I think about pretending I’m not armed but it’s too late. He saw me with it back at the hospital. I take it out from my bag.
‘Is this registered to you?’ he asks, taking it and checking the clip and safety.
I don’t answer. He sighs. ‘Do you even know how to shoot this thing?’
I raise my eyebrows. I should think Jonathan is proof I know how to pull a trigger.
‘Listen to me, you stay in the car, you do not get out, do you hear me?’
When I don’t answer, he glowers at me. ‘I don’t want you following me and shooting me by accident.’
I nod reluctantly. He hands me back my gun.
‘Stay here,’ he tells me before slamming the door behind him.
He walks around to the trunk. I crane my neck to see what he’s doing. He pulls a flak jacket on over his sweater, and then draws his own gun.
‘Lock the doors,’ he tells me. ‘If you hear gunshots I want you to get in the driver’s seat and get the hell out of here, OK? I’ve left the keys in the ignition. When the SWAT team arrive tell them I’ve gone in.’
‘OK,’ I say.
Nate darts across the road, keeping to the shadows, and in seconds he’s gone, blurring into the woods that surround the house. I wait a handful of seconds before I take the keys out of the ignition and ease open the car door.
Chapter 52
It’s cold, the temperature dropping fast, and I’m only wearing a light sweater. In the trunk I find a Sheriff’s department duffel bag and, inside that, another flak jacket – probably Jonathan’s. For a brief second I wonder what’s happened to him – is he dead? I feel totally numb about it but I suspect that when the numbness fades I still won’t feel anything.
The jacket’s too big for me but I put it on anyway, pulling the Velcro straps tight until it’s as snug as I can make it. I throw Nate’s Sheriff department rain jacket on over the top. My sweater is white and I want to do my best to make myself blend into the shadows.
I’m about to close the trunk when I spot a flare gun in the bag and as an afterthought I take that too, slipping it into the jacket pocket.
I close the trunk as quietly as I can, but still the noise echoes through the silence, bouncing off the canyon wall to my right and startling an owl, which hurtles into flight, hooting above me. I run around to the front of the car, ducking low. I don’t know what I’m doing – only that I’m not about to let Nate go in there alone. I can’t sit there waiting for the sound of gunshots, not when my daughter might be in there, just feet away from me.
I take a breath, and am about to run towards the house, when I catch sight of the mailbox on the other side of the road.
Williams.
It hits me with the force of a boot to the chest. Like stepping from pitch darkness into full, bright light. Margot Williams. The girl Nate was sleeping with while he was dating me. Her brother was called Calvin Williams. He was on the high school football team with Nate, that’s what Samantha said. They were new to the school – they transferred from a small town in Texas. He had a southern twang and used to get teased about it. She played it up and was thought cute.
The trees sway and for a moment it feels as if the sky is collapsing down on top of me. I have to lean against the car to steady myself.
Nate.
A gunshot ricochets off the trees, like a clap of thunder. I jump and then adrenaline flashes through me. Hannah . . .
I sprint towards the house, slipping into the trees. My feet crunch through the leaves, each step loud as the rat-tat-tat of machine gun fire, but I can’t stop running, driven on by the thought of Hannah. What if I’m too late?
I’m close to the house now – can make out the wooden porch running the front length of it, a decrepit lean-to at the side and a mosquito-battered screen door.
A dog barks – a mean, low-throated growl – and I drop to my knees behind a bush, breathing hard, shaking harder. What am I doing? This is insane. I should wait for back-up.
As soon as I think it, another realization dawns on me. No one knows we’re out here. There’s no SWAT team on the way. Nate never made the call. I assumed he had, too caught up in what was happening, but when? I didn’t see him use the radio or his phone.
He’s involved. And I let him go into the house.
Fumbling, nerves teetering on a knife-edge as my ears strain to hear what’s going on, I dial 911. Nothing happens. I hold the phone up to my face. Zero bars. There’s no reception so deep in the canyon.
The dog starts up again but it’s cut off mid-bark by a loud blast, another gunshot. Another follows a second later, and now I’m on my feet, zigzagging blindly through the trees towards the house, thinking only of Hannah.
I spring up the wooden steps to the front-porch door and yank it open. Gun held out in front of me, I swing wide into the front room, barely registering anything – except that the room is empty. There’s a door to the right, partly ajar, and I edge towards it, gun still clenched in my hands, eyes darting around wildly, scanning the room, jumping at every shadow, ears pricked for any sound but there’s only a creeping stillness.
‘Hannah?’ I whisper.
There’s no answer. I nudge the door open gently. The light’s off and all I can make out through the gloom are an unmade bed and a dresser.
My feet creaking on the uneven wood floor, I keep heading down the hallway. My heart
