This time, he’d judged their position better. The car was just about to reach the turn. He heard the displacement of air as a final shot whisked past the driver’s side door, but that was the last chance the marksman would have to hit them. King gripped the wheel with both hands and took the car round the corner at breakneck speed.
And just like that, the trees blocked them from view.
They’d survived.
CHAPTER 17
‘You can get up now,’ he said.
‘Oh my god,’ Kate muttered, crawling back into the passenger’s seat. She looked at King for a long period of time.
He turned and met her eyes. ‘What?’
‘You… reacted so fast. I don’t know what happened, I’ve never been in a situation like that before. I felt so weak. Like it was hard to move.’
‘That’s shock. Don’t worry, I’m not inhuman. We all experience that.’
Her face had become pale and clammy. ‘How are you so calm?’
‘That kind of thing used to be my job.’
Kate didn’t know what to say to that. She paused, looking at him. Deep in thought. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’
‘Not really.’
She nodded. ‘Figured as much.’
They sat in silence as King drove back up the path, towards civilisation. The wind beat at their faces, howling in through the shattered windscreen. He let his heart rate slow. It was a trick he had practiced in the midst of combat many times in the past, when staying calm and level-headed was the only means of survival. Now he could recover from the adrenalin rush of a life-or-death situation at will.
Kate was not handling the sensation well. Her hands shook violently as she stared out the passenger window. King remembered back to the first time he’d been shot at, to the sheer terror he’d experienced. There was something otherworldly about the feeling, when your life lay in the hands of how accurate your enemy was. So he wasn’t surprised by her reaction. Not at all. Coming close to death was a horrifying experience. Which perhaps made it worse that he had grown so accustomed to it.
On a whim, he reached over and took her hand. ‘Hey.’
She looked at him. Tears in her eyes.
‘I know what it feels like,’ he said.
‘Do you?’
‘I felt that way once. Everyone does. I hope you never see enough of that stuff to find it normal. I wish I hadn’t, but I have.’
‘How can that be normal?’
He sighed. ‘I’ll tell you later. Now isn’t the time.’
She shrugged through tears. ‘I’ll get over it.’
‘It’s not something to get over. It’s natural. Trust me, I wish I could feel that scared again.’
‘Why on earth would you want to feel like this?’
‘Maybe I’d try harder to avoid these type of situations.’
‘We’re getting close to the road,’ she said.
‘I know. Get in the footwell. There could be more of them up here.’
Kate swallowed hard, her hands still trembling. She sunk below the dashboard, away from the line of sight of anyone aiming weapons at them. King didn’t want to emphasise how close they had come to death back in the clearing. In fact, he found it hard to believe himself. But there was no time to dwell on the past.
The path opened ahead, spilling out onto the main road. There was little visibility in either direction. King wouldn’t be surprised if there were ten men waiting on either side of the forest, weapons up, ready to fire at any moment.
He wouldn’t let them hit their shots.
He pressed the accelerator into the floor and the sedan picked up speed. Travelling at close to sixty miles an hour, it rocketed off the gravel path and its wheels spun on the asphalt. King shot a quick glance in either direction, scouting for any sign of trouble.
Nothing.
No men.
No weapons.
Just empty road for as far as the eye could see.
He slowed to the speed limit and turned sharply, putting them on track to return to Jameson. Kate stayed in the footwell, eyes squeezed shut, knuckles clenched. He tapped her on the shoulder.
‘All clear,’ he said.
She scrambled back into the seat. ‘No-one there?’
‘No-one.’
‘This doesn’t feel right.’
‘I agree,’ King said. ‘Maybe there’s not as many of them as I thought.’
She returned to chewing her nails. ‘So what the hell do we do now? We don’t know anything. That didn’t give us any answers. All I know is that they want to kill me.’
‘They’re eliminating any possible witnesses. I have a video of the two hitmen picking up the package you dropped off. Did you get a look at it?’
‘It was just a box. They left it at my front door and I dropped it off. I didn’t look. I just wanted it over and done with. I knew they were doing something shady.’
‘Was it heavy?’
‘Reasonably.’
‘Kate, I’m going to need more than that.’
She turned to him. ‘I don’t know anything else. I don’t know how we get out of this, and I don’t know why we’re being attacked. Do you have any reason that people might want to hurt you? Because I don’t.’
He drummed his fingers on the wheel, deep in thought. ‘No-one knows I’m here.’
‘So what is this?’
‘It doesn’t have anything to do with us. We’re pawns. Something bigger is going on here.’
‘You’re saying we can just leave? Forget about all this?’
‘You can if you want.’
‘I don’t want to.’
He looked across. ‘No?’
She didn’t respond. Turned away. Looked out the window again, deep in thought. He stayed quiet and let the sounds of the forest take over. They passed her street once again. Her Subaru was still there, parked in the middle of the road.
‘We can’t go back to my place,’ Kate said. ‘They know where I live.’
‘I know.’
He kept driving, heading for Jameson.
‘I left England a year ago,’ she said suddenly. ‘My whole life I lived in this tiny flat in Brixton. My older brother fell in with the wrong crowd. Bunch of thugs, always coming in and out of our home. Drugs, guns, you name it. It didn’t take long for them to start harassing me. Threatening to rape me. And as soon as I got scared, I up and left. Bought a plane ticket and chose the smallest town in a country as far away as possible. Left my friends behind. Left my family behind. Just told them I was going.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ King said. He reached across and gripped her hand.
‘So I’m not just going to leave again,’ she said. ‘I really don’t care what happens. I’m sick of getting rattled and just backing away.’
‘This is different, Kate. You could die.’
‘Whatever. I have no work experience, nothing to start a new life with. Everyone around here has come to know me. I can get by on odd jobs. If I leave here, I’ve got nothing. I’m staying.’
‘I’ll do my best to make sure it’s safe for you to stay.’
The sedan trawled into the town centre just as the sun disappeared behind the trees. Old streetlights scattered along the main road flickered to life, casting a warm halogen glow over the footpath on either side.
‘Where are we headed?’ Kate said.
‘I think I can get us a safe place for the night.’
He pulled Billy’s sedan into the lot of the same motel he’d stayed at the night before. The same small light shone above reception, inviting them in. There were no other cars around them. A quiet night of business. He made sure to tuck the Beretta into his waistband before heading in. Best to keep the gun out of sight.