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

Lucas knelt down and felt beneath the board. His hand found hair. He gulped. Putting Sid in his pocket, he pushed the board up with enormous care, causing a small avalanche of detritus. Kate lay on her side, her arms up around her head, one elbow bloody and raw. There was a drift of shingle over her face and for a moment Lucas was back in the quarry, staring down at the dead-eyed visage of Zoe, buried in a rocky grave. The bass hum in his head went deeper, louder. He felt himself sway as his senses did a slalom of horror.

But the eyes were screwed up shut, not fixed and staring. Kate shuddered and coughed and opened them. He let out a cry of relief and dropped his face to hers, seeking evidence that she was really breathing. He felt the warmth of her exhalation and heard her mutter, ‘Shit. Have I still got legs..?’

‘Don’t move,’ he said, stroking her gritty hair. ‘Stay still. We’ll get you out of there.’

‘Nikki? Craig?’

He glanced along the beach and saw her two friends, huddled together by the shore, looking catatonic with shock.

‘They’re OK. You got them out.’

‘Mike? What happened to him?’

‘You don’t have to worry about him,’ said Lucas.

She gave a long sigh. ’Get away from it all… have a little break… that’s what they said. Forget all the murder and have some fun.’

The sand in the timer was nearly gone. He knew there was very little left.

But there was still the final reckoning to be done. Tessa was kneeling by his side, wearing her favourite yellow dress, looking young and well again. ‘You did all this for me?’ she said.

‘I’m not finished,’ he grunted, moving his limbs and noting that although they were screaming in pain, they were still able to move. Grit, stone and sand avalanched off him as he slowly sat up. He could hear the drone somewhere above, and police radios and chatter on the field and further along the beach. Had he finished off the last three? Had the bunker folded them into its concrete embrace and crushed them? If he knew that for sure, he could join Tessa in the next life with satisfaction.

‘Don’t worry now,’ said his sister, smiling tenderly at him. ‘Just come to me.’

‘Not…’ he grunted, pulling a block of stone off his left leg, ‘…yet.’ His eye was drawn by the gleam of metal a short way along the crumbled cliff. Something he’d brought with him earlier. Something he wanted to get back.

‘You’ve done everything you needed to do,’ insisted Tessa.

But no. He could hear voices. He recognised one of them as she said, ‘Mike? What happened to him?’

Just the other side of the bunker. Right there. Kate.

‘Let her go,’ said Tessa. ‘She didn’t try to hurt me.’

‘She didn’t try NOT to hurt you,’ he whispered, getting to his hands and knees and crawling through the pain, crawling for that bit of metal.

Kate tried wiggling her toes. Her left ankle complained but all ten toes appeared to be in working order. ‘Come on,’ she said to Lucas. ‘Just lift the board up, will you?’

‘Kate — don’t move! You might have broken something!’ warned Lucas.

‘Lucas - move it or I will!’ she said, with a reassuring belt of energy. He leaned over with a frustrated sigh and carefully shifted the board a little higher. Before he could stop her, she had wriggled out and was scrambling upright as the broken board, losing its human underpinning, splintered further under the weight of the broken concrete.

He grabbed hold of her as she got to her feet. ‘Jeezuz, Kate! What if you’ve damaged your spine or something?’

‘I’m fine!’ She could see Nikki and Craig — alive, if not exactly well, and felt a surge of intense relief. She’d got them out. She’d saved them from being buried alive. She could also see police approaching along the shore and hear the reassuring two-way radio chatter. It was over.

In the periphery of her vision, a figure staggered away to the right of the collapsed bunker and stumbled down to the water’s edge and into the grey surf. Kate spun around, sucking in a lungful of air. ‘It’s HIM!’

A shot rang through the air and Nikki screamed. She and Craig dropped to the pebbles, clinging together, a sitting target for the madman sloshing through the waves towards them, screaming, ‘SAY SORRY! SAY FUCKING SORRY!’

Whatever damage the collapse might have done was forgotten as a red mist of rage swept around Kate. Shoving Lucas away as he tried to restrain her, she ran down the beach, directly towards Mike. He was taking aim at Nikki and Craig again, screaming torrents of unintelligible words. One side of his head was dripping with blood and his balance was clearly out as he lurched around in the shallows.

But the aim still looked pretty true as he went to take another shot. Kate screamed, ‘MIKE! YOU FUCKER!’ and he spun around and fired at her instead. The shot went wide, but only just. She felt the heat of the bullet as it tore past her. Up on the cliff, a loudhailer voice bellowed, ‘ARMED POLICE! PUT DOWN YOUR WEAPON! PUT DOWN YOUR WEAPON OR WE WILL SHOOT!’

But Mike, she knew, was past caring. As she closed the last few metres between them, he was laughing and steadying his gun arm with his left hand. Her left foot found a lump of stone and she launched off it, calling on her countless hours of training in the dojo as she swung up her right foot and aimed for his face.

The sole of her sandal connected with his jaw at the same moment the gun fired. The pair of them toppled into the sea. She landed on his chest and drove the heel of her hand into his face, pressing him down under water. On land, she would have held him