Sanctus

Chapter 48

Before the driver’s airbag even started to deflate Gabriel was beating it down, unclasping his seat belt and reaching for the door. He kicked it open as hard as he could, rolling into the rain before it had time to swing shut again. It happened so fast that Liv was still looking at the empty driver’s seat when her own door opened.

She turned, and came face to face with the muzzle of a gun.

‘Out!’ a voice shouted from somewhere behind it.

She looked past the black hole of the barrel at the young man holding it. He wasn’t much more than a boy. Acne scars showed through the fuzz of a sparse blonde beard and rain poured from the peak of a baseball cap pulled low over pale blue eyes.

‘Out!’ he shouted again.

He leaned forward and grabbed her with his free hand just as the glass behind her exploded, showering the interior with tiny, glittering shards. The boy jerked backwards, pirouetting as if someone had yanked hard on a rope attached to his left shoulder. Liv glanced back to see Gabriel framed in the jagged remains of the window.

‘Run!’ he shouted, then in a flash of movement he was swept from view.

Liv whipped her head back and stared through the open door at the pale-eyed boy lying where he had fallen, staring up at the stinging rain. A shower of glass jewels fell to the floor as she fumbled for the release button and her seat belt slid across her body. She splashed past the corpse towards the shadows on the far side of the street. She expected to hear the crack of a gunshot behind her at any moment and feel the thump of a bullet punching her in the back and spinning her to the ground.

She made it to the sidewalk and skidded across it to a verge of low bushes and grass. Given two years’ growth and kind winters the wiry shrubs might have offered some sort of cover, but in their current state they served as little more than obstacles. She zigzagged between them, slithering over ground so saturated it was like running on ice. She shortened her stride. Risked a glance behind her.

Visibility was practically zero through the thick curtain of rain. She could just make out the outline of the car and the van in front of it, but nothing else. Something whacked into her, throwing her violently backwards. She lay there for a few moments, blinking up into the rain as the coldness of the earth seeped into her body. For the second time in as many minutes she thought she’d been shot, then she became aware of a shape in front of her, stretched across the darkness like a huge spider web. She followed its faint outline until she saw something thin and sturdy jutting up from the ground. A post. She’d run smack into a chain-link fence.

She risked another glance in the direction of the two cars and saw her cell glowing on the ground near her head, thrown from her grasp when she’d fallen. She grabbed it, terrified that its meagre light might act as a beacon for whoever might be stalking her. She smothered the display with her hand, pressed hard on the off button. From her new position she could no longer see the car or the van. It made her feel better — but only for a second.

A shot rang out, followed by the sound of an engine starting up and the tortured shriek of tyres on tarmac. She heard the whine of bullets against metal from somewhere down the street and a window blowing out. The fleeing vehicle powered round a bend and was gone.

She looked back up towards the road. Saw nothing but the yellow haze of the streetlights. She imagined someone standing beyond the shallow ridge, gun in hand, scanning the darkness. Looking for her. But who was it? One of the guys who’d ambushed them, or Gabriel? All she wanted was to lie perfectly still, not run, not draw attention to herself. But when she had bolted from the car she’d headed straight to the first bit of cover she’d seen. She hadn’t even run at an angle. She was lying in the first place whoever was up there would look. She had to move.

She looked to her right, in the direction they’d been driving. A row of service buildings marked a junction. Storage units, most likely. Full of luggage or freight, and maybe even people working night shifts — just a few hundred yards away from her. In the other direction the glow of the airport terminal highlighted the under-side of the low cloud. She had no idea how far away it was, but it was a lot further than the service buildings. She listened out for someone approaching. Heard the hiss of the rain. Her own rapid breathing. Nothing else.

She took three quick breaths, scrambled to her feet, and ran. The logical thing was to head for the nearest units and try and raise the alarm, so she went the other way. Back to the warm, brightly lit concourse, and the crowds of tourists staring blankly up at the departure boards, and the two cops with the semi-automatic weapons slung from their shoulders.

She crouched low, keeping the fence to her right, hoping to God that whoever was up there was looking in the opposite direction. A sudden flash of lightning split the night, burning an image on Liv’s retina of everything that lay in her path: the gate in the chain link fence about sixty feet in front of her, row upon row of parked cars beyond it. If she could just make it amongst the serried ranks of bullet-stopping family saloons and weekend runabouts, she might be safe.

Thunder rumbled overhead. The gate was now just forty feet away and the verge to her left started to flatten out as it dropped level with the entrance road. She was losing what little cover she had on that side, but there was nothing she could do about it.

The black-and-yellow stripes of an automatic barrier stretched across the opening in the fence. She forced herself to focus on it rather than on whoever was behind her.

Twelve feet now.

Ten.

Five.

Her right foot connected with the firm asphalt of the road and she launched herself towards the box containing the barrier’s mechanism, ducked behind it, fell gratefully back against the cold, wet metal and for the briefest of moments felt safe.

Then the rain stopped.

It was so abrupt it seemed almost unnatural. One minute she was enveloped in an almost tropical deluge, the next, the curtain lifted. She heard the gurgle of the gutters along the main road and the gentle sucking of the saturated earth. In the sudden silence her every breath sounded like the rasp of a chainsaw. She strained her ears for other sounds. In her fevered imagination the silence spoke of an enemy nearby, listening for her slightest movement, a gun pointing at the cold earth until a warmer target could be found.

The terminal building was still too far away, but she could pick out every detail of it now — which meant whoever was looking for her could too. She felt an overwhelming urge to sprint back to the cover of the parked cars, but fought it back.

Fifteen feet of tarmac was all that separated her from them. And now she noticed that the section where she crouched was lit more brightly than the rest. Elsewhere she could see comforting corridors of shadow where the pools of light didn’t quite overlap. She’d be much harder to spot if she ran along one of those. The nearest was about twenty feet away. Plus fifteen more to the cars. Or she could chance it and run from where she was.

She closed her eyes and rested her head against the steel upright. Then she launched herself across the narrow stretch of road, keeping her head level with the black-and-yellow barrier.

Gabriel heard her distant footfalls on the wet tarmac and watched her bolt across the entrance road, change direction as she came to a stretch of shadow, then disappear into the ocean of metal.

He turned back and scanned the scene of the ambush, checking to see if they were compromised. A few security cameras were sited at the edge of the car park, but all of them were pointing inwards at the vehicles. The same story with the service buildings. No cameras trained on the road. It was safe to assume that none of what had happened in the last few minutes had been recorded.

He picked up the brass shell casings from the seven rounds he’d fired at the retreating vehicle. Most of them had been on target, but none had stopped the driver from escaping. He dropped the casings into his pocket with a muffled clink and turned his attention to the body.