He could hear the guy running too, along a hallway, up the main stairs. Dan was at a disadvantage because he didn’t know the layout of the upper floor, didn’t know where this let out, even if he could get it open.
He barged into the door and it yielded, thickly at first, then loosening as something crashed on the other side. He could see a lamp on the floor in front of him, guessing a small table had been placed in front of the door.
And now he could hear the guy reaching the top of the stairs ahead of him along the landing. Dan dropped back down the flight he’d just climbed, onto his belly, and as the guy appeared on the corridor Dan fired off a couple of shots, hitting him in the leg.
The guy managed to return fire, or fired simultaneously, but it hit the door high above where Dan was lying. The guy staggered, fell backwards into the door of one of the rooms. Dan heard him try the handle and mutter something—it was locked.
For a short while there was silence. Dan listened out for signs of Brabham and the other guy. He’d imagined from listening that the room they were in would be behind him, but looking ahead he suspected the stairs rose up in the middle from a central hall like an inner courtyard, the landing forming a square with rooms on all four sides.
The conversation had definitely come from this side of the house, so if Brabham wasn’t behind him, the room he was in had to be ahead of him and to the right. There was only one problem; the guy ensconced in the doorway, bleeding, but no less lethal for that.
Dan pushed himself back to his feet, stepped lightly up the remaining stairs and to the edge of the doorway. He waited again.
Then the guy started to speak, saying, “Hendricks, the game’s up, we’ve called for back—”
Dan stepped out, walked directly towards him and fired twice, both to the chest. The guy dropped his gun and slumped against the door with an astonished look on his face. He slid down it then, his legs buckling under him. The thigh wound had been bleeding out badly anyway, probably weakening him, slowing his responses.
Dan waited a second, heard the telltale insectlike scratching coming from the guy’s earpiece. He stepped over him and moved to the edge of the big square landing that looked down over the hall.
There wasn’t much margin for error here, because if he was wrong about them being on the side to his right, he’d be caught in the open, an easy target from the cover of any other doorway looking out over the stairwell.
He went back, picked up the dead guy’s gun, then returned to the corner of the landing and tossed the gun out on to the stairs. It clattered down half a dozen of them before coming to rest.
In the silence that followed, he heard a whisper, nothing more, backing up his hunch. He edged out, to the first door, moving to the side of it before turning the handle and pushing it open.
There was no response. He moved along, repeated the motion, then with the third door. Instantly this time, a shot was fired, so eagerly that it clipped the door even as it opened and ricocheted into the frame. Another followed immediately afterward, whistling out and hitting the wall across the other side.
Dan smiled, and said, “How do you want to play this, Bill?”
“That’s up to you, Dan.”
The other guy in the room said, “No, with all respect, sir, it isn’t.”
That put a location on them both in Dan’s mental map of the room, but Brabham’s voice came back avuncular, aimed at Dan more than the guy in the room, saying, “Relax, Jim, I’m sure Dan doesn’t want to kill anyone else this evening.”
Once more, Dan took advantage of the split in concentration, moving as Brabham spoke, stepping into the room, firing as soon as he had even the promise of a sight, hitting the guy in the head. In turn, Jim also managed to get off another shot, but only into the floor a yard in front of where he was standing.
Only now, only as he turned and leveled the gun at Brabham, did he get any sense of the room they were in. It was a study, the walls lined with books, a desk at the far end with a view out through the window, which he guessed looked out over the lake.
On this side of the room, there was a leather chesterfield sofa on the wall facing Dan, and a couple of high-backed leather chairs. Brabham was sitting in one of those chairs, but turned to face the door rather than the sofa, as if he’d been choreographing this meeting all along.
Brabham looked at the dead officer on the floor beyond the sofa, and said with a bemused tone, “Well, I got that wrong, didn’t I?”
Chapter Forty-two
“Are you going to kill me too? I hadn’t thought so, but it seems I’m not much good at reading your intentions.”
He looked older than in the pictures Dan had seen. He was carrying a little more weight, his hair greyer, but he looked healthy and relaxed, like a man who was comfortable with where he was in life and what lay ahead.
“Are you armed?”
Brabham responded by opening his jacket for Dan to see. Dan walked over and sat on the chesterfield.