The Alex King Series, A BATEMAN [good books for high schoolers .TXT] 📗

Amanda’s hire car tearing up the lane. He spun around and ran out across the landing and down the stairs. He snatched the keys off the hall table and ran out into the night. He couldn’t let her drive with the amount of alcohol she had consumed, but he also realised that if he chased after her, she would drive even more erratically. She certainly wouldn’t pull over and calmly stop, agree she had a touch too much to drink and was being ridiculous.

King drove the Ford down the lane, turned right and made his way down the tree-lined road. It was a single lane with no white markings. The trees had met overhead, their branches entwining, and it gave the effect of driving through a tunnel. He hung a right and after another mile turned right again onto the main Truro to Falmouth road.

Truro was around six miles away and he approached sixty-miles-per-hour until he crossed over a roundabout and accelerated up a steep stretch of dual carriageway. There was no other traffic and he got the Ford up to eighty, slowed for the next roundabout and kept the car at fifty for the next winding stretch of road into the city of Truro, Cornwall’s only city and capital of the duchy.

There were a few cars travelling in both directions, but he saw no sign of Amanda’s rental Ford Focus. He did not know where she was staying, but he knew there were not many hotels in Truro and he cruised the outer roads of the city, then drove straight through. He cruised past a couple of small hotels, saw that her car was not parked in the hotel carparks or on the road outside and continued his search. On the other side of the city, he pulled into a large hotel, which looked like a monastery or an abbey. The carparks showed no sign of her rental Focus, and he drove back down the drive and up the dual carriageway, risking an illegal U-turn and heading back into town. He realised it was a futile exercise, but he didn’t feel comfortable with Amanda driving after the best part of two and a half bottles of wine, and him doing nothing about it. He drove up the steep hill and negotiated a weird double mini-roundabout and eight-way junction and headed back onto the Falmouth road. He slowed up as he drove through a winding wooded area with a steep siding on the opposite side of the road, but there were no signs of a crash or incident, so he accelerated on as he neared a service station and re-joined the short stretch of dual carriageway.

It occurred to him that Amanda could have taken another road, but this was the most direct route, and the myriad of roads meant that he could essentially search all night. He drew a line under it and as he crested the steep hill and turned left into his lane, he could at least satisfy his conscience, if not the nagging feeling inside that he had been missing something. It played on his mind, as he drove down the bumpy lane, right up until his windscreen shattered and he heard the gunshot.

13

The bullet had entered the windscreen, punching a tiny hole slightly high and right of King’s head, and travelled out through the back window, blowing out the glass completely. Afterwards, on reflection, King put this inaccuracy down to the severe potholes which pock-marked the lane. The car dipped half a foot at the point of impact. Glass peppered King’s face, and he ducked down, floored the accelerator and swerved into the gravelled driveway. He had heard the gunshot at the point of impact. The shooter was close. But only in sniper terms. Anywhere from a distance of point blank to one-hundred metres. He noted, as he remained low, that the bullet hole was small. Not a .338 Lapua Magnum, that was for sure. The sound had been that of an assault rifle. A sharp report, the crack of a high-velocity bullet breaking the sound barrier, but some of the sound leaving the open breach of the weapon as it cycled another round into the chamber.

The second and third shots were fired in quick succession and smashed through the driver’s window, and half of the glass shattered into a thousand pieces like cut diamonds and covered King as he crawled across the seat and opened the passenger door. He rolled out onto the gravel and darted for the front door. He realised that he had not locked it behind him in his haste, which was great for taking cover, but there could be more people inside.

That’s how he would have done it.

A shot buzzed past his head and thudded into the oak door. King barged through the door and fell into the hallway, the hard-slate floor breaking him as much as his fall. He grimaced and carried on to the hall table, where he had left his .357 magnum revolver in the drawer. He opened the cylinder and checked it as he turned back towards the door and switched off the lights. The cottage was in darkness, but he knew his way around. He took a breath, deep and calming. They hadn’t waited for him inside. They hadn’t checked the cottage for a weapon. Some of the skill of the sniper’s incredible shot at the California house was being redressed. He had felt overwhelmed, outclassed in a world where he had once been in the higher echelons. This gunman had made a mistake, and that meant King had a chance.

He went through into the kitchen and stopped at the back door. There were an array of light switches and he turned on the outside lights, but only the PIR sensor settings. Turning the key in the door cautiously, he listened. There was a layer of thick gravel chippings surrounding the house. A nightmare