“Go after her!” Acid yelled, fully conscious now. “We can’t let her get away.”
But Danny shook his head. “I can’t,” he gasped. “Can’t leave you… Can’t catch her.”
He slumped against the wall, defeated. His legs were shaking and it felt like his heart might explode. Acid glared at him, blood seeping from the tiny wounds all over her body.
She was in a bad way.
So was he.
This was the right move, he told himself, as he slid to the floor and retched up a mouthful of stomach acid and beer.
“Sorry,” he gasped.
Because he knew, even if he conjured the energy to chase after her, and by some amazing feat caught up with her, what then? He was a big guy, sure, and he could handle himself. But she’d caught him on his damned glass jaw, and right now he was a mess of quivering legs and a fuzzy mindset. If she hadn’t have legged it just now, she’d have killed him. And the thought of that only made him want to throw up again.
Thirty-Nine
Acid’s face was numb and her lips fat and swollen, but it didn’t stop her chastising the pathetic Irishman as he made a big show of getting to his feet and staggering zombie-like towards her.
“Are you bloody well joking?” she snapped. “You had her. Why didn’t you jump on her, hold her down, anything?”
All Danny could do was shake his head forlornly. “I don’t know what happened,” he muttered, as he clocked her fierce expression through glassy eyes. “She blindsided me. Knocked all the focus out of me. I’m sorry, I’m a fecking idiot. What she said about Camila…”
“Camila?” she asked, watching him as he shoved the tiny key into the remaining cuff lock, closing one eye and grabbing her arm to steady himself. His hand shook, fingers slipped off the key and he swore.
“My landlady. Of the room I was renting up until a couple of days ago.” He looked up at her. “She wouldn’t really have… Would she?”
Acid didn’t answer. But he took what he saw in her face, swallowed hard, nodded once and reaffirmed his grip on the key.
“Well I couldn’t leave ya, could I?” he said, unlocking the cuff and releasing her. “What if I’d have… If she’d… Ya know. You’d be tied up here for who knows how long. Bleeding out—”
“I’d have been okay.”
“Would ya?” he snapped, then dropped his gaze away.
She hobbled over to the mirror to better examine her injuries. As well as her bust nose and cut cheek there were around twenty puncture wounds in total. Some of them had already clotted but not all and they would require attention. As the adrenaline and sedatives left her system, they were also starting to hurt like hell. She wanted to shout. To smash something. To scream the scream of a million bats.
How the hell had this happened?
She’d had Magpie in her sights and she’d screwed it up.
Again.
She’d hesitated.
Again.
Maybe her old adversary was correct. She’d lost it. Nothing but a pathetic joke. An insult not only to her years of training and discipline but to herself, and her mother most of all. Poor, innocent Louisa Vandella. She’d had the chance to avenge her death. To do what she’d been longing to do. And she’d failed.
Again.
She got up close to the mirror, her breath steaming the glass as she stared into her own eyes, her mind drifting to that famous Nietzsche quote. If thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.
She sneered at her reflection.
She who fights with monsters… and all that jazz.
“What now?” Danny asked, joining her at the mirror and speaking to her by way of his reflection.
“Not entirely sure. Do you think the apartment has been compromised?”
“I know it has,” he replied. “She was there. Luckily I saw her before she arrived and jumped out the window. Hurt my leg actually, which was another reason why I couldn’t—”
“Wait.” She held her hand up. “She was there? So has the egg, the USB?”
“Ah no,” he replied. “I did have the foresight to bring my bag when I left. I… Oh no… Oh shite on a bike, no.”
Before she could quiz him further he was out the door and had disappeared into the gloom of the corridor beyond. She was about to follow him when she heard a noise. It sounded like the last pitiful wails of a dying animal.
“Danny,” she said sternly. “Don’t tell me she…”
He put his head around the doorway and his expression said it all. “I’d left it outside the door here. She’s taken it.”
“And what was inside?”
He looked down. “Everything. The egg, the USB, money. My passport.”
“Oh for heaven’s sake.” She made for the door but stumbled as her legs gave way beneath her. The trauma caused by Magpie’s sordid torture session, coupled with the tranquilisers, had drained all the lifeforce out of her. She hadn’t felt this damaged in a long time.
“Here, let me help.” Danny shoved his head under her arm, supporting her as they shuffled along the corridor and out of the building. She didn’t even have the strength to resist. And as the bats screeched across her soul, a heavy existential weakness overcame her. She hadn’t felt this vulnerable in a long time, either.
They got to the steps, where Danny reached down and gathered up a piece of black cloth, part of Magpie’s habit tossed away whilst fleeing the scene. “Here, wrap this around yourself.”
“I don’t need it,” she mumbled. “I’m not cold.”
“Yeah, well it’s not for your benefit,” he said, brushing her hair forward, covering the cut on her cheek. “We both look enough of a state without all the blood.”
She gazed up at him, her head spinning some more as she did. “What do you mean?”
Ten minutes later and she understood, sat in the back of the taxi as the driver,
