And with Jo gone—
They're telling me where to go, Natasha said. She had not spoken out loud since leaving the service station. Maybe it was too much effort, or perhaps it pained her. Keep driving north. They'll be waiting for us and they'll tell us where to find them.
"Don't you know where they are?"
Natasha was silent for a while, yet still there, and her doubt made Tom uncomfortable.
Well, she said at last, they're not telling me. I don't think they trust me very much. They know what happened to us, but they don't understand how I'm still alive. I told them about Mister Wolf and what he did, but… I don't think they believe me.
"Do they mention Steven?"
Again that pause, just slightly too long. No.
"They must know that Cole's after us. Why would they risk– ?"
Because I'm one of them.
Natasha withdrew from his mind and Tom drove on. He kept his eyes on the road and concentrated on staying within the white lines. His back was a throbbing pain now, and it itched all across its base. It was the sort of itch that accompanied healing. Since Natasha's last feeding he had felt better, calmed perhaps, stress suckled away. But however much he tried to convince himself that the healing was charged by his own body, he knew that was not the case. Natasha took, and she gave as well. Just what she gave he could not dwell upon right then. It made him better, it helped him drive, and every moment took him closer to Steven.
And Steven was the only good that could come out of this mess. His son. Tom would take him away and make him well again, guide him through the process of finding home, love him just as much as he had loved his memory for the last decade. They would be a family again.
"My family," Tom whispered, awed. The idea was amazing.
The baby would not stop crying.
For a few seconds after first hearing it Cole had almost stopped the car. He would exit the motorway, return to the petrol station, give the kid back to its father and then leave again. Except it would not happen like that and he knew it. There would be complications. Nothing could ever be that simple. Oh, here you are, I stole your car and kidnapped your baby but please take the kid back now … er, but I still need your car, and you'll recall I have a pistol in the waistband of my jeans? The police would have been called, the father would be frantic, the mechanic would no longer consider it someone else's problem, and apart from the time he would waste Cole had no wish to become embroiled in some messy forecourt brawl.
And there's the woman I shot, he thought, her blood all over the MX5. They'd have noticed that by now as well. He tried not to think of how frantic the father of the baby would be. I'm doing this for you and your kid, he thought. But no good intentions or moral justification would stop the brat from screaming.
"Shut up!" Cole shouted. It worked for a minute and then the crying started again. He frowned, bit his lip and concentrated on driving.
That was when the dead brunette with the pale thighs and black underwear came into his mind.
Cole shouted and let go of the steering wheel, and bad tracking swerved the car over toward the hard shoulder. He grabbed the wheel and brought it back under control, panting, trying to calm his racing heart and wishing he could close himself off to what he had just felt. Because she had been there. That dead woman, brains blasted out by a shot he had not intended for her, had appeared in his mind unbidden, uninvited, and he knew it was more than his imagination because he could smell her, taste her. It was more than just a memory. She had risen briefly from the underground—shifting aside a manhole cover and rising from the darkness, a ghost he had never intended creating—and he had dwelled on her parted legs and skimpy black underwear, hating himself but unable to shake the image.
The baby cried.
"Leave me alone!" Cole said, not exactly sure to whom he was speaking. The smell of the woman was still there, a mixture of obsession and the decay already creeping into her cooling flesh. Her body must have been found by now, but her mind, her soul, surprised by an unexpected death, had become lost in the darkness of his subconscious. He was sure it would rise again.
She shouldn't be dead, he thought. I shouldn't have loosed off that shot.
The baby gurgled in agreement, then started crying again. Cole twisted the rearview mirror so that he could glance at the kid. She was bundled up in pink, and her face had coloured to match her coat. Tears streamed down her face.
"I'll stop soon," he said, "don't worry, there, shhh, shhh." He had no idea how to handle children other than what he had seen on TV. And now he was a kidnapper as well as a murderer. It's all for them, he thought, all for the sheep.
The woman rose in his mind once more, drifting up out of the dark and revealing herself fully to his scrutiny, and her name was Lucy-Anne. She was there with him, a true presence instead of a simple memory. He gasped, and as he took in the next breath he could taste her, a saltiness to her cooling skin. She moved in his mind and revealed her pale thighs once more, good legs, sexy underwear that she had never expected to display to a bunch of crime scenes officers today. She pulled those panties aside, and much as Cole tried to draw away from what was happening, he could not. He could smell and taste her, and his guilt did nothing to change what he was smelling and tasting. He could see everything but her face.
The baby cried on. Cole drove. Lucy-Anne's ghost tortured him and he found himself crying, great shuddering sobs that blurred his vision. The car drifted over two lanes and vehicles swerved to avoid him, their brakes smoking angrily. He wiped his eyes and regained control of the car, but Lucy-Anne was still there. She was back in the driver's seat of the MX5, her head blown apart and her legs splayed wide, inviting him in to finish raping her body. He had raped her life with a bullet from the .45, and now there was little left for her to protect. He knew her anger and rage. He ran the streets of his mind to escape her, but she was always faster, always there.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, "I'm so sorry." The baby cried, and so did Cole. He had never been haunted before.
Tom drove on, observing the speed limit. He breathed shallow, expecting any deep breaths to burst his wound and set the blood flowing again. He felt so delicate.
Natasha was away. She had been gone for ten minutes, and he hoped she was talking with the other berserkers, finding out where they would be. Tom did not think he could go on for much longer. He drove toward the light of Steven's life, leaving behind the darkness of Jo's death. That darkness would fall again, and when it came it would be hard and heavy and difficult to accept. But for now Jo was somewhere away from here, a loving memory that he was reserving for later when things were better. Natasha had done something to help him with this; that made him uncomfortable, yet he accepted it. For now.
The present pulled him on and he went with the flow. Beside him, like a bag of shells being shaken, Natasha giggled.
Lucy-Anne giggled. It was a grotesque sound and Cole tried to ignore it, but it was insistent, reverberating through all the dark places of his mind and echoing into the streets of his psyche. He could not escape himself, and that was where Lucy-Anne was. Inside. In him. With him, because of what he had done to her. Her giggle seemed misplaced but he was not in a state of mind to really dwell on that.
The baby was still screaming, and Cole knew he had to stop. He could not go on like this; guilt would not let him, and neither would the pulsing headache the kid's screaming was giving him. The question was, what could he do? He could not just pull over and leave the baby by the side of the motorway, and to exit would lose him precious time. He was still only assuming that Roberts had driven north with Natasha, and now that Major Higgins seemed to have abandoned him, he could think of no real way to trace them. Higgins would likely have the police at his disposal; road cameras, patrol cars, aerial surveillance. Cole could rely on nothing more than Natasha's occasional mockery to locate her.