Long Time Lost (29 page)

Miller stepped up on to the porch of the chalet through the curtain of rainwater dribbling down from the swamped gutters just as Melanie bundled the kids through the front door. Kate came out behind them, buttoning a huge suede overcoat that looked as if it belonged to Timo. The shoulders dwarfed her own and the sleeves hung down over her hands. She cast a surly look Miller’s way, her lips pressed into a thin line.

‘We need to talk,’ she told him.

He glanced at Melanie, who glared back defiantly. It wasn’t difficult to imagine the kind of things she might have said. ‘We will. But can it wait? At least for a little while?’

Miller set down the axe he was carrying and held the rifle out to Kate. His hand and the rifle were dripping and slick with moisture. She debated a moment, then reached out and took it from him.

‘You’ve fired one of these before?’ he asked.

‘Something similar. Not for a long time.’

‘Why don’t you head into the meadow and take some shots at the log pile? We have plenty of shells.’

‘Aren’t you afraid they’ll hear me?’

‘They might not over this storm. Besides, they’re coming regardless. And I think we’ll both be happier once we know you’re comfortable shooting that thing.’

He freed a box of cartridges from his pocket and held them out to Kate. She waited a moment, then took them, stuffing them into the pocket of her new overcoat, turning to go.

Miller grabbed her arm.

‘We will talk. Trust me.’

She nodded sharply and walked away, head bowed against the deluge, carrying the rifle at her side. Miller felt a tugging on his trouser leg and looked down to see Nico beaming up at him, his eyes crazed with the strange adventure of it all. He ruffled his hair.

‘All set?’

Nico nodded eagerly.

‘And you, Mia? Will you be warm enough? You’re going to get wet.’

She stared shyly, unsure what to say, hiding behind Melanie’s legs. Melanie rested a hand on her, watching Timo step up on to the porch next to Miller. He was weighed down with the sodden ropes and climbing equipment that were slung across his torso and neck.

‘We should go,’ she said to him.

Timo didn’t respond right away and Miller could see the fear take hold of Melanie. The muscles in her jaw tensed and bunched. The wind was gusting and her hair was getting in her eyes, but she did nothing to clear it.

‘You go on ahead,’ Timo told her. ‘I’ll catch you up.’

‘You promised me.’

Timo ducked his head, dropping the climbing gear in a heap as thunder tore through the mountain skies and lightning stuttered brightly. Mia shrieked and clutched at Melanie. Timo nodded at the quad bike.

‘Go to Levin’s hut. You can shelter behind it. I’ll be there soon. I’ll hike up in thirty minutes from now.’

‘You swore you wouldn’t do this.’

‘It’s my fault,’ Miller put in.

‘I don’t have any doubt about that.’

‘I need his help,’ Miller explained. ‘But not for long. I won’t let him stay. You have my word on that.’

‘Your word.’ Melanie lifted her chin towards Kate, down in the meadow. ‘Why don’t you go and tell her what your word is worth?’

‘I’ll find you,’ Timo said again. ‘Thirty minutes. I promise.’

Mia broke away from Melanie and rushed forwards to clamp herself to Timo’s legs.

‘Come with us, Papa,’ she pleaded.

‘Soon, sweet one.’ He hoisted her up in his arms. ‘Now kiss me and go. Hold on to Melanie. Be brave. Stick close to her in this storm.’

He knelt down to lower her to her feet, pulling Nico into him, too. He kissed their heads, then released them back to Melanie.

Miller looked across at his daughter, who scowled at him, shaking her head. Then she turned and led Nico and Mia away in the direction of the quad bike.

‘Who is that man?’ Mia asked, glancing back over her shoulder.

‘Nobody,’ came Melanie’s reply, in a tone as bleak as any Miller had ever known. ‘He’s no one at all.’

Mike Renner winced at the pitched whine of the van’s engine. Wade had slowed for a hairpin corner, then found he had no traction to accelerate out of it. The track was mud-slicked. Too many storms had washed the gravel away. Wade was revving so hard that the engine cover was shaking, plumes of blue smoke rising up from the tyres and the exhaust.

‘You’ll have to get out and push,’ Wade said through his teeth, his knuckles white on the steering wheel.

Renner looked out at the pelting rain and the wind. He thought of his ruined shin. There was no way he was putting his body behind the weight of the van. If it slipped backwards, he could be crushed.

Hanson and Pete were in the back, but their ankles and wrists were bound. Releasing them would take time. Plus there was the danger that one of them might be foolish enough to try something.

‘Let it go,’ Renner said. ‘It’s not far from here.’

Wade shook his head, gunned the engine and attacked the slope once more, but it made no difference. The tyres scrabbled and spun.

‘Pull over.’ Renner reached across and grabbed Wade’s forearm. It was almost wider than the span of his hand. ‘It’s done. Pull over. Here is good.’

There was a single-storey mountain chalet in the crook of the hairpin, a couple of goats nearby. The place was all boarded up, the grass grown long around it.

Wade cursed and let his foot off the gas, compressing the clutch, whipping the steering wheel to the left on full lock as the van raced backwards in a lurching arc. Renner rocked sideways, his shin striking the centre console. He heard the slap of limbs and a concussion of bodies in the back.

Wade stomped on the brakes and the van tore two deep gouges in the sodden grass before coming to a grinding halt. He cut the engine, cranked on the handbrake. Rain drummed off the metal overhead.

‘Can you even walk?’

Renner had to fight against the urge to cuff him. Wade could be unpredictable at the best of times, and up here on the mountain, in a storm, they were a long way from that.

‘Adams is already there by now,’ Wade pressed. ‘You get that, right? The longer we take, the longer he has to get the girl away.’

‘They can’t go far in this storm. And besides, I don’t think he’ll be going anywhere. I think he wants us to come to him. He needs to end this somewhere.’ Renner craned his neck, looking up at the sky. ‘Pull your gear together. Make sure they know not to try anything in the back. We’ll give it five minutes. See if this storm eases off at all. Then we go. OK?’

Wade took a look at the conditions for himself, humming doubtfully.

‘Whatever you say, Boss.’

‘I don’t like this twilight. It’s bad for visibility.’

‘They’ll come soon. They have to.’

‘Another hour and it’ll be completely dark. And I can’t shoot what I can’t see, Miller.’

‘Works both ways. Neither can they.’

Kate pressed her face to the barn window. It had a crumbling timber frame and was divided into four glass panels. She’d knocked out the bottom two panels with the butt of the rifle before stepping inside and now the damp, misty breeze was eddying around the opening where she’d propped the barrel of the rifle on the base of the frame.

‘How are you feeling?’ Miller asked her.

‘Cold. Wet. Scared. Pissed off.’

‘At least the storm cleared through. Has to be good for your aim.’

Kate didn’t know which of them he was trying to reassure, but there was some truth to what he’d said. She could still hear the distant boom of thunder far away across the Alps and glimpse the muted stutter of lightning. The worst of the wind and rain had passed on more than half an hour ago, and the sky had brightened for a spell. Now, though, dusk had drawn in and it would be night before long. In the mountains, the blackness would be absolute.

It was so still and quiet that Kate could hear muffled drips from the pine boughs hanging over the barn roof. The air she inhaled seemed somehow cleaner and fresher than any she’d ever breathed before. Maybe terror could do that to a person – make them focus intensely on the simplest things, like the breath in their lungs – though she guessed it also had to do with the passing of the storm and the altitude.

‘Do you see anything?’ she asked, trying to hide the strain in her voice.

‘Nothing.’

Kate slid her thumb off the two-way radio. Her fingers were cramped, beginning to numb. She wished she had gloves to go with the black beanie hat she’d found in a pocket of Timo’s coat.

More than that, though, she wished that she was with Miller inside the chalet. She could see the logic in his plan. He’d been right to say that Renner and Wade might overlook the rickety barn, and though her line of sight was compromised by the distance between them, by the grainy half-light and the faint ribbons of dewy mist, stationing her out here with the rifle seemed like a reasonable strategy. Reasonable enough, in any case, that she hadn’t been able to think of a good reason to argue against it.

But right now she didn’t care very much about good reasons. She was cold and afraid and alone, still reeling from meeting Melanie, still adjusting to the idea that she was alive. And then there were the things she’d said to her.

Kate pressed the talk button on the radio again.

‘Melanie told me about your benefactor, by the way.’

She heard Miller exhale. Could picture him shaking his head.

‘And I was mad at you. For all of five minutes. But then I started to think, Screw it. Lane’s the reason I’m freezing my backside off out here. He tried to get me killed. I say take the bastard for everything he has.’

‘Did I mention how much I like you?’

‘I am pretty great. But since we’re just waiting right now, is there anything else you want to say to me?’

‘So much. Believe me. But I think it’s best we save it for when we’re alone again. Or at least until we’re not on a radio channel that Timo can listen in on.’

Kate smiled briefly and set the radio to one side. In the silence that followed, she thought again of the woods that bordered the meadow, unable to escape the sensation that they were crowding in on her. Miller was basing his strategy on the assumption that Renner and Wade would approach the chalet along the mountain track. But what if they circled round and came through the pines? What if they sneaked up on her from behind?

She shuddered, drawing her hands up into the sleeves of the musty overcoat. The suede was heavy on her shoulders, swamping her arms and restricting her movements. Which was not great for a sniper. But the cold had already weaved its way into her toes and was gnawing at her fingers. If she took the coat off, her shivers would be uncontrollable. Her aim would be wrecked.

She bent at the hip and crouched over the rifle, resting the stock against her shoulder. The stance conjured memories of accompanying her adoptive father on dawn grouse hunts in matted Cotswold fields. Of frost, and tension, and the harrowing fear of the kill.

Miller’s radio beeped once and fuzzed static in the stolen silence of the chalet. Timber boards groaned and settled all around him. Pipes creaked. He clicked the radio twice in response – the signal they’d agreed on – and his speaker crackled to life.

‘If you’ve moved to the kids’ bedroom, I can still see you.’

Miller hung his head. ‘OK, so the lights are no good. I’ll cut them.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘No. But I don’t want them shooting at me from outside. I want them to try and find a way in.’

‘That’s going to be a problem once it’s fully dark. No ambient light means no targets.’

Miller lowered the radio for moment, thinking it through.

‘Like I said before: works both ways.’

He let go of the talk button and heard the muffled click of Kate doing the same thing, then took his axe and the radio and went room to room on his way downstairs. He found the fuse box in a kitchen cupboard and removed the light fuse. It was the same technique the man Lane had sent to kill Kate had used on the Isle of Man, and he supposed that was a bad omen.

The fire was still burning in the hearth. Miller stepped closer to it, the light of the flames flickering and drifting across his hands and face, shadows playing around the walls and against the floorboards.

Standing in the chalet, he found himself drawn back to that other fire, the one that had led him here. He could still feel the strange intensity of it; the awful fury and peculiar lure of the flames. Some days it felt to Miller as if the fire that had torn through his home had consumed him, too. Some days it felt like it had burned out his heart.

Slowly now, he lifted the axe on to his shoulder and crossed to the window to peek out through the curtains. He peered at the twilit meadow and the trees; the barn and the SUV; the mist and the dwindling track.

Inside his head, the terrible fire raged on.

Renner and Wade sheltered beneath a group of pines. The trek had been brutal on Renner. The ascent had been steep and the mountain air thin. They’d strayed from the path to avoid being spotted and the terrain had been boggy and uneven.

Pain skittered across his shin and there was no longer any flex in his lower leg. The swelling had got so bad that his hobble had turned into a semi-crawl and he’d been pulling himself over soaked mounds and ridges, his hands clawed into sods of dank grass. In the end, he’d had to suffer the indignity of leaning on Wade, but soon even that had become too much. Wade had as good as carried him for the last hundred or more metres, like he was a wounded soldier being dragged across a battlefield.

The rain had petered out to little more than a faint dampness on the air but both men were drenched, their clothes pasted to their bodies, and the map Renner had tucked under his shirt had been reduced to a sodden mush of papier mâché.

Not that they needed it any more. He could glimpse the SUV Adams had driven off in through a break in the trees. It was parked in the middle of the track, blocking the way ahead. Off to the right was an unlit chalet, smoke weaving upwards from a crooked chimney.

‘How do you want to do this?’ Wade asked. ‘You want me to go in alone?’

Renner had been asking himself the same thing. It was probably the sensible play but it wasn’t one he could contemplate.

‘You can rest here,’ Wade went on. ‘What do you say?’

‘I’m thinking.’

‘Is that what it is? I thought maybe you were getting ready to pass out.’

Renner stared ahead through the tree cover. There was something about the set-up he didn’t like. The stillness of the chalet, maybe. Or perhaps it was just the distraction of his shin. He was worried about the wound getting infected. He hated the idea of running a fever. Once they were done up here, they’d need to leave Switzerland in a hurry. They couldn’t afford delays.

‘If you stay hidden in these woods,’ Wade said, ‘you can watch for anyone who tries to make a break for it.’

‘No. We go in together.’

‘And how do we do that? I can’t carry you through the entire house.’

Renner dug a hand into his pocket for his pistol, biting down against an agonising surge in his leg.

‘Just get me closer. Help me behind that vehicle. We’ll assess things from there.’

Wade wrapped a thick arm around Renner’s back, shaking his head as he lifted him. ‘You’re handicapping both of us.’

‘I’m guaranteeing there are no mistakes. Not this time. You don’t have to like it, but this is how it’s going to be.’

Kate’s father had owned many sporting rifles, nearly all of them Brownings. It was a brand he trusted for its safety and accuracy, and it was the only make of rifle he’d ever allowed Kate to shoot. Timo’s rifle was a Ruger, though the basics were the same.

The Hawkeye was a single-shot bolt-action sporting rifle with a walnut stock, some checkering on the grip, and a blued finish on the barrel. It was chambered for .223 Remington-calibre cartridges with an internal magazine that could hold five rounds. Timo had added a scope to make aiming the rifle a lot easier.

Which it would have been, during the day, but right now the sky had bloomed a deep indigo grey, bleeding to black, the light fading all the while. Kate guessed that in a little over ten minutes, she wouldn’t be able to see a thing.

She blew on her hands, shoulders huddled for warmth. It was five minutes since she’d last talked on the radio with Miller, almost fifteen since he’d killed the lights in the chalet. She felt alone and badly out of her depth.

A gust of wind streaked through the window, rocking the Ruger, and Kate crouched and returned her eye to the scope. She blinked as her lashes brushed the curved glass lens and the rickety porch ballooned in her straining vision.

She leaned back a little and worked a kink out of her neck, then settled herself over the rifle once more, cushioning the recoil pad in her shoulder, hooking a finger on the trigger guard and easing the muzzle to the left. The scope swooped down off the porch and across the hazy meadow towards the SUV.

Kate exhaled gently and the scope trembled, making the wet metal of the SUV appear to ripple.

She swept the scope left, then right, then left again.

And that was when she saw them. Just barely.

Two greyish blobs, blurred, almost spectral, in the very centre of her vision. The scope made the men appear close enough for Kate to waft a hand in front of her face and swipe them away.

One of them was limping badly, leaning on the other. Both were stooped at the waist, hurrying towards the SUV, looking as if they might fall.

Kate snatched the rifle off the windowsill and adopted a crouched firing stance. The men had moved ahead of the scope for just a second but she tracked them again and peered hard, centring them in the fish-eye glare.

Then she waited. Not because she wanted the perfect shot but because shooting a man required more than simply pulling a trigger. It was a totally different prospect from firing at a mechanical target during a pentathlon event or at a field of grouse during hunting season. And this time, she had to kill. Too often in the past she’d made a conscious decision to miss her prey.

‘Bad luck,’ her father would say. ‘Better shooting next time.’

But Kate hadn’t ever been unlucky. She’d made a choice.

Her pulse beat in her throat and the tip of her finger. She clamped the rifle tight but still the scope quivered.

Freeing her hand, she worked a little of the tension from it, then clicked the safety switch to the fire position and hooked her finger around the trigger.

She watched one of the men stumble, his outstretched hand and his knee striking the ground. The other man pulled him up and they lumbered on.

They were five metres from the flank of the SUV.

Four metres.

Three.

Kate sucked in a halting breath, held it, and fired.

Something
thunk
ed into the rear quarter of the SUV, throwing up sparks in the dim. Then a window exploded and Wade heard the clap of gunfire for the first time. He heaved Renner after him, diving for the cover of the vehicle as a third bullet whined overhead. He hit the ground, face pressed into gravel, and looked under the chassis. There was a spark way off in the meadow. The sound of drilled metal close by.

‘Are you hit?’

Renner was toppled on to his side behind the rear wheel, looking fat and useless. Wade cursed himself for not leaving him in the woods. He should have come at the house clockwise through the tree cover. His instincts had been right. Renner wasn’t just holding him back. He might cost him his life.

And now he was fumbling with his pistol, as if that could help. He hadn’t even spotted the shooter.

Wade reached above his head from his prone position and tried the handle on the SUV. The door clicked open, a dome light shining down.

‘What are you doing?’ Renner snapped. ‘They’ll see us.’

‘Who do you think they’re shooting at?’

Dipshit
. That’s what he wanted to add. But something stopped him even now. The burden of his past mistake, perhaps.

Keeping low, he pulled himself into the footwell of the SUV and peered at the underside of the steering column. He knew how to hotwire a car. The benefits of a misspent youth. But the keys were there in front of him, dangling from the ignition.

A fifth round blew out another side window, drilling into the roof. Wade ducked back out and opened the rear door. Renner was still pinned and sheltering with his hands over his head. Wade grabbed him by the collar of his drenched shirt and heaved him on to the back seat.

‘Are you crazy?’ Renner tucked himself into a ball. ‘They’re shooting at us.’

‘You want to sit here and be killed?’

Wade didn’t wait for an answer. He clambered into the front seat, his head down, and turned over the ignition. The engine fired, the headlights bloomed. He threw the gearbox into first, turning hard to the right and plunging down a drainage trench into the meadow.

The rear door slammed shut on Renner as the SUV hit the first big rut and rose high at the front like it was riding a wave.

It was a Japanese model with chunky tyres and a high ground clearance. The torque felt mighty. The engine was a beast.

Leaning way down to his right, peeping up over the dash, Wade flicked the headlamps to full beam and the meadow sprang into greyscale relief. The chalet was to his left. A door flew open at the front and he saw Adams step out with an axe in his hands. Dead ahead was a small timber building at the edge of the trees. Something glinted from a window. The glinting thing sparked.

A round thumped into the engine block. Then another punctured the windscreen.

‘What are you waiting for?’ Renner shouted. ‘Get us out of here.’

But Wade had never run from anything in his life. He was all about confrontation. His natural inclination was to go at a problem head on.

Which had to be better than rolling around on the back seat like a coward.

The big engine pushed the vehicle on. They were gaining speed. Gaining momentum.

The shooter wasn’t giving up. Rounds were still peppering the SUV, hitting every time.

Which was something Wade could appreciate. Because just like the shooter, he’d zeroed in on a target. He had a fixed trajectory.

Reaching up now, he grabbed for his seatbelt, whipping it across his chest, clicking it home. He raised his eyes one last time and saw the shooter, saw Kate, swinging away from the rifle in the glare of his headlamps, turning to run.

He didn’t stamp on the brake. He didn’t slow at all. He just lifted his hands from the wheel and covered his face, shouting a late warning to Renner as the SUV pitched up at the front and catapulted into a hail of timber and glass.