The Hunt (18 page)

Back outside, the two men were still standing where he’d left them. Scott looked just as shocked as before. They watched Blondie crawling towards the hut.

Chris paused for a moment, wondering what more he could gain from this. He tilted his head, smiled apologetically. ‘Phone?’

‘Sure,’ Wes said. He pulled the phone from his pocket, lobbed it, and Chris caught it.

‘Thanks. Sorry.’ He shrugged, then set off away from the hut.

They were soon lost to sight behind him. He switched on his head torch, and before he’d moved far enough away for the storm to take him fully into its belly, he heard Blondie cry out. They were dragging him towards the stone hut.

More than anything, he hoped it hurt.

There were families. Wives and children, brothers and mothers, sisters and fathers. And beyond there would be friends. Some would know of the Trail, but probably most did not.

Every action she took in these mountains had far-reaching consequences.

The fat bastard she’d killed had paid good money to hunt and murder someone, and yet she could not feel good about shooting him. In no way did it chip at her mountainous grief, because he’d had nothing to do with her family’s murder. In a way he was as innocent as her, corrupted by the Trail simply because it had enabled his sick fantasies to come true. She didn’t care about or mourn him, but the thought of his loved ones troubled her.

They’d hear about him shot dead on a remote mountain in Wales, and perhaps they’d never know why. He’d risen the day before, maybe preparing for a business trip to the City that might take a couple of days. Kissed his wife goodbye, if they had that sort of relationship. Ruffled his kids’ hair. Then he’d left, always expecting to return, leaving unsaid things that could heal a wound or calm a troubled relationship. There were always things unsaid.

She and Adam had let many arguments fade away rather than settling them. They were always minor things, but sometimes she thought about them, really analysed, and her heart raced and her thoughts drifted, making them monstrous blots on their marriage.

She was a new person, but she still retained the empathy that set her aside from the Trail. She had to. If she didn’t remain human, she’d be just like them.

So just for a few moments, walking in the darkness, she forced herself to think about the families affected by this. And then she just as easily boxed them and set them aside in her mind. At least they could still draw breath, laugh, and cry. They were still alive.

In the darkness, the memory came again. Arriving at the quiet detached house on the outskirts of Birmingham, knowing it was the right place because she’d located Adam’s phone using a ‘find my phone’ app on the new iPhone she’d bought, waiting outside to assess comings and goings. She didn’t know then that the hunt had been called off almost a whole day before, soon after she’d dropped the tracking device into someone’s pocket on a bus, given the hunters the slip, and literally gone to ground, hiding in the city’s sewers for a day and night. She’d considered calling the police, but took the warning given to her by the woman she’d come to know as Grin seriously:
Call the police and your family die
. She knew little about who the hunters were, didn’t even know if they were still alive. Right then she didn’t care.

Creeping around the side of the house and forcing the back door open using an old screwdriver rusting on a windowsill. Waiting for a barking dog and screaming occupant, but finding neither. Entering, and sensing something wrong the moment she crossed the silent kitchen. She didn’t know then, and still had no idea, exactly what she had sensed. Maybe an unnatural silence, one honoured by the smallest creatures because this was a house for the dead. Maybe a stillness in the air, or the scent of something familiar. Family.

She found them downstairs in the basement.

On the Welsh mountainside, screwing her eyes against the unrelenting rain and wind starting to scream through the heavy darkness, nothing could make her not remember.

Adam was propped against a rack of shelving, both arms tied back to the framework at the elbows and wrists. They’d slit his throat and left him there to bleed out. His eyes were wide, head pressed back against a shelf containing a stack of
Empire
movie magazines. Ironic, because they’d loved going to the movies together. She’d spent long hours wondering what he’d seen as he died. Their children lying dead before him?

Or worse, their three beautiful children watching him die?

Molly was huddled against a damp wall, her long blonde hair covering her face. She’d liked animals and wanted to be a vet, just like her mum. They’d stabbed her behind the ear. Isaac, their youngest child at only five years old, was splayed in the middle of the floor with a halo of blood dried around his head. He had often made up nonsensical songs and drove them mad singing them again and again. He was lying face-down. It looked like he’d been thrown there, and there was something so blasé, so inhuman about that idea that it stuck with her more than the mess of his head. Alex was still holding his father’s hand. He’d loved athletics and running, and his sports teacher in school had been pushing for him to enter some of the local club runs. Maybe he’d gone to him while he was bleeding, dying. Or perhaps Adam had to hold his son while they killed him.

Her whole past and future was dead in that basement. She stayed with her family for several hours, then when she climbed the staircase and emerged into daylight, the best of her remained down there with them, forever.

Rose breathed hard, drawing cold air into her lungs. She closed her eyes and turned towards the storm, relishing the stinging sensation of rain spearing her face. Whenever she thought of her family, alive or dead, returning to reality always felt like a dilution of life. The world was an emptier place for her now. Even revenge was a fleeting thing.

She glanced at the satphone that she’d taken from the dead pilot, hunched down over the screen to prevent it from being seen. After quickly appraising her position, she switched it off again. Chris had been motionless for almost half an hour. She wasn’t letting that worry her just yet. He was probably resting, having put a good distance between himself and the hunters. Even if he
had
been injured or killed, the three Trail men were still in the mountains with her. They were still hers.

But she hoped he hadn’t. She liked Chris, and she found herself wanting him to get through this. Find his family, rescue them, make a life together with them again even after everything that had happened.

It was impossible, but she liked the crazy idea of a happy ending.

She swayed as dizziness hit her. Her whole arm and shoulder throbbed, heavy as a sack of coal, burning. She could barely open and close her right hand without searing pain pulsing through her whole limb. When it came to firing the rifle, she’d just have to grit her teeth.

That time had to be soon. She was weakening.

The storm had brought down an early darkness. The sun had almost set, and what little light it still provided was diffused and weakened by the heavy mists and driving rain. Her clothes were soaked through, even though she’d shrugged on her waterproof jacket. She shivered. The elements felt heavier than they were, urging her down to lie still and fade away. She would do neither.

But movement across the mountainside towards Chris was already dangerous, and very soon it would prove impossible. She’d taken a torch from the helicopter, but lighting herself up to become an easy target was a foolish idea. While Chris was still, perhaps she could afford to take a rest as well.

Find somewhere to hide away, take her time. Launch an ambush.

She shrugged the rifle from her left shoulder, knelt, rested it on her right forearm. And when she looked through the scope she cursed herself for not checking before.

Night sight! The hazy green view startled her for a second, then she swept the gun to the left and right and the landscape leaped into view. It was distorted by lancing rain, which looked like laser streaks across her field of vision, but she could make out rocks and slope, the darker shadow of emptiness to her left, and the green mass of the mountain above and to the right.

She could move.

Rose found herself lifted by this discovery, and she started moving faster through the storm. Doing so helped warm her tired muscles, and though she still shivered, the cold no longer seemed so bad. She considered taking the scope from the rifle and holding it to her eye, but she quickly discarded the idea. She needed it attached to the weapon. If she saw or heard anything of the Trail men closing on her, she’d need every advantage to beat them.

As she walked and climbed, the idea of an ambush grew. It was a good idea. Her plan was always simply to move forward and adapt to situations, and now she had the opportunity to take out at least three more Trail. Whether there would be more after that, she didn’t know. She’d discovered that there were at least a dozen members of the UK cell, but there was nothing to say there weren’t two or more cells at work in the same country. There was a good chance that reinforcements were already on their way, or they might even be here, closing on her from a different direction while the hunters continued to pursue Chris.

Taking the fight to them seemed to be the only logical way to go. She couldn’t run very far in her current state, and the longer she left it, the weaker and more tired she became.

And she wanted Grin.

Holding the rifle up so she could see her way, she zig-zagged up the mountain. They’d know she was wounded – they would have seen blood at the helicopter site, and would probably find the scattered dressings and first aid kit she’d left behind – and hopefully they’d suspect that she would run, a wounded animal trying to escape her tormentors.

Even though not yet cornered, this wounded animal would turn and fight.

Fifteen minutes later she found the perfect site. Beneath an overhang, a huge boulder had tumbled and come to rest leaning against a sheer wall of rock. Water splashed down one side, covering any sounds she might make. Between the boulder and the wall, a narrow gap offered a wide field of vision down the hillside she had just climbed. She could see at least a hundred metres across and down the slope, with a scope of over ninety degrees.

Wishing for something warm to eat and drink, she huddled down to wait.

Chris was running with her, taking graceful, long steps while she struggled to keep up. He kept glancing back and smiling. It was as if his own family did not have a gun to their heads. He leapt a narrow gorge and did not even pause to make sure she made it over safely. She jumped, scrabbling at the far side, fingernails shearing off and knees smashing against rock as she tried to gain purchase. When she was up and running again, Chris was just ahead of her once more.

She was puffing beneath the weight of her dead family, all of them slung over her shoulders.

‘They’ll never catch me,’ Chris said, and Rose thought,
But then your family will die
. ‘Oh, no,’ he said without turning around. ‘If they never catch me and I keep running, my family will live forever.’

Adam’s arm bumped against her side as she ran, and her daughter’s blood-matted hair scraped her cheek.

They were in the basement again, only this time her family were no longer there. A dozen Trail members were tied and restrained, and Rose walked casually around the large room with a butcher’s knife in one hand, slitting throats.

Grin was tied against the storage racking where Adam would have met his end. However many men and women Rose killed, she didn’t seem able to reach her. Grin was always one death ahead, one slashed throat out of reach.

I need help
, Rose thought.

‘You need to do it on your own,’ Holt said, and his voice was so loud, so there, that everything else that Rose could feel and sense became unreal.

She opened her mouth to reply, but she could only cough.

She snapped awake. Another cough. Something hissed in the stormy darkness, perhaps a voice berating the cougher. Rose gathered herself and focused on the place, the moment, banishing any confusion. She’d drifted off, that was all.

She remained motionless. Her wounded arm was heavy and numb, and she was okay with that. When the time did come to move, she would compartmentalise the pain, give it to the wind and the darkness, while she did what needed to be done.

Her heart beat fast, but she was now calm and clear. She was doing it all on her own.

Through the rain and wind, she heard the unmistakable sound of stone on stone. Someone was walking across the slope before her.

She’d dropped off with the rifle resting on her legs, and now she eased it up and propped the barrel in the opening. She only had to lean to the side and edge forward to see through the scope. Her right arm sang a song of pain, but she shut it out.

There. Two of them, one less than twenty metres away, the other further downhill. She shifted slightly left and right, trying not to move too much. She couldn’t see the third man.

It was definitely them. They both carried rifles in one hand. The one in front wore a casual leather jacket and jeans, and though she couldn’t see what the other guy wore, she guessed it was something similar. She might be shivering and hurting, but they’d also be tired from dragging waterlogged clothing with them, their muscles cold, dehydrated. They were as unprepared for these conditions as she was.

The lead man paused and raised something to his eyes. Night vision binoculars. Good. Though they had rifles, their weapons weren’t as well-equipped as hers.

Her time was close. She had to be quick. The first, then while the shock bit in, she’d swing a few degrees and take the second. The second shot would not be easy – he was at least fifty metres away, the storm still raged, and she’d have maybe a second to aim. She’d be shooting left-handed, but she had spent plenty of time practising. She was good. Calm, ready, eager for the kill.

She wanted nothing more.

Breathing gently, Rose lifted her burning right arm and grasped the rifle, hissing softly as if to gasp away the pain. She readied herself, aimed, stroked the trigger. The man had drawn a few metres closer. He raised the binoculars, swept them left to right, paused.

Seen me
, she thought, and she squeezed.

The gunshot was thunderous in the confined space, and her vision through the scope flashed bright green as rain and mist were stirred into violence. The rifle bucked and sent a shimmer of agony through her body, rippling from her wounded arm. She ignored it all, shifting the gun slightly down and to the left, sighting on the greenish shape that she hoped was the other man, squeezing, firing again.