SEVEN DEADLY THINGS (Henry & Sparrow Book 3), A FOX [good books to read for adults .TXT] 📗

Barney, expertly avoiding the worst of a deep hole in the centre of the track. ‘The dowser guy?’

The figure clinging to the low branches of a stunted cliffside pine was definitely Lucas. ‘Yeah!’ yelled back Francis. ‘He must have found them. Where’s the killer, though? I can’t see him.’

‘Wherever he is, your mate’s got backup now,’ said Barney, sending the Capri hurtling off the track and onto the lumpy turf of the field with no attempt to brake. In fact, he went up a gear.

‘I’m not sure this car can take this!’ Francis warned. ‘It’s pretty old and—oofff!’ The words were knocked out of him as the car bucked and rode the uneven grass.

‘It can take it,’ said Barney. ‘I’ve been driving since I was twelve. I know what I’m doing.’ He went on to prove this by getting them right to the edge of the field, within sight of the beach, and then handbrake-turning sideways on to the stretch where, further along, Lucas was crouched, focused on something happening below.

As Barney jabbed the accelerator again to get them closer, the Capri did its party piece.

Lucas got ready to jump. Mike was holding the gun firmly and pointing it back at him with his left hand, while the right hand was hauling another sack of sand towards the guttering. This was more than the structure could take. It was going to collapse in the next ten seconds if any more sand hit it.

‘You can’t stop me,’ said Mike, feeling for the opening of the sack and getting ready to nudge it over with his knee. ‘Give it up.’

‘The police are watching everything you’re doing!’ said Lucas. He could hear sirens and sense officers now running — and maybe driving — towards their location. ‘They’ve got a drone up, look!’

Mike gave the drone, hovering fifty metres above them, a cursory glance. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Justice should be seen to be done.’

That might have been the moment — that microsecond when the killer looked up — but Lucas missed it. He needed something to distract the guy, to wrong-foot him for a second or two.

There was a deafening gunshot.

The report sent seabirds screaming into the air, and Mike jolted and looked behind him. ‘It’s the police. They’re going to take you out!’ Lucas warned him. There was another bang and this time Mike actually looked spooked, as if he’d suddenly remembered he could get shot — and that maybe he didn’t want to die. His eyes scanned the sky as if he thought the drone was armed.

Lucas realised it was now or never. That roof could not take any more sand. He leapt on top of Mike, angling himself, even as he was airborne, so that he would slam the man against the bank and not onto the roof of the bunker.

He struck Mike’s arm as he landed on him, knocking the gun away down the cliff. They both crashed into the steep bank. Mike was briefly winded but soon started fighting back, aiming to push his attacker backwards onto the roof of the bunker. Even amid the bloodrush violence of their struggle, Lucas could see and sense the roof cracking and tipping inward.

‘KAAAAAATE!’ he screamed. ‘GET OUT OF THERE!’

Mike rolled out from under him, dragging Lucas sideways and gashing his cheek against an outcrop of stone. Lucas fought against his instinct to violently repel his foe, aware at every moment that he could not risk either of them landing on that roof. He wrapped one leg around Mike’s knee, hooking him in close and hugged the killer close with his spare arm.

Mike shoved himself back, took Lucas by the shoulders and bashed him repeatedly against the cliff wall. With every thud, earth, sand and stones ran out in torrents. Lucas knew this whole promontory was disintegrating under the pile-driving force of the two men fighting on it. It was going to go at any moment, and Kate and her friends were still entombed beneath them. He was all out of ideas and hope.

Then Mike jerked and his eyes rolled up in his head. The pounding ceased and his arms fell away. A second later, as Lucas slumped, winded, against the cliff, Buntin’s Head of Security started levitating.

Lucas gripped a network of roots and stared up, open-mouthed, at the man’s black work boots as they floated past his head. He tracked this surreal spectacle with his eyes and made out two strong arms in silver sleeves, a metre above his head. There was every chance, Lucas thought, that he was concussed and hallucinating. That, or Mike had just been stunned and collected by an alien equipped with a tractor beam.

Backflip Barney was extraordinarily strong. Francis had every chance to notice this as he clung to the young man’s buttocks and thighs, feeling the tension in every muscle, tendon and sinew of the athlete’s body while a feat of staggering physicality occurred.

After abandoning the backfiring Capri, Barney had flung himself out of the driver’s side door, grabbed something from the back seat and run to the edge of the cliff.

‘ANCHOR ME!’ he bawled, flinging himself belly-down and Francis, shaking and stunned, had run after him and thrown himself on the guy’s legs to pin his lower half to the ground. There was a fight going on below and Francis recognised the shout of warning to Kate. Lucas was down there with the killer.

Barney hadn’t said another word. He had something shiny in his right hand. Francis had just enough time to recognise it as the post and saddle of the unicycle before it was swung down in a swift and brutal arc. He heard the saddle connect with someone’s skull and then felt the swift and accurate surge, drop and grab as Barney collected the man by the head and pulled him up over the cliff.

Slewing around on his chest, the circus performer ended his trick with a flourish, slinging the stupefied man across the grassy edge of