He'd pissed himself. Probably when she'd screeched at him, invaded his mind, driven him down into his own darkness. It was her fault.
"You bitch!"
As the soft-top approached, Cole raised the gun. The car slowed, the driver wide-eyed and terrified, and in her face Cole saw the mockery of the berserk girl, the twinkle in her eyes every time she had called him Mister Wolf, the condescension in the gaze of someone so young.
He pulled the trigger.
He had meant to put a round through the canvas roof, but blood dripped in his eye as he fired. The car skidded to the right, just clipping the rear bumper of Roberts' abandoned car before nudging the field gate and coming to a halt. It rolled back slightly then sat there, engine still running.
There was no movement from inside.
"Shit," Cole whispered, the sibilance pricking his tongue on his ruined tooth. "Shit, shit, shit."
When he reached the driver's door and opened it and watched the woman's body tumble out onto the road, he tried to tell himself he would have had to kill her anyway. No way he could leave her here with a smashed up car and a body inside. She'd run, and find someone, and the police would have been onto him in hours, if not minutes. She was a brunette and looked as though she had been very attractive, just the sort of woman he sometimes tried to fuck when loneliness got the better of him. The bullet had popped neatly through the corner of the windshield and taken off part of her skull. Blood and brains dripped from the underside of the canvas roof and across the dashboard. Her skirt had ridden up to reveal skimpy black panties and pale, muscled thighs. She was a casualty, and it was people like her he was trying to protect.
Doing his best to reason away his second murder of the day, Cole dragged the woman to Robert's old car and piled her in with the other corpse.
He did not even bother flicking the skull splinter from the centre of the MX5's steering wheel before driving away.
Tom was numb. His body felt distant, and sitting in the driver's seat his head felt lower than his stomach. He could move his hands on the steering wheel and gear stick, his feet on the gas and brake and clutch, and he constantly twitched in the seat, subconsciously trying to find the pain that should be there. He had a feeling that the bullet was lodged somewhere close to his spine, but at least he was not paralysed.
He felt unattached.
And mentally his numbness had spread, a protection against what had happened that was as obvious as it was comforting. As he drove he dwelled on what the last twenty-four hours had brought to, and taken from, his life, and yet his mind only skimmed the surface. The digging, the body, the running, the shooting, the dying … all these flashed through his mind with the immediacy of fresh experience, and yet with the dimness of a faded dreams. He could smell the stink of the grave, but digging up those corpses seemed like someone else's memory. He could smell Jo and hear her yawn and see her brushing her hair, but she was someone from the past, an inconsequential part of his here and now.
He could feel Natasha inside, worming her way through his mind, exploring, calming, and he welcomed her in. Because she was protecting him. She was a drug that he needed so much, one that took away the pain and heartache and replaced it with one word, and one aim: Steven.
He drove slowly and sensibly, not wishing to attract attention. He could feel the tremendous damage his body had sustained—she could hide the pain and the immediate consequences, but not the knowledge—and some part of him worried about what the future would hold. Yet somehow he knew that he was safe, at least for now. Safe until they reached wherever it was they were going.
Steven, Natasha said from the backseat.
"Will he know me?"
I'm sure.
"Will I know him?"
Natasha paused, and Tom sensed something that may have been surprise. What daddy doesn't know his son?
Tom blinked slowly, eyelids heavy. They were on a dual carriageway now, heading north, and he stayed in the slow lane, watching lorries and cars and motorbikes pass them by. "I only knew him ten years ago," he said.
Natasha fell silent, and Tom guessed that she had gone somewhere else.
He thought of what he had watched her doing when she lent him her memories. Why the army had deemed it necessary to send in the berserkers, he could not fathom. There had been lots of people and lots of guns, yes, but surely one single bomb could have wiped out that drug den as easily as four berserkers? Perhaps it was political. Perhaps it had been a test. But then Tom thought of the faces he had seen through Natasha's eyes, and he realised the truth: it was all about fear. Whoever those unfortunate people had been in business with would find them at the house, or what was left of them, and their hearts would be stricken with the terror of their discovery.
Fear. It was a powerful weapon. He wondered just how much it had backfired on the staff of Porton Down, and why. And much as he felt a trace of that fear as well, he hoped that Natasha would soon show him what had happened there.
The girl was still away. His mind was his own—still hazy, distant from the pain that should be ravaging him, but his own—and Tom concentrated on driving. He had no idea where they were going. But he thought that when they finally arrived there, Natasha would let him know.
Cole waited for Natasha's scream to come in again. His mind felt clear for now, but he knew that there were depths, unplumbed hollows beneath the streets where his darkness ran deep. Anything could be hiding down there. As he drove he strolled the byways of his mind, peering into darker alleys, always afraid to shift manhole covers or venture into tunnels in case he found her waiting for him. He had always feared that he would. And in a way she was always with him, a nightmare that he had never quite been able to put down.
The steering wheel was slippery with blood. The CD oozed Tori Amos; Cole had not bothered to turn it off. The car stank from one of those odour eaters that smelled worse than wet dog or cigarettes, and it was burning the inside of his nose and giving him a headache. He found the little plastic turtle stuck to the underside of the dash, ripped it off and threw it from the car. He kept the window down, cleared the air, and now he could only smell blood. That was fine.
His trousers were still wet from where he had pissed himself; he could smell that too. His hand and calf still dribbled blood from where he had cut them climbing the fence. His legs hurt from the BMW impact, his left much worse than the right, and he feared that soon the bruising may prevent him from driving. His head thumped and throbbed, pulsing with nightmare echoes from the roar Natasha had driven into him, so loud and powerful that it had forced him down into his own dark subconscious.
At least she had not been waiting there for him.
Cole ignored the aches and pains and drove on, not knowing where he was going, simply aiming in the direction Roberts had taken. And much as he hated the prospect, he knew that once again he needed Natasha to slink into his mind if he were ever to find her again.
"Where are we going?"
Tom glanced in the rearview mirror, raising himself so that he could see down into the backseat. Natasha was still where he had left her, a shriveled dead girl, but somewhere inside that carcass was the blood she had suckled from him. He wondered where it was and what good it had done her. She did not respond.
"I feel weak," Tom said. "It's almost lunchtime. I need to eat. I haven't eaten since …" Since before I dug you up, he wanted to say, but somehow it seemed impolite.
Natasha was still away.
The road had turned into a motorway. He kept his speed down, wondering about stolen cars and number plates and police cameras, but there was nothing he could do about that right now. He had a bullet in his back and a body in the rear seat; stealing another car was hardly an option. Besides, he would not know how to do it. He was just an office worker.