‘All right, bitch!’ he shouted.
Then she saw him racing for the steps, a gun in his right hand. She catapulted into the darkness of the loft.
Hurtling blindly across the loose planks, banging into objects in her path, Kate encountered a dark looming mass. She had stumbled against a tall stack of plastic bags. By the smell, they contained fertilizer or manure. They were piled on a platform extending the length of the barn. Kate jumped up on the platform and ducked around behind the bags. She was up against the barn’s inner wall. She crouched in the dark, pulse racing, unsure whether to stay put or move farther along the wall. The stench from the manure was starting to make her retch.
There was a sharp crack, then an almost simultaneous thud, as something smacked into one of the bags next to her. Christ! A bullet. She stifled a gasp. A tabby cat, hissing and yowling, leaped from the bags right in front of her and skittered across the shed to safety.
A mixture of tears and sweat was coursing down Kate’s face. The blouse under her jacket was soaked and clinging to her skin.
There was the tread of a cautious footstep on the floorboards – and then another. He was now very close.
The footsteps stopped.
‘You’d better come out. That bullet was not meant to hit you.’ A pause followed. ‘The next will – believe me.’
His words raised the fine hairs on her arms. Her heart was thumping.
A floorboard creaked as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, edging toward her. Then the creaking stopped.
She had to move. With her back flattened against the rough timbers of the wall, Kate crab-walked along the narrow gap between the stacks of plastic bags and the wall, praying that the floorboards wouldn’t give her away. Splinters of wood pulled at her jacket.
She heard a shuffling noise.
Then stillness again.
She stopped and held her breath. The cat meowed plaintively in the distance.
Inch by inch, she edged along the wall. In front of her, the bags were now stacked much higher – almost up to the crossbeams of the roof. At last, she reached the end of the loft. It had dead-ended. She was trapped.
A crashing sound made her recoil.
Another crash followed.
Then another.
Oh, God! He was heaving the bags off the platform. In only seconds, he would reach her. ‘Come on, lady.’
‘Jesus,’ she breathed.
‘You wanna play games? Fine by me.’
Her stomach convulsed.
‘Come on,’ he taunted.
He was standing directly below her, she reckoned. This was it. It was her only chance. And she would only get one shot at it. She braced her back against the pile of heavy plastic bags, and then put one foot up on the plank wall in front of her. She took a deep breath, then pushed off with all the force she could summon. The bags didn’t budge. She grimaced. She needed more leverage. Manoeuvring her spine as high up as possible on the bags, she was about to push, when he spoke again. This time his tone was deliberate and mocking. ‘Last chance, babe. Come out or start saying your prayers.’
That did it. Kate shoved, taxing every muscle in her straining body, every inch of nerve and sinew, mobilized in one superhuman effort. Suddenly the bags gave way. Unable to check her momentum, Kate went over with the bags, tumbling helplessly off the platform.
Shaken but unhurt, she managed to stand up on the slippery bags. There was no sign of Marcus. She looked down at the lumpy pile. My God, she realized, he could be right underneath her. She had to move fast. She’d hardly taken a step when his hand lunged out from under the heavy bags and grabbed her ankle.
‘Gotcha! You bitch!’ he shouted.
Kate screamed. He was gripping the ankle she had bloodied earlier. Looking down, she saw that he was still partially buried under bags but his hold on her ankle was giving him the anchorage he needed to pull himself out from underneath.
He jerked hard. She tottered awkwardly, then lost her balance, falling, face down, shielding her head with her crossed arms and hit the floor hard. She winced as needle-like slivers of wood pierced her palms.
His relentless grip on her injured ankle was making it numb. In a matter of seconds he would be free.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Sweet rose, whose hue, angry and brave,Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye:Thy root is ever in its graveAnd thou must die.
George Herbert
Kate dug her fingernails into the floorboards and pulled. She couldn’t break his hold. She screamed, redoubling her effort, but it was no use. She had nothing to hold on to and simply hadn’t the strength to break free of his grip. She began to cry tears of pain and frustration. Trying to blink them away, her eyes came to rest on a broken posthole digger and a garden fork. They were among a jumble of old implements stacked against the wall. Close to her, less than an arm’s length away, was a shovel. The long wooden handle was weathered and grey. Despite age and rusting, it looked sturdy. She reached for it, fingertips barely touching.
Marcus jerked her backward. Turning her head, she could see that his upper body was now almost free of the bags. She could make out the tendons stretching in his neck. She looked at him with revulsion. His dark, ferret-like eyes bore into hers like black marbles, relentless and vengeful. She lunged forward, straining for the shovel. She barely managed to grasp the bottom of the handle before he jerked again. Kate turned, pulled herself up to a kneeling position, raised the shovel above her head, and swung it down with all the strength she could muster. She closed her eyes just before it crashed down on his head. A hard, metallic sound echoed around the barn. It made her stomach turn. She tensed, expecting him to scream. But no sound came, as he lay slumped, eyes closed, his cheek distorted grotesquely on one of the bags. She turned away from the sight.
Her leg now free, she scrambled to her feet and started to stagger towards the steps. As she did, her foot struck something small and metallic that slid along the wooden planks in front of her.
The gun.
My God! He’d dropped it!
She stooped and picked it up. Gripping it in her right hand, she turned and ran.
She could see a patch of daylight ahead: the entrance. What would confront her when she returned to the paddock, she wondered? She was fearful but determined to find out. She was almost out of the barn when she heard a strange noise. She stopped and looked to her left. Alongside a small tractor, Baldie – still strapped to the post – was furiously thumping the ground with his feet. He stopped when he saw he had her attention.
Kate put the gun in her pocket and ran over to him. Remembering Baldie’s knife, she reached in his pocket, unfolded it and cut through the duct tape. She let him pull the tape off his mouth.
Cursing profusely, he told her how Marcus had out-smarted him. His shotgun was nowhere to be seen – Marcus had undoubtedly taken it. In turn, she explained briefly everything that had happened to her, finally telling him that the police were on their way.
Together they headed toward the paddock.
The fog was thicker than ever, swirling in grey curtains, beading the grass with moisture and deadening sound. From behind the cover of the barn, Kate brushed the damp sheen off her eyebrows and lashes and stared into the paddock. Barely visible, though no more than thirty feet from her, the tall man in the windbreaker she’d seen earlier was pacing back and forth as if waiting for somebody or for something to happen. He was still holding the gun. Immediately behind him, looking out of place in the empty paddock, was a large shrub in a wooden container. Two men still stood by it. In her panic she must have missed it before. It took a few seconds to register on her. It was the blue rose.