do it, you idiot!”
For the third time Hannah banks away, even farther this time.
The traffic around them has lightened and an empty lane now separates them. In the abundance of manoeuvring space the truck begins its approach, turning so sharply it faces John’s car in an almost headlong position.
John abandons the steering, hugs his head and ducks towards Landon, forcibly pressing him down sideways into his seat. The truck’s one functioning headlight floods the interior of the car, and the next instant everything explodes in a terrific din. The side of the car caves in upon impact. Vision blurs and jaws rattle.
The jolt alone would have snapped their necks if they weren’t lying across their seats. Arthur feel the crush of the bonnet as it strikes the low concrete barrier. Grey dust billows through the shattered windscreen and fills his nostrils. A nauseating sensation of weightlessness comes after, and the wrecked car sails through the air and plummets towards the Marina channel.