Fifth Victim (40 page)

Eisenberg arrived, panting, while Gleason barely seemed out of breath. She took one look at the situation, and drew her own weapon to stand guard over Hunt. Maybe Parker would offer her a job, after all.

‘Are there any tools in the truck?’ I demanded. ‘We need a tyre iron or a crowbar –
right now
.’

It was Eisenberg who obeyed without questions, skirting carefully round Hunt’s body to open the cab door of the pickup. He pulled out a scuffed toolbox and yanked the handles apart. Inside, he quickly found a hammer, long flat-bladed screwdriver and a pry bar and jumped down into the trenches without a thought to his own thousand-dollar shoes.

The three of us attacked the lid of the coffin with a vengeance. It seemed to take for ever before the last of the screws tore loose, and we could finally rip the lid loose.

I took a deep shaky breath, and looked inside.

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

Dina lay slightly on her side, her knees wedged hard against one side of the box, her back against the other. She was groggy, filthy, bleeding, in shock.

But alive.

Most definitely alive.

We lifted her out with great care. Her whole body was shaking and the tears streamed down her face, leaving tracks through the grime. There was a stained dressing covering the amputated part of her ear and, not to put too fine a point on it, she stank. Infection, I considered, was a very real possibility.

Caroline gathered her daughter in her arms and held on tight, rocking her like a child.

‘I’m sorry, Mom,’ Dina kept repeating, an edge of barely contained hysteria slashing through her voice. ‘I’m so sorry. I—’

‘Hush, darling. I know.’ Caroline Willner pressed her face into the girl’s matted hair as if she’d never smelt anything so sweet. ‘It’s all over now.’

I skimmed over Hunt with a dark gaze. His eyes were open, watchful but calm. Rarely had I met a beaten player with such composure.

Parker had his phone out and was already calling in the cops, the FBI, and the paramedics. It would not take long before this whole place was crawling with officialdom.

‘Gleason, I’d like you to go back to the stable yard and wait there for the cops,’ Eisenberg said. There was something in his tone that snatched my attention. It was too polite, too controlled. I turned and found him staring down at Hunt with smouldering intensity.

Gleason saw it, too. She opened her mouth to argue, then shut it again, and nodded. She gave me a narrow-eyed stare as she came past, as if searching for something in my face. I’m not sure if she found it, but she walked away up the slope leading from the ditch without looking back.

Parker moved closer, touched my arm. ‘You OK?’

I took a moment to reply. It was as though Hunt had opened a wound between us, and sooner or later we were going to have to swab out the grit or risk it starting to fester. But now was not the time. ‘Yeah, fine.’

He nodded. ‘I’ll go fetch the pickup. The ground’s bad for getting an ambulance up here. We’ll take Dina back to the stable yard.’

I murmured assent and, after only the slightest hesitation, he followed Gleason’s tracks. It was suddenly very quiet out there, with only Dina’s muffled sobbing and the cries of the disturbed birds circling back into the trees.

Eisenberg continued to stare down at Hunt, hands clenched.

‘You murdered my son,’ he said at last, his voice deep and rusty. ‘He was dead before you even tried for the ransom money. Why? Why did you do it?’

Hunt lifted his head up slightly. His face was pale now, bathed in sweat, and his breath came short and shallow. The bullet wound must have been pulsing like hell, but still he managed to talk.

‘What do you care? You weren’t going to give up those pretty stones anyway. Not your kid, was he?’ he threw back. ‘How was I to know he had the whole of that boat wired for sound, that he’d catch me calling Lennon and realise I wasn’t who I said I was. Little bastard was going to tell everyone. Couldn’t trust him.’

‘So this was all about protecting your false identity,’ I said flatly, ‘and nothing to do with the kidnapping scam?’

He tried to smile, but it turned into a grimace. ‘That was a bonus. These kids were playing at it. There was big money to be made, if it was handled right. They were never going to take advantage of it. So I took advantage of them. Just needed that damn kid to keep his mouth shut. Fortunately, he wanted his moment in the spotlight. Got it, too.’

‘You were never going to let him live, were you?’ Eisenberg said, sounding immeasurably tired. ‘From the moment you snatched him from the beach that day, he was as good as dead.’

The gaze he turned on me was reproachful.

If you’d stepped in
…
If you’d stopped them
…

I looked away. I had enough burden of regrets. ‘And was Dina supposed to die, too?’

Hunt gave a ‘who cares’ shrug that ended in a gasp of pain. ‘I woulda played the game,’ he said, mouth twisting cruelly, ‘if you hadn’t told me there was no chance of winning.’

‘And so you did
this
to my daughter,’ Caroline Willner said suddenly, her voice cold as steel. ‘You tortured her, and brought her here to bury her with no intention of telling us where to find her. She might never have been found.’ She took a breath. ‘In the name of God … why?’

Hunt’s laugh sounded more like a weak giggle. He was losing it, voice starting to slur. ‘She wanted danger. Excitement. I gave it to her in spades. Enough to last a lifetime, hey Dina?’

Dina shrank back at the sound of her name on his lips. Caroline Willner wrapped her arms more tightly around her daughter and glared at him. ‘I hope you die soon, young man,’ she said. Her tone was perfectly even, her diction clear and precise. ‘And I hope when you do that you are raped by every demon in hell.’

‘You got
that
right,’ Eisenberg muttered bitterly.

Caroline Willner shifted her gaze to me, and in the same detached tone, asked, ‘Do you remember, Charlie, when we first met, I asked you if you were prepared to die to protect my daughter?’

‘I remember,’ I said softly.

‘Now, after everything Dina’s been through, there is still the horror of the trial to come, and no doubt the appeals and legal arguments may drag on for years,’ she said. ‘So I would very much like you to save her from those further agonies … and kill this man.’

‘What?’ Eisenberg whispered, as much in awe as disbelief.

I looked across at Hunt. The bleeding had slowed and he was still conscious, so Parker’s shot must have missed anything vital. With medical attention on its way, he would most likely survive, and very probably recover.

He had shot me, I reminded myself. Coldly, deliberately, fully intending to kill. He had done the same to Joe McGregor. He had beaten Torquil to death, and murdered his two accomplices. He had sliced off Dina’s ear and buried her alive.

He absolutely deserved to die.

‘We’ll act as witnesses, say he attacked you – that you had no choice,’ Eisenberg said urgently. ‘Just do it. I’ll pay you – whatever you want. Name your price.’

‘Don’t be so foolish, Brandon,’ Caroline Willner snapped. ‘Charlie will not do something like this for the money. She’ll do it for justice. That’s what I want for Dina – justice.’

I hadn’t taken my eyes away from Hunt’s and saw, finally, the fear begin to seep in. I reached into my jacket pocket and brought out the Colt that Hunt had dropped when he’d fallen. Now I had a chance to study it, I saw it was a Government Model, a scaled-down .380 version of the .45 ACP. The same gun he’d used to shoot me, the day he’d trashed my Buell. I could see the irony of that was not lost on him.

The gun weighed about the same as my SIG but was more compact, with a shorter barrel and a smaller magazine capacity of just seven rounds. With one gone to dispose of Lennon, there were six shots left.

More than enough.

I thumbed off the safety and held the gun loosely by my side. Hunt shifted uneasily, not wanting to beg, but realising he may be forced into it. It took me a few seconds to realise I didn’t want him to.

I turned back to Eisenberg and Caroline Willner, flicked the safety back on and held the gun out towards them, grip first.

‘You’re both wrong,’ I said. ‘I won’t kill for money, and I won’t kill for justice, either. Die to protect? Yes. Even kill to protect if I have to. But you don’t want a bodyguard here, you want an assassin.’ I shook my head. ‘If you really want this man dead, you’re going to have to do it yourself. I won’t stop you.’

For a moment, nobody moved. Eisenberg shifted his feet, his expression a torment of frustration and grief. He didn’t have it in him to take a life in cold blood, I saw, whatever the provocation. I dismissed him.

But Caroline Willner carefully disentangled herself from her daughter’s clinging grasp, letting her hand stroke lightly across the girl’s bowed head. Then she straightened, took a step towards me, and closed her manicured and bejewelled hand around the pistol grip.

I let go of the barrel slowly, letting her get the measure of the weight and the shape of it.

‘Safety’s to the left of the hammer,’ I said, conversational. ‘Up for safe, down for fire. Use both hands and keep the front sight up. Point and shoot.’

Eisenberg turned away, almost staggering. He hadn’t the stomach to watch, never mind take part.

Caroline Willner nodded absently, as if I’d been explaining how to operate a pocket camera. She squared her shoulders, and stepped determinedly towards her prey.

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

‘I really think she would have done it.’ I glanced across at Sean. ‘That lady has a lot of spine. I’ve a sneaking suspicion you’d like her.’

Sean – lying on his back today with his head tilted slightly towards me on the hospital pillow – did not respond. He had lain without any movement at all throughout my report. I tried to tell myself that I had his full attention, the way he’d focused on me so absolutely in the past, but in truth I found his stillness unnerving. I leant across, stroked the back of his hand with a soft finger. Not a quiver.

The only reason Caroline Willner had not slotted Hunt Trevanion out there on the cross-country course was because of Dina. Bereft of the comforting embrace, the girl had lifted her head – just as her mother raised the gun and aimed it squarely at Hunt’s chest.

‘No!’ she’d cried, her voice raw from the screaming she’d done, I later discovered, when she woke from a pill-induced slumber and found herself in the middle of her own worst nightmare, just as the first shovelfuls of earth splattered down onto the lid of her coffin. ‘
Please
, Mom, NO!’

Caroline Willner had paused, her hand already tightening around the grip and trigger, and glanced at her daughter.

‘Why not?’ she’d asked simply.

Dina had swallowed, her throat working convulsively. ‘Please … don’t let him do this to you,’ she said at last, cracked and pleading. ‘I’ll remember what’s happened to me here for the rest of my life. Don’t let him do the same to you.’

Caroline Willner had stared at her for what seemed like a long time, her features very controlled. Then she’d swivelled her gaze towards Hunt, examining him minutely as though he was something she’d found stuck to the bottom of her shoe.

I don’t know exactly what she saw there, but the fire went out of her. Her hand dropped slowly to her side, and I’d stepped in, taking the gun from her unresisting fingers, thumbing the safety back on.

She’d turned, studied me with eyes that were curious and just a little afraid. ‘How do you do it?’ she’d demanded, a tinge of bitter wonder in her voice. ‘How do you make killing seem so … easy?’

‘I told her it was all down to practice,’ I said now to Sean, a half smile twisting my lips. He would have appreciated the irony of it all, but he lay waxy quiet on the sheets, so pale beneath the dark fall of his hair that it was hard to tell where the linen ended and he began.

Caroline Willner, I recalled, had been much the same colour. Shortly after I’d retrieved Hunt’s gun from her, Parker had arrived with the GMC. He’d scanned the taut faces arrayed in front of him, and seemed neither dismayed nor relieved that the status quo remained unchanged. He’d loaded Dina and her mother into the pickup and driven them away, slow and careful, across the grass.

In the whirl of police and federal agents that followed, I hadn’t seen my principal again for twenty-four hours. When I did, she was lying in a hospital bed in a private room not dissimilar to this one.

Dina had been propped up on pillows, though, alert, as well as clean and rested, with a neat antiseptic dressing enclosing her foreshortened ear lobe. She was almost as pale as Sean, but looking into her eyes, I’d seen she had attained at least a surface measure of calm.

‘I’m so sorry, Charlie,’ she’d said, her voice a husky whisper. ‘I—’

‘Forget it,’ I’d told her. ‘There’s no need. Just … get over this. Don’t let him beat you. Live large.’ I’d watched the way her hands knotted nervously with the sheets, and said teasingly, ‘I assume your mother will ask Raleigh for the return of your horses?’

That had got a response. Dina gave a lukewarm smile that could easily have turned into a sob, shaken her head slightly, not meeting my eyes. ‘He’s already offered to give them back. And she’s been … wonderful.’

I’d sighed, pulled my chair a little closer to the bed and bent low enough that she was forced to look at me directly.

‘I’m going to give you some advice, Dina,’ I’d said. ‘You don’t have to take it, but you’re at least going to listen, OK?’

A flush of colour had lit across her cheeks, a confused mash of shame and anger and sadness and self-pity, but she nodded, just once.

‘Don’t waste this experience,’ I’d told her. ‘Never forget that your mother was prepared to kill for you. That is one hell of a declaration of love on her part. And it would have been so easy for you to let her, and then you would have been blaming each other for that wretched haul of guilt for the rest of your lives.’ I held her startled gaze. ‘But you didn’t force her to prove herself to you then. Don’t make her do it later, over and over. Get past this. Move on.’