“Three plus a back-up?” I repeated. I glanced at my watch. This was all taking much too long. “OK, where are they likely to be?”
Trey shook his head again but just when I was about to snap at him he dragged himself to his feet and wiped his nose across the back of his hand. “Last time we were here I kinda noticed that he only had one machine connected to the Net,” he said.
I shrugged. “Meaning?”
“Less chance of picking up a virus and if you do you don’t, like, lose your whole setup, like you would if they were all networked together.” He nodded towards one of the tower units on the far side of the room, carefully avoiding what lay between him and it. “That’s the only one plugged into a phone jack.”
“How difficult is it to take the hard drive out of it?”
“A coupla minutes if I had a screwdriver.”
“Here.” I pulled my Swiss Army knife out of my pocket and threw it across to him. “Get on with it.”
Trey didn’t want to come any further into the room than he had done already and he certainly didn’t want to touch the computer he’d indicated. It had been behind Henry at the moment he’d been killed and its outer casing had taken on a colour and texture not usually available in office equipment catalogues.
He took a quick peek at what was left of the back of Henry’s head just once while he worked. That was enough, even for a fifteen-year-old kid who lives on a diet of thrill rides and horror flicks. After that he kept his back slightly turned and his chin tucked down.
As soon as the stained outer casing was removed, his hands seemed to steady and he fumbled less. The hard drive he’d mentioned was about the same size as a double-album CD case. It wasn’t long before he stood up with it in his hand.
I grabbed a towel from the kitchen and quickly wiped over the surfaces I thought we’d touched. Better for the police not to find our prints at another murder scene, if we could help it. I smiled bracingly again. “OK?” I said. “Then let’s go.”
We hurried back down the hallway as far as the outer screen door. I picked my bag off the floor and Trey shoved the hard drive into it.
Scott had swung the Dodge round and was sitting with the motor turning over, as requested. He saw us appear and started to wave, just as a man in a dark suit stepped out from behind the shrubbery of the house opposite.
I elbowed Trey back into the hallway and brought the SIG up in front of me, almost as one move. In the truck, Scott, Aimee and Xander hadn’t noticed what was going on behind them and when they saw the gun come out their expressions froze.
“Get down!” I shouted.
The man in the suit reacted to the warning much faster than the kids. I didn’t see him pull a gun but one had suddenly appeared in his hand. He kept low, crabbing sideways so that he had the cover of a rusting Chevrolet. I put one round into the front end of it, shattering a headlight, just to keep his head down.
As I did so, another two figures appeared round the corners of the houses on either side of Henry’s, closing in fast. This was getting silly.
“Get back into the house!” I yelled to the kids.
Xander and Aimee jumped straight out of the pickup bed onto the scrubby front lawn, hitting the ground already running. Scott should have just hutched across the front seat of the Dodge and left via the passenger door, the one nearest to the house, but panic stole from his logic and left it weak.
He opened the driver’s door and got straight out onto the road instead. As he sprinted round the front of the truck the man behind the Chevrolet rose into a crouch. He was holding a silvered revolver with a stubby barrel but he had the advantage of short range.
He fired three shots, the second of which hit Scott in the back. I’ll never forget the look of sheer surprise on the kid’s face. He stumbled over his own feet and began to stagger.
“Shit,” I muttered.
Aimee, who’d just reached the safety of the hallway, turned as I spoke. When she caught sight of Scott she started screaming.
I moved out fast onto the porch, aware that almost anything was better than staying close to that noise. Scott had made it halfway to us but he was losing momentum and direction. The man behind the Chevrolet had risen into plain sight and was steadying his aim for another shot.
I ran across the grass until I was up against the solid front end of the Dodge and shot the man on the other side of the Chevy, just once, about half an inch below his right eye. He fell back behind the car and didn’t come up again. I hadn’t expected him to.
His mates took that as their cue to open fire but I’d lost interest in this uneven game. I turned back for the house, ducking my shoulder under Scott’s arm as I ran past him, just as his legs gave out and he started to sag. I swept him forwards, using all my strength to keep him on his feet. Xander ventured out as far as the porch steps to help take the load. The bullets seemed to be raining down all around us. How the hell could they keep missing?
We all burst through the narrow doorway into the hall and fell onto the tiles. Aimee slammed the door shut behind us, turning the locks firmly like that was going to keep them out.
“Shit man, who are these people?” Xander muttered softly under his breath. “Like, shit!”
Aimee had bent and was clutching Scott’s hand as he thrashed and twisted. Her eyes were shimmering with tears. “Do something!” she pleaded. “He’s bleeding.”
I knelt in front of Scott who was sprawled where he’d landed, half on his side, propped against the wall to the kitchen. He was still conscious and crying with the pain.
I eased his hands away from his body. The bullet had left a small but messy entry hole just behind his left hip. There was no exit wound, but that didn’t make it any better. He was losing blood at a rate that meant most of the loose rug in the hallway was already greasy with it.
“We need to get him away from the door,” I said. Xander and Aimee’s faces were grey with shock. Suddenly this adventure game had cracked back and bitten them, big style. It wasn’t fair. “Scott, you’re going to have to move now.”
“No-o,” he wept, writhing when we tried to get him up. In the end we just grabbed the edges of the rug and dragged it, with him on top, through the door into the tiny bathroom. He mewled at every jolt.
I gathered all the towels I could find from the rail and used them to pack onto the wound. They were pale colours that turned almost instantly scarlet. “Here,” I said to Aimee and Xander. “Lean on the towel, keep it pressed hard onto his hip. Like this.”
My demonstration was met with a squeal of protest from Scott. His legs threshed weakly.
“You’re hurting him!” Xander objected.
“It’ll do more than hurt him if we don’t stop the bleeding,” I shot back. “Keep it pressed on – as hard as you can. And call the cops.”
Xander glanced at me sharply, but he nodded and flicked his mobile phone out of his pocket. I heard him already speaking to the dispatcher as I got up and moved past Trey, who was still in the hallway, staring at his injured friend.
“For God’s sake stay down and keep out of sight of any of the windows,” I told him.
I tiptoed round the house, skirting Henry’s corpse to peer carefully out of the broken window in that room. Outside it had all gone quiet again. The kitchen looked out onto the front porch but from that angle I couldn’t see if the man I’d hit was still lying behind the Chevrolet.
I cursed myself then for shooting him dead. At the time my only thought had been to save Scott’s life, but wounding the man would have been a far better strategy. That way his comrades would have had to tie up manpower and resources to either get him away from the scene, or treat him there, as we were doing with Scott. Killing the gunman outright meant they could forget about him until the fight was over.