“What the f—” he said, his voice at normal volume, and I hissed at him in an agony of fear.
“Shut up, there’s police, outside. I have to go.”
“But—” Cole started, but I was already grabbing my rucksack and peering through the rear windows of the cottage. There was only one door, but at the back there were two large windows, one of which opened above a straight drop onto sand, the other onto what I strongly suspected was a gorse bush. The question was whether I risked the prickles, for the cover, and to break my fall. For a moment I hesitated, unsure. Then I went for the other window—the straight drop. The prospect of cover from the police was tempting, but the landing would probably make a noise, and if I got tangled in the bush I might never get out. The idea of flailing there painfully, twigs cracking, trying to stifle the sounds of pain as the thorns pricked me… it wasn’t appealing.
The window gave a squeal as I pushed it up, and I winced, holding my breath. But there was no sign from the front of the property that anyone had heard, and I dropped my rucksack gently out of the window and then climbed after, lowering myself down the side of the shack with my feet braced against the wooden shingles, until I was hanging full length. The stretch made the area below my ribs screech with pain. I could feel the dressing pulling against the skin and the wound beneath opening up.
I let go, dropping soundlessly to the sand, on all fours as I always did, but this time, in spite of the soft landing, I had to close my eyes, biting my cheek against the pain in my side and waiting for the hot throbbing to recede.
I was just straightening up, one hand pressed to my ribs, when I heard the sound of an engine and the crackle of tires on tarmac coming from the front of the cottage. The reinforcements were here.
Drawing a deep breath, I shouldered my pack and began to run, into the mist.
I had no real idea where I was going, only that I was heading through the dunes, away from where the taxi driver had dropped me off. It was ridiculously hard, running through the shifting sand—the rise and fall of the dunes was almost impossible to see in the mist and darkness, and I was glancing over my shoulder for pursuers when I ran almost full pelt into something that stopped me short with a jolt.
Shit. Shit.
Barbed wire. My nemesis.
It looked to be the remnants of some long-forgotten fence, perhaps, coiling up out of the soft sand like a weed, and it had tangled itself in my shoes and jeans, hooking into the loose fabric and the skin beneath. I couldn’t rip myself free without losing a chunk of flesh. Carefully, cursing my inattentiveness and the farmer for not picking up his fucking debris, I began to uncoil the strands.
From behind me I could hear sounds, someone pounding on the front door, raised voices, and when I glanced back, I could see the headlamps of a car piercing the mist, and something else—something smaller—the swing of a torch beam, perhaps. I unhooked another coil. I was almost free.
And then I heard it, a voice, maybe through a loudspeaker, though I wasn’t sure.
“Jack!” It was a woman’s voice. “Jack, it’s DS Malik. We know you’re out there, you’ve got nowhere to run. You need to turn yourself in.”
I shut my eyes for a second. How. How the fuck had they found me? Had they tracked Cole’s car?
I ripped the last coil off my shoe and began to run again, my feet silent in the damp sand but my heart and breath sounding painfully loud in the predawn hush. Even the waves seemed to have quietened.
“Turn yourself in, Jack!” Malik called. Was it my imagination, or was her voice closer? “You’re innocent, we know that—this is all a big misunderstanding. We’ve spoken to your sister and she explained everything. We just want you to come home and clear it all up, clear your name and help us catch Gabe’s killer.”
A sob rose in my throat. I wanted—God, I wanted more than anything—to believe that was true, to believe that they really did think I was innocent. But you didn’t send two squad cars after an innocent person in the middle of the night.
“You can’t keep running, Jack,” Malik’s voice came again, and now I could see torch beams in the darkness, slicing through the mist like white light sabers. “We’re tracking your phone. We know your location. I’m giving you the chance here to turn yourself in. Things are going to look much worse for you if you keep running!”
I thought I was innocent?
I almost wanted to shout it back to her, the bait-and-switch was so laughably transparent. But I didn’t—I wasn’t that stupid, and I couldn’t spare the breath for shouting anyway—I needed every scrap of oxygen in my lungs to force myself forward through the dunes.
I ran on. And on. It felt like miles, though in reality it was probably not even one. But running in the dark through soft, shifting sand is no joke, particularly when you can’t see the rise and fall of the ground and every step is jarringly unexpected.
After another few hundred meters the muscles in my legs were beginning to ache, the initial bolt of adrenaline wearing off, and the pain in my side was rising with every step. But I had to keep running—I had no other choice. You can do this, I thought. Speed, stamina, strength; this is what you train for. Except there were half a dozen of them, combing through the mist, and one of me—and my stamina was running out. I would have to stop running at some point. The only question was whether they caught me first.
And then I saw it, looming out of the darkness—a low concrete shack with a metal serving hatch at the front. In the summer it probably sold ice creams and slushies, but right now it looked like a World War II bunker. I glanced back over my shoulder and saw the beam of a torch slicing through the mist, not as far away as I would have liked. For a second I wavered. Keep running—or hide?
My breath was shuddering through my nose, and for an instant I put my hand up, feeling reflexively for the rubber earpiece, to ask Gabe for his advice—but I knew the truth before my hand even touched my bare cheek. I was alone. There was no Gabe here to tell me what to do.
The shutter covering the serving hatch at the front was padlocked from the inside and looked secure. I might have been able to pry it open with a crowbar; I had a small, slim jimmy in my rucksack which would probably have done the job, but it would be hard to force the shutter without making a noise, and impossible to do so without leaving a visible sign of what I’d done—a sign that would lead any pursuer straight to me. Picking the lock of the staff entrance at the back was a better bet, if I could do it fast enough. The torch beam was getting worryingly close—and now I could see another coming from the other direction, high up in the dunes ahead of me. They were closing in. Hiding had suddenly become not just the better option but the only option.
But when I rounded the corner of the shack, I saw that there was a door—but no keyhole, just an ancient numerical keypad made of painted metal, and beside it a rusting steel knob. A mechanical combination lock. Fuck. It made sense. The place was probably staffed by a multitude of casual workers, so giving all of them a key would be a headache. It also meant that if the code had four digits, there were exactly ten thousand possible combinations.
“Jack!” I heard from behind me, as if in answer to my misgivings, and my stomach lurched. Whatever I did, I had to do it fast. Doing anything was better than doing nothing. Quickly, I tapped in 1234, just as I had at Arden Alliance, and twisted the metal knob. It had been worth a try then, and it was worth a try now, but just like at Arden Alliance, nothing happened.
Unlike at Arden Alliance, though, the attempt wasn’t entirely pointless. Touching the keys had shown me something—two of them felt different from the others. Smoother. Colder. The chipped paint had worn away, exposing the metal beneath. I longed to get out my torch, but I couldn’t risk it, so instead I ran my fingers over the whole keypad, closing my eyes to better feel the change in texture. There were five that were perceptibly more worn than the others: 1, 4, 5, 9, and the * sign.