The gun swung sharply around, the shot zipping above him and smashing through the window behind. He’d jumped down low, most of his body shielded by the bed as he scrambled on the floor and grappled his arms around Lorena from behind.
As he raised again, he had her pinned tight against him: a complete body shield. His eyes jousted with Nicola’s for a second, as if pressing home who was in control now.
‘Move away from the door or I’ll snap her neck.’ He pulled his forearm tighter around Lorena’s throat to demonstrate.
At the other end of the camera, Bell was on a knife’s edge, his heart like a jackhammer as he watched events unfold. As the gun had pointed at the camera, he’d been screaming, ‘No,
Bell watched Nicola hesitate for a second, then finally move aside a couple of feet as Ryall edged towards her and backed half a step at a time towards the door with Lorena gripped tight to him. As Nicola followed, they were gone from camera vision; all Bell was left with was the sound.
Nicola had moved aside almost mechanically. Afraid that he might harm Lorena, or just following his command the way she’d become programmed to all these years? Only as he edged towards the top of the stairs did the thought hit her.
‘Where are you going with her?’
‘I don’t know yet. I’ll decide that once I’m in the car.’ Ryall’s eyes shifted nervously downstairs. They’d know about the hypnosis from the tape, but had he touched Lorena anywhere he shouldn’t? He’d got so used to touching Lorena where he liked when she was under that he just couldn’t recall. ‘They’ll be here soon.’
‘Here?
He nodded towards Lorena’s bedroom. ‘The bear. They’ve been taping.’ Tired tone: tedium of the long years of having to explain every last detail to cut through her drink and pills stupor.
For Nicola, everything suddenly gelled in that instant. All she had to do was hold him up a couple of minutes. She raised the gun more confidently. ‘Then you’re not leaving.’
That condescending sneer again. ‘You hardly had the stomach to shoot the bear… and both you and I know that you’re not a good enough shot to get me without also hitting Lorena.’ His eyes focused on her gun hand, which started to shake more under his stare.
She found his confidence infuriating: a few words and she felt her own confidence blow to the wind like dandelion seeds. Exactly why he’d got away with everything for so long with Mikaya, and now Lorena. She’d let them down; and now even with a gun in her hand there was nothing she could do to stop him.
She put her other arm up, trying to steady the gun with both hands. But still it shook and wavered wildly.
‘You’re pathetic!’ Ryall grinned at the spectacle. ‘Go back and practice shooting at the bear — then when you’re ready in a couple of years, let me know.’
She tried to face him off a moment longer, but finally crumbled, lowering the gun. He was right: she was pathetic. A hopeless wreck of a woman on the edge. She’d been crazy to even think she had the strength to -
But as he turned to the stairs with a last indignant ‘Pathetic’ and she caught the pleading look in Lorena’s eyes — a fresh spark suddenly rose. A red raw anger that made her eyes sting. Anger and disgust at the shell of a woman she’d become, at what he’d made her. She’d done nothing to help Mikaya — but she couldn’t let him go off now with Lorena! If she didn’t do something now, she never would: one last chance of redemption! And in that moment, there was a window of opportunity: he turned slightly to take the first step on the stairs, his guard down fleetingly as he thought she’d given up the ghost.
She raised the gun and fired in the same motion, before his eyes could settle on her and steal her confidence away again.
But at the last second he’d half-turned towards her — perhaps catching the gun raising in the corner of his eye — and as she saw the splay of red on his side and at the same time on Lorena’s night-dress, it looked like she’d caught Lorena as well.
Then watched in horror as they were thrown down the stairs, Lorena almost directly under him as they tumbled down. They landed with a sickening thud at the bottom, and Nicola closed her eyes for a second, hardly daring to look, before finally rushing down.
She knelt a yard away from the tangle of their bodies: Lorena blood-soaked, half-trapped under his chest. No movement from either of them.
She tentatively reached out, then retracted halfway. Her nerve had suddenly gone again. And so she just stayed in the same position, chewing at the knuckles of her gun hand and rocking back and forth on her haunches as she looked on at their bodies.
At Bell’s end, he’d been keened sharply to every small sound after the gunshot, praying that he might hear Lorena’s voice. Nothing but silence for a full minute; then, as he honed in closer, his ear less than an inch from the speaker, he finally picked up something: Nicola Ryall muttering ‘What have I done… What have I done?’ Punctuated by gentle weeping.
The search-beam of the helicopter raced across the landscape ahead of them.
‘How far now?’ Michel asked. They knew from Mundy that the exact location was halfway between Cochrane and a place called Fraserdale.
‘Two or three miles, no more.’
Trees, lakes. Trees, lakes. They knew the house was on the edge of a lake, but Michel couldn’t tell one from another. Hundreds of miles of the same vista stretching out across Northern Quebec and Ontario.
‘I think that’s it,’ the pilot said after a moment, nodding to one side. He tilted the helicopter, starting to circle in.
And then as they straightened, the search-beam hit the house: no signs of life at first, not even any lights on. Michel’s hands clenched tight. Again the image hit of picking through the bodies.
Then Michel spotted a figure in front of the house and another running along the lakeside. ‘There! Something there!’ He pointed.
The man by the house looked up at them anxiously as he was caught in the beam, but the man at the lakeside seemed to have half his attention on something deeper out in the lake.
‘Where was
‘Don’t know. Let’s look see.’ The pilot swung back and pointed the beam towards the lake.
At first they didn’t see anything, and he had to tilt the beam to reach further out before it finally picked up the two figures facing each other at the centre of the frozen lake.
‘So what now?’ Georges gasped for breath.
‘I think you know.’ Roman smiled as he levelled the gun. ‘Oh, but one thing just before you go. I had nothing to do with that abduction and attempted hit on you. That’s not to say I didn’t plan to kill you — but I think your friend and mine Chenouda knew that, and decided to try and get you into the programme.’
Georges shook his head. His first reaction was to disbelieve Roman, but then why would he bother to lie at this moment? So many side-games that he’d never been aware of; but there was one that did now prey on his mind.
‘I can’t believe that Jean-Paul is responsible for this now, has ordered you to kill me. It goes against everything he believes in.’
‘Yep, you’re right there. His idea was to get you away to Cuba. Soft fool that he is.’
Georges glared hard. ‘He’ll have you for breakfast when you get back.’
‘I don’t think so. As we speak now, he’s being taken out. He won’t be having any more breakfasts.’
‘What, I… I don’t-’ But as he saw the gloating satisfaction on Roman’s face, he knew that it wasn’t a bluff. His stomach dipped sickeningly, but his first thought was for Simone. Jean-Paul dead, and now him. She’d never be able to face it. He closed his eyes for a second and shuddered. Maybe they’d been wrong all along, wasting their time. In the end, Roman’s ways held sway.
But if he was going to die, he might at least have one last swipe back. ‘Jean-Paul was right about you all along. No fucking brain! The bullet the answer to everything.’ Roman glared back intensely, his jaw set tight, but Georges met his stare evenly. ‘So if you’re going to shoot me, shoot me! Prove us all right what an absolute no-
