And stepped on something and lost his footing. He landed on his back, knocking the breath from his body. His.38 skidded under a chair. The fireplace poker grumbled away from him across the wooden floor. The two figures disappeared through the open door.
The seconds passed. Wyatt got up from the floor, holding to the back of a chair until he could breathe normally again. The fall, coming so soon after his fall from the bike, made him feel slowed down and clumsy.
He was at least a minute behind them.
He closed the door, sealing in the smoke, and stood in the hall, listening and thinking. Without the light from the fire the house was in absolute darkness. Every curtain was drawn. Would the gunman open them to give himself light to shoot by? Wyatt doubted it. He’d feel too vulnerable.
People in darkness are very sensitive to another person’s presence. Wyatt was relying on that as well as his hearing. He crept down the hallway and stood for some time at the open door to the study. He breathed slowly, quietly, extending his inhalations and exhalations so that the tiny sounds he made did not sound like breathing. He listened for exertions and tension in the other two.
He went through all the downstairs rooms doing this. They were empty. He looked at the stairs. Ten minutes had gone by but when Wyatt climbed the stairs he stopped for long periods on each step. He wanted to be certain. He was also trying to read the gunman. Was he capable of waiting immobile for hours at a time? Or would he want to precipitate action, come out shooting? Wyatt reached the top step. He stood there listening, breathing shallowly, for five minutes.
They were betrayed by a watch. Wyatt heard the faint double beep that indicated the passing of another hour. What hour? Ten, Wyatt guessed. He advanced cautiously to the doorway of the main bedroom.
The angle was bad. He had to get to the other side of the door. But he wondered if the gunman had adjusted to the dark by now, letting him register any shape crossing the gap. Wyatt’s best chance was to present a confusing shape. He dived, rolled and got to his feet again. There was a shot as he passed by the door, but it went high.
Suddenly there were five more shots. Wyatt heard the slugs punch through the plasterboard wall, spaced at groin height. The last one emerged a hand’s breadth from his hip. He didn’t move.
Leah yelled out: ‘Quick, his gun’s empty.’
It was a ruse. But the fact that they were trying it could mean they were off-balance for a moment. Wyatt threw himself through the door and came up with his.38 aimed and ready.
Leah moaned. ‘He’s got a knife.’
Wyatt focused on her, a dim shape against the curtain. The man stood behind her, one arm around her torso, the other at her neck. In struggling they had disturbed the curtain a little. Weak moonlight lit the room; Wyatt could see it glinting on the blade under Leah’s jaw.
‘Throw your gun down,’ the man said, ‘or I cut her throat.’
‘Go ahead,’ Wyatt said, ‘cut.’
He could hear the next-door neighbours beneath the window outside. ‘Should we knock and see?’ one of them said. ‘It’s just the wind,’ the other said. Wyatt looked around the room, sizing up the walls and furniture abstractedly. The gunman had only his arms and half his face showing. A voice outside said, ‘Come inside for God’s sake.’ A door banged.
‘Drop it,’ the man said again, ‘or she dies.’
‘Fine,’ Wyatt said.
It didn’t matter to Wyatt which one he killed first. Killing Leah first would give him a clear shot at the man. But the man had the weapon. He might throw the knife. Wyatt raised the.38. He turned a little to one side, held his arm fully out, and pulled the trigger. It was quick, practised, tight, like a dance step.
The bullet caught the man in the throat, jerking him back against the wall. The arm around Leah stiffened, then relaxed, and she pushed free of him. The blood welled in his throat.
Wyatt said nothing. He turned the gun on Leah.
But she was a bad target. The gunman, sitting on the floor now, raised the knife to throw it. As Wyatt followed Leah with the gun, he saw her dart down, wrestle the knife away, and jerk back.
That was when he saw the handcuff. He took his finger from the trigger but kept the.38 trained on her. The man on the floor coughed, a liquid sound in his throat, and fell sideways, twitching once or twice.
Leah looked at Wyatt. ‘You might have hit me.’
Wyatt nodded. ‘But I didn’t.’
She held her arms around herself. ‘But you might have.’
THIRTY-SIX
Wyatt knew that he was being unfair. He knew how his coldness discouraged people and coloured the way he saw the world. He pocketed the gun as a way of saying that he was disarming himself, then slumped back against the wall to wait, knowing it was too soon to touch her.
Leah shivered, her arms wrapped around her chest. The hand-cuffs swung on her left wrist. ‘I’ll be all right in a minute.’
‘I doubted you,’ Wyatt said. ‘I shouldn’t have.’
She didn’t approach him but let go of her arms and seemed to notice him properly. ‘You’ve changed your appearance,’ she said. She shivered. ‘Everything’s weird.’
Wyatt sat on the bed and pointed at the body. ‘Did he tell you anything?’
‘He said his name was Letterman and he was hired to kill you. Apparently you trod on somebody’s toes.’
Wyatt gestured in frustration. ‘A Sydney mob. It’s so stupid. Clearly they’re not going to let go of it, so now I’ll have to talk to them.’
Leah sat next to him on the bed. ‘Talk to them? Will they listen?’
‘They’ll listen.’
‘Do you know who?’
‘I’ll find out.’
They were silent, looking at the body. ‘He was waiting at the farm,’ Leah said. ‘Snyder had been in contact with him.’
‘That figures. It’s my guess Letterman put the word out offering big bucks to anyone who knew where to find me.’
‘He must have followed Snyder from Melbourne.’
Wyatt nodded. ‘And he wouldn’t have paid Snyder the full amount until he was sure he’d found me. That’s why Snyder was so keen for us to go back to the farm instead of running. He’d missed out on the payroll-he didn’t want to miss out completely.’
By now their shoulders were touching. It calmed Wyatt and seemed to calm Leah. She rested more heavily against him. ‘What went wrong?’ she asked. ‘Judging by the way Snyder and Letterman acted, they were just as surprised as we were.’
Wyatt told her what he’d found on the road. ‘They hijacked our job, copying it detail for detail.’
Leah looked closely at his face. ‘Because I brought in Tobin,’ she said, ‘you thought I was behind the whole thing?’
‘It’s happened before. Tell me about him.’
She rolled her shoulders in embarrassment. ‘You know that guy you got the bike from, the one who pissed you off? I got Tobin’s name from him. I thought you’d get mad if you knew I’d gone to him again.’
Wyatt didn’t push it. Tobin was a distributor of bootleg booze, videos and cigarettes. Maybe his supplier was behind it. He put his arm around Leah’s shoulders. She made a noise in her throat.
Then he felt her stiffen and jerk away from him. ‘I can’t stay in the room with him there.’
She got to her feet and went downstairs. Wyatt changed into his own clothes and shoes, the searched Letterman’s pockets until he’d found the keys to the handcuffs. But something about the big man’s shape bothered him. A minute later he was counting out thirty thousand dollars from Letterman’s moneybelt. He pocketed twenty thousand and went downstairs. The bottom half of the house was full of smoke. He gave Leah the keys and ten thousand dollars. ‘Take the cuffs off,’ he said. ‘Pour yourself a drink I’ll be back in a moment.’
Checking that no one was standing in the garden next-door, he climbed to the roof and removed the chimney cap. When he got back inside Leah had opened all the doors and windows. She handed him a glass of Scotch. It was fiery and reviving. ‘What do we do now?’ she asked.