He walked the few paces to the kitchen, making sure it was empty, then back to the door, listening carefully to the occasional sounds from the rest of the house: someone shifting about in bed, floorboards creaking, a cough, light snoring.
Then the commotion started, as violent and immediate against that background as gunfire itself. Novakovic was shouting in Serbo-Croatian like he was trying to alert the other people in the house. Lucas heard Dan hit him and the screaming stopped as Novakovic fell heavily against a chair or table. Then a moment later it started again as more furniture bounced around the room.
Lucas strained to hear the rest of the house above the struggle. There was definitely movement, and that was the last thing he wanted. The door of the next room opened and a bleary head looked out, retreating as soon as he saw Lucas. Maybe they were used to being raided by police or immigration and knew when to keep out of the way.
The din continued, though, and the bleary-headed guy came running out again, waving what looked like a knife, his figure silhouetted against the light behind him. Lucas wasn’t sure it was a knife, but he shot him anyway. The guy dropped a couple of feet short of where he was standing.
There was panicked shouting upstairs now, then a gunshot, a startling crack that silenced the voices and momentarily silenced Novakovic before he resumed, shriller, louder.
Like a delayed response to the gunshot, a body tumbled down the stairs. The hallway and landing lights came on almost as he hit the bottom and then the second voice above resumed on its own, angry and desperate, wailing with the realization of what he’d just done.
Lucas looked at the two bodies, both young Eastern Europeans. The first had been holding a bread knife and was in his underwear. The second was wearing jeans and had a wound on his neck that was still gently pumping blood, his eyes startled.
Another shot cracked out, hitting the wall near the bottom of the street door, then another, before the guy with the gun hurtled down the stairs, screaming in fury, firing again. Lucas fired a shot up through the stair railings and the guy stumbled, his momentum vaulting him over the body at the bottom of the stairs and leaving him splayed awkwardly on the floor beyond.
He was dead—another young guy, lean and pale and red-haired, wearing track-suit bottoms. It was quiet in the house now, even in the room behind him. Lucas took a step towards the latest body, curious. He spotted the wound then, a lucky hit, up into the side of his abdomen, the bullet probably bouncing around inside his rib cage before lodging.
If there was anyone else in the house, they’d clearly decided on keeping quiet and out of the way. Lucas walked back to his position and then a moment later the door opened and Dan was standing there with Novakovic. Novakovic was dressed and cuffed, his face and T-shirt bloody and bruised.
Dan, on the other hand, looked like he’d been out for a stroll—not a hair out of place, his whole demeanor as relaxed and easy-going as it always was.
Lucas smiled and said, ‘Problem?’
‘Couldn’t find his shoes, that’s all.’ He looked around the hall then and said, ‘Jesus H!’
‘I only killed two of them.’ They both looked at Novakovic but he was taking in the scene coldly, like he’d seen this kind of thing too often to offer up any sadness for it.
They stepped over the bodies and walked back to the car with Novakovic between them. The street was quiet; no bedroom lights, no indication of curiosity about the gunshots that had burst out a minute before. Lucas sat in the back with Novakovic and they drove away, the sky showing the first uncertain hints of daylight.
Dan dropped him along the street from the hotel and said, ‘I’ll take him back to my place, give him some breakfast, then I’ll take him somewhere out of the way.’
‘Okay.’ Lucas thought about telling him to be careful but it was hardly necessary, and Novakovic was beaten, his spirit so visibly broken now that Lucas had to wonder how he’d got this far without being taken down. He looked like someone who’d been waiting these last seven years for his own history to catch up with him, whatever it was he’d temporarily escaped from back there in Bosnia.
Lucas slept for a couple of hours, then ordered breakfast and watched the news channel. He was waiting to see something of what had gone on but there was nothing, either because it still hadn’t been reported or because no one thought it mattered that much.
Novakovic wouldn’t matter that much either, except to Ella. She’d want him dead, but Lucas would try to steer her away from that course. It wasn’t that he wanted to spare Novakovic’s life, but that he thought he could protect Ella from the ugliness of what lay ahead of her.
And for all he knew, she didn’t want to be protected from it. Lucas couldn’t be sure what she wanted, or how far she’d strayed from the girl she’d been three months before, but he had an idea that the fate of Novakovic might tell him.
Chapter Thirteen