‘He’s very vocal, that one.’
He laughed. ‘I didn’t mean the cockerel.’
Her sigh weighed down on him.
‘Something wrong?’
‘We’re going to have to leave here, aren’t we?’
It was his turn to sigh. She was right. He blinked his right eye, checked the time. Another eight hours gone. ‘This isn’t going to go away. The odds are stacked against us, whichever way you look at it. It’s a question of making the best of a bad bunch of options.’
Gabrielle ran her fingers through the hair on his chest. ‘Which are?’
‘As you know, I don’t do garnish, so here they are. In no particular order. We give ourselves up to Ormandy, Ethan dies, we end up in a halo-confinement tube for the rest of our natural lives. Next, we give ourselves up to Lytkin and we all suffer a slow agonising death.’
‘But she said she wanted me in exchange for Ethan.’
‘OK. So you suffer a slow torturous death and I suffer the same but in a different way, but Ethan will be OK. In fact, probably not, he loves you almost as much as I do.’
She draped her leg across his. ‘Go on.’
‘Oh, I nearly forgot. Lytkin unleashes the pathogen on whomever she likes or dislikes. And call me cynical if you want, but Miss Lytkin doesn’t strike me as the forgiving kind.’ He pulled a blanket over them and tucked it under his arm. ‘She holds us all responsible for what happened to her brother and we’ll all pay with our lives. Just like the General and Blackburn.’
‘Wow,’ she sighed. ‘I know you said you don’t do garnish, but…’
‘There’s one other option,’ he said, stroking his jaw.
Before she could ask for details, he was out of bed. ‘How many?’ he said, pulling his trousers and boots on. ‘OK. Stay out of sight. Keep them covered with the 50.’
Gabrielle pulled her poncho over her head as she sat on the edge of the bed. ‘What is it? What’s going on?’
He slung his poncho over his head, chambered a round in the Glock, pushed it into the back of his trousers. ‘Five men on horses appro—’
The clatter of the pit bells pierced the tranquillity of the dawn.
‘Sofi spotted them. Sounds like they found the trap.’ He waited, impatience welling as she hopped from one foot to the other to get her boots on.
A blast of chilled air hit him as he dragged the door open and plunged down the steps. Footprints converged from the various homes onto what he assumed to be the main footpath. Progress was slow through the knee-deep snow. Gabrielle followed a few yards behind. ‘You OK?’ he called back.
She nodded, cinching her poncho around her waist with an old leather belt.
He activated his TC comms. ‘Update, Sofi. What have we got?’
‘Three identified as Walt, our friend Issy from the bridge and you’re going to love this…’
‘Spit it out!’
‘None other than Ex-Chancellor - Justin Wheeler, aka the bean counter. No idea who the other two are.’
‘Armed?’
‘Possible, but not visible. Rags and ponchos are obviously de rigueur this season.’
He slowed, gave Gabrielle a chance to catch up. ‘Looks like it’s your ex-husband and his motley crew,’ he said. ‘Plus Wandering Walt.’ He zoomed in from the cover of a grey-barked beech tree, identifying the riders. Wheeler sat nonchalantly at the head of the phalanx on a large grey horse, looking every bit as arrogant as he had the last time Helix had seen him. The remaining four fanned out behind in a V-shaped formation around the undisturbed trap. Walt, mounted on a smaller chestnut horse, tugged at the rope carrying the scrap metal bells. The clattering metal echoed through the woods, interspersed with the men’s laughter as they watched the approaching villagers, led by Bo. Helix spotted Issy at the back of the group, hash pipe clenched in his teeth, his head on a swivel, eyes darting in all directions. He drew the Glock from the back of his trousers. With the poncho draped over his hands he stepped from behind the tree and moved forward. ‘Stay close to me,’ he said over his shoulder to Gabrielle.
Children chased each other around the edges of the group as the adults stood their respective grounds in silence. Bo turned towards Helix and Gabrielle as they made their way up the slope. Helix nodded a greeting. ‘It’s OK, Bo, I’ll take it from here.’
‘Good. Take whatever it is, back to wherever you came from. We don’t need any trouble.’
‘I’m not making any promises but take everyone with you. We won’t be long.’
‘Major Nathan Helix VC DSO,’ Wheeler announced, the blepharospasm that caused the unconscious winking of his left eye doing overtime.
Helix had forgotten about the affliction that caused the orbicular muscles of Wheeler’s eyelids to twitch, making it appear that he was winking at you. He ran his hand over the hairs on the back of his neck. ‘What do you want, Wheeler?’
‘I heard a rumour,’ Wheeler said, leaning forward in his saddle. ‘My friend Mr Brunel here, told of a large man in black in the company of a petite woman refusing to pay the toll to pass over the bridge in Chepstow. The description rang a bell.’
Walt gave the rope a hefty tug, causing the bells and scrap to clatter and clang, almost unseating himself from his horse. The men erupted into guffaws of forced laughter.
Helix fixed his eyes on Walt. ‘Can you take care of the rope?’ he said to Sofi.
Walt’s horse reared up, spinning underneath him as the branch overhead cracked and splintered under the force of the shot. His arms and legs flailed as his terrified mount pitched him from the side of the saddle onto the slush-covered ground in a heap before galloping off deeper
