CAITLYN ROLLED, USING the momentum to push herself up, her shoulder, arm, hand shooting upwards, the metal rod flashing out. There was less resistance than she anticipated. The end of the rod went straight into his eye socket, seemed to shudder as it cleaved through bone and came to rest in his brain.
She got up and staggered back as the man groaned and flopped away from her, limp as a fish. He lay there on his back, the rod sticking grotesquely from his head, bloodless, his mouth agape. Caitlyn shivered, her eyes darting over his ragged clothes and filthy boots, the long thin tendrils of grey and brown hair running from the sides of his otherwise bald scalp.
A homeless man. One of the people who must have come into the hotel and left the trash she’d seen in the hall. She could hear that it was raining hard, now that the door to her prison room was open.
She stumbled, trying not to gag, her stomach rebelling against the sensation now cemented in her memory of the rod going up, the breath coming out of her victim. Fighting her revulsion, there was a white-hot excitement pulsing through her at the sight of the dark gaping doorway. She could feel sobs pushing their way up her throat but couldn’t hear them. Her ears were ringing. It seemed an age before her hand finally reached the doorframe and she looked down the long hall.
He was there.
Eyes fixed on the unlocked door, flicking now to her face.
Caitlyn’s captor marched towards her.
Chapter 66
I DIDN’T WANT to leave Zac. But I knew if I could find the killer, I could force him to tell us how to disarm the bomb. My teeth were gritted as I bolted into the house and grabbed my gun, Snale running after me with the diary from the kitchen table. The rage rippling up through my throat was almost a growl. I was going to find this sick fuck and make him reverse the trap he’d put the child in. If I had to beat him to within an inch of his life to make that happen, I would do it.
I ran across Snale’s porch and through the back door into the yard, keeping low so that my silhouette didn’t appear against the lights of the house. My gun drawn, I did a sweep, squinting in the dark, then hopped over a fence into the next property. I could still hear Zac’s crying from the windswept fields. Around Snale’s property, lights were coming on. As the seconds passed, more lights appeared in the distance as residents called each other, panicked, in the night.
‘Come on, you fuck,’ I seethed. ‘Where are you?’
I rushed across the road and through the property opposite Snale’s, making for the tiny house in the centre of the barren field. As I leapt up onto the porch a woman emerged, a young mother, small children trailing behind her. She screamed at the sight of me.
‘I’m police,’ I said. ‘Are you alright? Have you seen anyone in the area?’
‘No, no.’ The woman tried to usher her kids back through the screen door but they resisted, mouths gaping at my gun. ‘We heard screaming. What’s happening?’
‘Get inside,’ I said. ‘Shut the door.’
‘It’s all gonna come out.’ She shook her head ruefully, trembling before me, her hands gripping the small children by the shoulders of their pyjama shirts like they might run off at any second. ‘It’s all coming to an end.’
‘What?’ I squinted at her. ‘What’s that mean?’
She disappeared inside the house. I kept moving, doing a lap of her house, the next field, sweat sliding down my neck and ribs. When I got back to Snale’s house she was on her knees in the light of the doorway, flipping through the diary as Kash tried to get sense out of Zac.
‘Did you find anyone?’
‘No,’ I knelt beside Snale. ‘What did you find?’
‘I think it’s this.’ She pointed to a messy diagram in blue and red ink. ‘I think it’s connected to the seat. If he gets up, it’ll blow.’
I grabbed the diary and took it to Kash, who was standing on his toes with another torch, trying to see down the back of Zac’s seat.
‘ Oh Jesus.’ Zac panted, his sweat-drenched hands squeaking on the other side of the glass, fingers spread, desperate. ‘Jesus Christ, I think I can hear ticking.’
Kash snatched the diary out of my hands, glanced at the diagram. ‘Thought so. Circuit-breaker. It’s linked to the driver’s seat. We can open the doors.’
‘Don’t open the doors!’ Zac cried. ‘I don’t wanna die! Oh God! Please!’
‘Let’s go with the front passenger side,’ Kash said. ‘Just in case.’
We ran to the other side of the car. Kash pushed me back.
‘I’ll do it.’
He eased the handle of the passenger door out. There was a click. My mouth was dry as I cringed, waiting for the blast.
There was none. I rushed forwards to the doorway beside Kash, reached out and grabbed Zac’s hands.
‘It’s OK.’ I squeezed his hot fingers. ‘Don’t move. We’re gonna figure this out.’
Kash leaned in the doorway, trying not to touch anything, and shone the light quickly around the seats, the console, the back of the cabin.
‘Christ,’ he breathed. ‘It’s all wired up under the seats. I can’t get to it from this angle.’ He stood back, kept his voice low. ‘I can hear a timer ticking.’
‘Can you see it?’
‘No, it’s tucked up underneath. All the wires are. I can’t get at it unless I put my hand in there, and we have no idea where the switch is. If I disrupt the connection at the wrong point the thing will blow.’
We were walking unconsciously away from the car, taking steps out of the blast zone. Zac sat in the driver’s seat, reaching for us, sobbing.
‘Please don’t go! Don’t leave me here!’
‘What can we do?’
‘We can try to replace his weight on the seat,’ Kash panted, looking wildly at the house. ‘It’d have to be at least the same weight as the boy. We don’t know how sensitive the switch is. If it’s too light it might –’
‘I got it.’ I ran towards the house. In the hall was a backpack hanging on a row of hooks cluttered with hats and coats. I grabbed it and sprinted into the living room, almost slipping on the floorboards, and dumped the contents of the bag on the floor. I grabbed at anything heavy and started shoving. Wine bottles. A huge dictionary. A cast-iron sculpture on a shelf. Things were crashing everywhere as I went along. My hands were shaking so hard I could hardly use them. Zac’s screams burned in my ears.
‘I’m coming!’ I screamed. ‘I’m coming, Zac! Hold on!’
Chapter 67
CAITLYN’S KNEES BUCKLED beneath her. It was the only thing that saved her from his full arm swing, the punch sailing over her head as fear consumed her completely. She flopped against his legs, defeat turning her limbs to jelly. He grabbed her waist, hair, tried to get a hold of her. He was standing too close. Stepped back.
‘Stupid bitch,’ he snarled. He flipped her, hands beneath her arms, gripping painfully at the tender flesh. ‘Get back in there!’
It was the sight of the doorway that awakened the fury again in Caitlyn. The enormous sucking weight of the room beyond it. The hours, days, weeks she had lain awake in that concrete nightmare, dreaming of release. Her limbs suddenly hardened. She lifted her leg and slammed it into the doorframe, shocking him, sending them both staggering backwards.
‘No!’ she snarled, facing him, her body bent with pain and exhaustion. ‘Never again!’
She didn’t know how to fight. She’d never so much as been in a loud argument with a stranger. It was raw animal terror taking over now. Her hands sprang into claw-shapes, her jaw set and teeth bared. She threw herself at his middle with all her might. They hit the ground hard, his legs coming up and around her waist, arms and hands gripping at her face. She let him pull her into his embrace, bit some part of him hard through his shirt – his shoulder or upper chest. She was blinded, wild, tugging at his face and ears, scratching at his eyes.
He rolled and she was suddenly free, stumbling into the walls. She ran as though through water, trying to pull herself along. His footsteps pounded after her.
Chapter 68