She rolled onto the ground and, flat on her chest, took aim at the man.
But he held the girl in front of him, making her a human shield. If Eva fired now, she might harm her.
Claude Salaville crossed the yard, heading for the other house.
If she had been wrong, and the brothers had another vehicle in the back of the property, he would escape.
The man fired another round. Then he rushed into the house.
He’d chosen the option of true killers.
He took refuge inside.
Ready for an apocalypse.
At this point, the inspector knew she was supposed to wait. The procedure was quite clear about that. But the girl’s screams rose again.
Eva Svarta had no choice. This profession drove her crazy with frustration. Sometimes she was too late and found killers already splattered happily in their victims’ blood. Sometimes she did manage to stop them before they crossed to the irreparable. But always, she found herself reminded of the reason she had decided to join the force: to exorcise the darkness, her very own darkness.
She’d been a girl, too.
Nobody had come to her rescue.
She was not going to let the past repeat itself.
She got up and ran across the yard, weapon raised.
In spite of the lightning that had blinded her a minute earlier, the sky showed no sign of rain. It seemed odd, but she had no time to think about it.
As she passed in front of the barn halfway to the house, a premonition hit her. She pressed herself against the wall and took a quick look inside to make sure the other brother was not holed up there, hidden and ready to pounce.
There seemed to be nobody, yet the smell was abnormal.
She stepped into the doorway.
Nobody alive, anyway.
Eva had to fight back a violent urge to vomit.
The air was heavy with the stink of decomposing flesh.
She forced herself to breathe calmly. She pushed her hair back so it would not be in the way. Then she pushed her sunglasses up the bridge of her nose.
She hesitated to step into this slaughterhouse. She had expected something awful. But this was beyond horrible.
She gulped, swallowing what tasted like bile. Her hands shook. On the walls she could see inscriptions drawn in blood, circles and occult symbols. The Salavilles had left dozens of victims, and they lay strewn in the barn. Broken, ripped-apart figures. Girls with no faces. Not a single one of them had a face.
It was the voice of a little girl in her mind. A six-year-old girl she had held in her arms. An entire life annihilated.
She forced herself to forget it. It all belonged to the darkness.
A mission, yes. One she had every intention of seeing through.
She went back outside and moved along the stone wall. Then she cut through the rest of the yard, double- quick.
She reached the second house.
The door had been left open.
It could be a trap.
She had no time to worry about it.
More important, she didn’t care anymore.
She pushed the door all the way open, revealing a living room with furniture covered with plastic sheets. She entered, pointing her gun in every direction.
“Come out, asshole! I’m by myself. Let’s settle this, right now.”
Laughter came from the top of the staircase.
She drew closer. And saw Claude Salaville on the top floor.
“It’s all settled already,” he said. “You’re going to get the fuck out of here right away and shut the door. Or else the kid dies.”
He was holding the girl against him, a huge boning knife under her throat.
9
The fugitive bolted though the trees.
“Salaville!” Vauvert shouted, fast on his trail.
He was in good physical shape. He just had to avoid slipping in the mud. The fat guy ahead of him, on the other hand, was not used to such exertion. He was losing ground every second.
Now Vauvert was just ten yards or so from him.
He ran even faster.
Unexpectedly, the man he was chasing left the narrow path and threw himself into the bushes.
“Stop!” Vauvert shouted at the top of his voice. “Don’t move!”
In the branches, the obese man rose to his feet. He pointed a handgun in his direction.
The inspector barely had time to dive behind a tree as the man fired.
“Salaville! You don’t want to do that!”
A second shot rang out in the uncanny silence of the forest. The tree Vauvert stood behind shook as the bullet hit it. Roman Salaville fired several more times. The bullets whizzed by the trunk. Vauvert crouched.
The gunfire ended. The moron had run out of rounds. Vauvert heard branches snap as the fat man made his way deeper into the woods.
He stood and darted after him. The trees were thick, making it hard to see anything. Still, he could discern the fugitive struggling to get through the dead branches and undergrowth.
“Freeze! It’s an order! Freeze, you hear me?”
The man kept giving it his all. He managed to hoist himself over a fallen tree limb and heave himself forward. Then he vanished into a tall clump ferns.
There was no hesitating. The inspector picked up speed and caught sight of the fugitive again. But his right foot encountered a pile of branches.
He stumbled and fell, his ankle stuck between two stumps.
He did not know what hurt more, the razor-sharp branches or his twisted ankle.
When he was finally able to extricate himself and wobble to his feet, the fugitive was out of sight once again.
“Shit, shit and shit.”
Infuriated, he trotted along, trying not to put too much weight on his right leg. His ankle hurt like hell, but he figured it was a sprain, nothing more. It was not his first, and he had no time to feel sorry for himself.
“Salaville!” he bellowed.
Where had he gone? To the right? Thick, black fir trees. To the left? A wall of tall ferns and thorn-filled bushes.
And that damn silence in the woods, as though there was no life anywhere.
He made his way through the trees, trying to detect a human trail.
Roman Salaville could be lurking anywhere, hidden behind any trunk or rock. The only reason he had not fired at Vauvert was because he had run out of ammo.
