Текст книги "An Easeful Death"

The word psychopath was once widely used, but these days sociopath is the preferred term. All serial killers are sociopaths, but not all sociopaths are serial killers or murderers. Their common ground is a complete lack of empathy for their victims. One needs only to look at some of the world’s top businessmen to see how this is true.

James L De Vakey, (PUV Press, Sydney, 2006). ‘One man’s best-selling account of the hunt for Australia’s most notorious multiple murderer.’

Stevie was staring at a map of the old British Empire, or so she thought as she willed her eyes to focus on the shapes in front of her. But when the fog of unconsciousness began to lift and the map of the world cleared, she found herself staring at a red brick and plaster wall, lying on her side on a concrete floor with her hands and feet bound with duct tape.

Oh God, let this be a nightmare. But nightmares took place in the dark and she was surrounded by light, light so bright it made the glare of the chipped plaster wall hurt her eyes. She became aware of loud male voices talking above the chesty vibrations of a generator, felt the bite of carbon fumes in her lungs. Rolling onto her other side to find the source, she found her view of the room partially blocked by a twisted hunk of metal. Through the gaps she could see the solid legs of a wooden table and three pairs of shuffling feet.

‘I can’t believe you got away with this, you’re a fucking genius!’ The voice was familiar and deep, one of the creeps who’d tossed Monty’s flat—the older one, Keyes was it?

‘Told you you could count on me, didn’t I?’

Her flesh crawled at the sound of the second man’s voice. Smooth and controlled to a casual listener, only she could tell by the slight inflection how close Tye was to snapping.

‘Beauty, let’s have a look.’ The third voice belonged to Thrummel, the younger partner. What the hell was going on? Some kind of racket, no doubt, but how she’d ended up stuck in the middle of it she had no idea. For a moment, curiosity overcame her fear. She managed to twist herself up into a sitting position so she could peer through a higher gap.

She watched, hardly daring to breathe, and saw Thrummel dig his hands into a plastic holdall on the table, and lift them, letting the contents fall through his fingers. The generator muted the clunking of the nuggets but the light spearing from the cascading gold was unmistakable and flashed rapaciously in the eyes of all three men.

‘I’ve never seen so much gold,’ Thrummel said in awe.

‘It’s yours. Keep your mouths shut and there’ll be more in another couple of months.’

‘But how—’ Thrummel began.

Keyes cut him off, ‘Shut it, Thrummel. We don’t want to know, okay?’ Then he turned to Tye. ‘No more killings, there’s been enough killings. I hope you’ve put that Hooper chick out of your mind now, you were pushing the envelope there.’

Stevie drew a silent breath. No, this couldn’t be. Tye wasn’t behind the killings, he had an alibi, she was hearing this wrong. Tye was a lot of things, gold thief, obviously, but not a murderer. She screwed up her eyes, attempting to block the thought: the father of my child is not a murderer.

Tye smiled. ‘Laid to rest, mate. Just a temporary moment of insanity.’

‘Yeah well, it’s too bad those others had to get knocked off before you came to your senses.’

‘The Birkby woman had to be silenced, you know that, she was about to pull the carpet right from under us,’ Tye said. ‘Hell, you bitched enough about the interrogation she put you through, the non stop hassling, the phone calls day and night.’

‘Yeah, but that other one, what was that about? She was just an innocent girl. I don’t mind doing your dirty work, that’s the deal, but I draw the line at unnecessary killing.’

‘Okay, mate, what’s done is done,’ Thrummel said. ‘Let’s just take the gold, see the fence and get what’s coming to us.’

The fearful realisation dawned on Stevie that they were leaving, that she would soon be alone with Tye. She heard the chalky sound of feet shuffling on a concrete floor as the men repacked the bag, a cough, the splat of a spit gob when they’d finished. She tried to cry out to them, but the generator swallowed the feeble sounds she managed to push through the duct tape. Please don’t go, please, she silently pleaded. With at least one unwilling participant in the room there was still a glimmer of hope she would hang onto her life. Through eyes stinging with tears she saw Tye lead the two men to the heavy wooden door and unlock it for them.

‘Oh, one more thing.’ Thrummel put his hand out to Tye. ‘You haven’t forgotten have you?’

‘The perks of the job? No worries, mate, of course not.’ Tye reached into his pocket and handed Thrummel a small silver packet.

‘Jesus Christ, Tye,’ Keyes complained. ‘He’s strung like piano wire as it is, he doesn’t need any more of the stuff.’

‘Just adds to the thrill factor, eh Thrummel?’ Tye nudged a grinning Thrummel in the ribs.

Keyes muttered something Stevie couldn’t hear. Tye called him an old woman and laughed.

He was laughing when he locked the door behind them, still laughing when he grabbed her by the ankles and slid her from behind the hunk of machinery. She closed her eyes and tried to will her breathing to calm down.

‘I know you’re awake, you’re shaking.’ He gave an amused snort. ‘You playing possum on me, Stevie?’

Rough hands flipped her onto her back and pulled her into a sitting position against the wall. The tape was ripped from her face with the sting of an exfoliation she didn’t need. He clasped her shoulders and peered intently into her face for a moment.

And then he began to hum.

That song again.

He was mad, she thought, he had to be: mad or frighteningly sane.

He paused. ‘Our song, remember? Who’d have believed that rough, tough, Stevie Hooper was such an incurable romantic?’ The hum turned into words. He placed his mouth to her ear. ‘ You must remember this ...’ The warmth of his breath on her skin had once caused tingles of desire. Now all she could feel was rippling shivers of fear. He pinched her earlobe between his teeth.

She gasped.

He pulled back to assess her reaction. Determined not to give him one, she tried to keep her face blank, though she couldn’t help the skittering of her eyes as she searched for a way of escape.

He grabbed her face in one hand and squeezed her cheeks. ‘C’mon baby, you love it rough, you know you do, tell me you love it, tell me!’

She resisted the urge to bite him on the hand. Now was not the time. She had to be patient, her life depended on it.

She pushed the words through his hands, ‘Okay, I fucking love it.’

‘Hmm...’ He rocked back on his heels. ‘You’ll be saying it for real soon. You’ll be begging for me.’ He appeared to be in deep thought. Humming softly to himself, he continued to stare unnervingly at her, his mouth curving with the play of a smile.

She took in her surroundings and tried to block out the sound of his humming, to think past her fear. She was in a cavernous, windowless room with heavy double doors in the centre of one wall. Another twisted hunk of metal, similar to the one she’d been stowed behind, grew from the floor nearby. Grainy shapes of other metal objects were lost in the shadows beyond. A theatrical spotlight, powered by a lurching generator and wired to one of the roof girders, bathed them in bright light as if they were the stars of the show. Near the generator stood a table laden with cardboard boxes and bits and pieces of hardware.

At last she managed to steady her gaze and focus on the tip of Tye’s nose. ‘Where am I?’

‘In one of the basement rooms of the old power station, one of the few that still lock—it’s virtually soundproof.’

She looked again at the hunks of machinery, realising they must be the heavy cradles on which the turbines had once rested. Two silhouettes of silver and bronze misted the floor nearby. Her throat clenched, her mouth went dry. It was a struggle to speak and when she found her voice, it was high and squeaky. ‘Is this where you killed them?’

‘Clever, eh?’

You can handle this, just keep him talking, don’t get him angry; just keep him talking.

‘Why? Why murder those women?’ she asked, unable to control the tremor in her voice.

He stretched his legs out on the floor, propped his back against the wall and spoke in a tone of restrained rationality. ‘I don’t like killing, but I don’t dislike it either. It was just something that had to be done, self-preservation if you like. You blowing the whistle on me started an investigation that would’ve unveiled a lot more than a few bribes. You got me sacked, but that was preferable to being an ex-cop spending years in the slammer.’ He continued on, matter-of-factly, ‘This is your fault, you know, all of it. If not for you, everyone would still be alive. If you hadn’t threatened me that night, none of this would have happened.’

‘You killed the prostitutes?’

‘With a little help from Keyes and Thrummel behind the scenes. They had as much to lose as me. We were in business together, setting up our own stable. Once you started things rolling it became obvious that the whores were going to grass us up, they had to be silenced.’

‘And you drew the short straw, you did the silencing?’

‘They’re more squeamish than me, it took me a while to persuade them that knocking the girls off was the only alternative.’

‘So you did the dirty work and carried the can, and they went on working.’

Tye laughed. ‘Not quite true, but I can see what you’re getting at. You want me to get all hot and bothered over them. You want me to smack myself on the head and say to myself, “Duh, Tye, she’s right, it’s the boys I should be blaming, not poor little innocent Stevie.” Good try.’ He leaned forward, chucked her under the chin and winked. ‘It was all worked out very amicably. I went from one business to another and in retrospect this one is working out a lot better than the first ever could. Keyes and Thrummel owe me big time, they’re only too happy to help me out.’

‘Some kind of gold scam, you’re into gold.’

‘You’d be amazed at how lax security is in the small mines. It doesn’t take long to remove a sizeable amount when you have an understanding supervisor.’ Tye rubbed his chin, musing. ‘Not sure how long he’ll last, but; the mine’s a dangerous place to work. He might find himself knocked on the head by a falling beam if he doesn’t pull himself together. Got in quite a panic after your lot questioned him.‘

‘He’s the one who gave you an alibi. Said you were working at the time of the Royce murder.’

‘Sure. He wouldn’t want the world to know I was in Perth fencing our mutual takings, would he?’ He paused and looked pensive. ‘Maybe I should be grateful to you for blowing the whistle on me after all. I always knew you’d make me my fortune one way or another.’

Stevie didn’t know what to say next and that proved to be a mistake. The short silence gave him time to brood.

He grabbed her face again and his voice rose. ‘But have you any idea what it’s been like for me over the past few years, being sacked, seeing the one who shafted me doing the job I loved, rising meteorically up through the ranks? Didn’t you learn your lesson the last time?’

The pressure on her face increased. Gripped with panic, she tugged and twisted at the duct tape bindings. He let go of her face and clamped his hands around her shoulders, pinned her arms and buried his face into her neck, alternately sucking and nipping at her skin. She froze when she realised the effect her exertions were having on him and shrank as far back as the wall would allow. The skin of her neck continued to burn, long after he pulled away.

‘You and I have lots of catching up to do,’ he said, breathing heavily.

She flopped back against the wall, relieved to see his anger tempered again. ‘Tell me more about the murdered prostitutes.’ She had to keep the conversation away from herself.

‘I made the slappers look like the work of a sexual pervert. I even took “trophies”, like the book says, though I chucked the hair and jewellery into the river. It was touch and go for a while, my hair on that first one could have been my downfall. Just goes to show it’s not what you know. Baggly cleared that little glitch up for me and after that I used the wetsuit. The paint’s an added security, the chemical properties in it destroy just about anything else I might’ve left behind, skin cells, etcetera. I thought the commissioner’s hair on Royce’s body was a good touch too, don’t you? Keyes stole his hairbrush for me—my old partnership comes in very handy when I need things done from the inside. I’d’ve liked to have seen Baggly’s reaction to that little trick, I never told him about that, wanted to keep him on the edge of his seat, the cowardly perverted creep. He knew we had to cover up the KP murders, but he had no idea what else I was up to.’

‘So you’ve not only got Keyes and Thrummel in your pocket, you’ve got Baggly too. Clever,’ Stevie said.

Tye smiled. ‘Yeah. Then after years of thinking about you and the mess you’d got me into, I decided it was time for the so-called serial killer to make a return. There’ll be no one else after you, Stevie. What’s really funny is how easily you were all fooled, even the great De Vakey, and it was his books that gave me the idea in the first place.’

‘But why kill Royce, why Birkby?’

Stevie wondered if what she saw was a genuine shadow of regret passing over his face or just pretence. He shrugged. ‘I didn’t want to kill Linda, she was just a kid. I made sure it was quick and she didn’t suffer. I borrowed Baggly’s car, put on one of my old uniforms. Said her dad had taken a turn for the worse; that I’d been asked to pick her up and take her to the hospital to see him. She was quite a talker when she wasn’t scared shitless, her uncle was a retired cop y’know, she was very proud of him. We’d got to know each other quite well. I visited her in the cafe whenever I could, always made sure she served me. She was flattered. I flirted with her, she was an easy target: flirtatious, naive and trusting. I needed to kill her you see, to disguise the identity of my true target.’ He paused and ran his tongue over his lips. ‘You.’

The pounding of her heart seemed to come to an abrupt halt. She felt light-headed, as if her blood had already started to pool at the lowest point of gravity. She had to keep him talking. ‘Easeful Death. I never knew you were into poetry.’

‘Came across it in a poetry book when I was at school and always remembered it. Believe it or not, I hate to see things suffer, hated what your dad went through.’ He clicked his fingers. ‘Short and sharp, that’s what death should be. The girls were drugged up to their eyeballs, never knew what was going on. I did them a favour, I mean, who knows how they would’ve died when their time came.’ He paused. ‘See, there’s a lot of things you don’t know about me, Stevie, I’m a deep thinker, I’m a sensitive kinda guy. You should have given me more of a chance.’

For a moment anger overcame the fear. ‘You knocked me around, you raped me for God’s sake! What was I supposed to do?’

‘Mitigating circumstances, you were threatening me, you had to be taught a lesson. But it didn’t do much good, did it? You still didn’t learn; you still dobbed me in.’ He brushed her face with fingers rough as hessian. ‘But we had some good times didn’t we, babe?’

‘Yeah, good times till you realised you couldn’t get hold of my house, till you started your corruption racket in Vice, till you heard about my pending promotion, wanted those kinky photographic sessions—what was that all about? An attempt to get some kind of power over me?’

‘But you wanted to do those photos, deep down, I know you did. You were always so uptight, that was your problem, so busy keeping up with the boys you were afraid to let your feminine side shine. I posed Linda for you, Stevie. It was you I was thinking about. I even took the risk of coming back to take away the props, just so it would be perfect for you. Thought it might strike a chord—and it did, didn’t it? That’s exactly how I tried to get you to pose for me, remember?’ He sighed and shook his head. ‘Again, this all boils down to you.’

Stevie felt the tears well. She struggled against her bonds.

‘Then of course there was Birkby and Sparrow’s book—that fucking journalist never let up, the stupid cow. I saw her plotting and planning with the albino. I knew what they were up to. I followed her from the cafe and grabbed her in the back car park. The chloroform knocked her out before she even blinked.’

‘Oh yeah, the chloroform—where did you get it?’

‘There’s this vet I know. We did a swap, his chloroform for my ice—another little business of mine, appreciated by Thrummel too, by the way. The vet decided he needed a bit more variety in his life—you can only go so far with animal meds. What a dickhead, eh?’ Tye shook his head. ‘There’s just no accounting for taste.’

‘Why did you go to all the trouble of getting Michelle into the store? That was some kind of risk wasn’t it?’

‘Hey, why do they climb Everest? And of course there was the special bonus of putting your precious Monty in the frame for it. You gotta believe me, I didn’t get much pleasure in killing her, but I had to kill someone else, anyway. Bronze, silver, gold—get it?’ He drew in a breath and let it out slowly through thin, smiling lips. ‘Kinda fun really. I might not have enjoyed killing the others, but I know I’m going to enjoy you, long and slow. You’ll be my exception to the rule: you get the gold medal, baby.’

Stevie’s heart kick started with a jolt and she jerked her chin from his hand. ‘But Sparrow survived.’

‘So what? I learned about the safe while the bitch was begging for her life. You and Sparrow caught my boys by surprise. Bad luck the paddy wagon turned up before they could finish him off.’

‘He knows the truth.’

‘Without the documents, what can he prove? The woman was the brains behind the book. People might have believed her allegations, but who’d believe a ranting, white-faced idiot like Sparrow? Hell, even Baggly was confident enough to keep him on as a cleaner.’ He smiled. He was enjoying himself. ‘Any more questions? Any more delaying tactics? You know I have all the answers, Miz Super Cop.’

He was onto her, but still she racked her brains for more questions. Last time she’d seen Monty, he was planning on visiting Peter Sbresni. She took a punt. ‘What about Sbresni? Was he just a fall guy or is he in on it too?’

‘Sbresni knows nothing about me; he was following Baggly’s orders, and Baggly’s so fucking terrified of what I’ve got over him, he wouldn’t dare breathe a word.’

She didn’t know what else to say, she only knew that she had to keep stalling him. She grasped at one last straw. ‘You act like you have a conscience, Tye, that you didn’t really want to kill anyone. Where does Izzy come into this, how will it feel for the rest of your life to know that you’ve killed the mother of your child?’

She closed her eyes against the venom in his face. Oh God, why did she have to bring up Izzy?

‘Bitch! What do you take me for, a complete moron?’

His blow cracked her head back into the wall. She felt a slash of heat where the stitches burst open and a thick tide of blood streamed down the back of her neck.

Tye pushed himself up from the floor and paced. ‘I’ve spent the last ten minutes answering your questions. Now it’s time you answered mine.’

She stared back at him blankly. For several seconds he regarded her in angry silence. Then his face began to relax and, to her surprise, his laughter started bouncing back at her from the walls of the cavernous room.

‘You have no idea what’s so funny, do you?’ he said, recovering his breath. ‘The super fucking detective doesn’t have a bloody clue. Christ.’

Stevie swallowed and shook her head.

‘Mumps.’

He’d lost her. ‘What, what are you talking about?’

‘Shooting blanks. It probably would’ve come out eventually if you’d ever given me a chance. Now don’t tell me in your heart of hearts you never questioned your child’s paternity. Hell, your mother sure knows Izzy’s not mine; I’ve seen it in her eyes often enough—Jesus, the kid doesn’t even look like me!’

She looked at him, shocked.

He raised an eyebrow. ‘You mean she never breathed a word? Maybe she thought you deserved to be a dupe, you can be a prickly little bitch. Funny though, I never took you for the screwing around type. It was Monty, wasn’t it? It had to be. You always did have a thing for him. It made framing him all the more sweet, made the killing of Michelle that bit easier.’

No. This had to be another of his lies. She wanted it to be true though. Her throat was too dry for words.

She struggled to fathom the implications of what he was saying. When she’d discovered she was pregnant, she had no doubt it was from the rape. The violence had left an indelible impression on her mind of powerlessness and self-hatred. The encounter with Monty had been so brief, a stupid drunken impulse in response to his tenderness, a small measure of unexpected comfort at the end of that ghastly week with Tye.

Tye sighed and shook his head. ‘I never understood how you could be so blind, you were so convinced the kid was mine. Course I didn’t mind.’

‘Why? So you could keep the link with me?’ she finally managed to croak.

‘I knew you were putty in my hands so long as Izzy was in the equation.’

A sob pressed against the back of her throat, she couldn’t let it escape. No tears. But her internal battle proved pointless when she realised that for once in his life, Tye might be telling her the truth.

She’d read of cases in which extreme fear caused physical blindness. Could the same be said about mental blindness? Perhaps deep down she’d known all along that Monty was Izzy’s father. Had she suppressed the knowledge out of fear of losing him, thinking that he’d only ever regarded her as a little sister? She was convinced he’d been repulsed and ashamed of their brief intimacy. Even during their fleeting but passionate lovemaking, she’d known it was the alcohol running things, and that it was Michelle he’d had in his mind.

‘Never mind, babe, it’s over now. Time to put an end to your misery,’ Tye whispered in her ear. ‘Only I think this time our impotent killer’s going to get lucky. This’ll baffle your profiler friend, eh?’ He rubbed his bulging groin and grinned. ‘But first, precautions have to be taken.’

Stevie watched in horror as he sauntered to the other end of the room, turned his back and started to rummage among the junk on the table. The noise from the generator made it hard to interpret the sound of his movements, but she could imagine the grinding of tablets, the clinking of a glass and the trickle of liquid. When he turned once more to face her, he was holding out a glass of orange juice.

No! She knew what was coming next. She felt like she had always known.

He held the glass up for her to see the liquid turning blue. ‘You’re going to enjoy this, babe,’ he said.

With her ankles and hands bound, all she could do was roll onto her stomach and wriggle like an inchworm, anything to stop him from forcing her to drink the drugged juice. He gripped her shoulders and flipped her onto her back and she found herself cradled in his arms like a baby, like a lover.

She closed her lips and clamped her jaw, but he pinched her nostrils until her limbs tingled and her chest felt as if it would burst. The glass clunked against her teeth, her lips parted for air, and in a reflex action she gulped the mixture down.

When he let go she shrank into herself and curled like a leaf onto the gritty concrete floor. She watched him return to the table through blurred eyes.

She clenched her jaw. She couldn’t let him win.

She forced herself to think. It was Rohypnol, the dye confirmed that. It could start taking effect as early as fifteen minutes after ingestion, but might take longer to work its way through her fettuccine dinner. Her mind raced as she recalled the symptoms: impaired memory, dizziness, confusion, lack of inhibition, sexual compliance—there had to be more.

Think Stevie, think. Christ, you might only have fifteen minutes!

Tye glanced over his shoulder and smiled before turning back to the boxes on the table.

Stevie scanned the room for anything she might use to cut her bindings. Her eyes came to rest on the nearest metal cradle. If she could get closer, maybe she could use one of the edges to saw through the duct tape. But that glimmer of hope soon shattered when she realised the jagged hunk of metal was further away than it looked. She’d never be able to reach it without Tye seeing her.

He extracted the dark wetsuit from the box and laid it on the table between some cans of gold spray paint. The dull metallic gleam of a gun next to the paint cans caught her attention. It looked like the Glock Barry had given her for the re-enactment. Tye must have taken it from her bag. If she could find a way of getting to the gun ...

A pleasant floating feeling began to overtake her senses, she felt herself gently rocked, like a lilo on a calm sea. Thoughts of the gun faded into the back of her mind.

A sudden dry retch brought her back. It broke through the soporific rhythm of the drug and gave her scattered senses one last chance to regroup. Then an idea filtered through the fog of her mind; an idea that might even save her life. Nausea. That was it. Another side effect of the drug was nausea.

Drawing in a deep breath, she willed the filthy odour of the generator deep into her stomach, then begged her body to expel it. She gagged again, turned her head to the side and opened her mouth. Nothing happened. Perhaps she shouldn’t have suppressed the urge before. Tye turned to look at her and she pulled her head back with a jerk, she couldn’t let him see what she was trying to do. The sudden movement of her head caused her ponytail to flick against her face. Up floated another idea.

She jerked her head again, this time catching the ponytail between her teeth. She forced the tickling hairs to the back of her throat and gagged.

Again only a dry retch.

Tye had his back to her. He’d taken off his clothes and was busy easing himself into the wetsuit when her body finally obeyed her command. With several heaves she puked out the fettuccine and, she hoped, most of the Rohypnol. But she couldn’t let him see the mess. She wriggled as far away from it as she dared, nudging a bit of filthy tarpaulin across to hide it from sight, and prayed the stink of the generator would mask the acid smell.

Now she had to convince him the drug was still coursing through her system. She attempted to conjure up the pleasant floating sensation she’d experienced before she’d vomited. Returning to the lilo she willed back the sleepy feeling. On the verge of sleep, her limbs felt blissfully heavy. A moan escaped her lips, followed by a deep sigh.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Tye pull the diver’s hood over his head. Then he manipulated his erect penis through a hole in his wetsuit so it lay flat against his belly. Under any other circumstances the image would have been ridiculous.

Block the fear.

Lack of inhibitions, sexual compliance. She giggled. The giggle became a laugh. He smiled and moved towards her with a pair of scissors in his hand. She concentrated on making her breathing slow and even.

He cut through the bindings on her ankles and eased her legs apart. Not yet, she cautioned, not yet. She must wait.

He leaned forward, trying to press his lips to hers, but she turned her head to the side. He mustn’t taste the vomit. She attempted to distract him with a sensuous moan.

‘C’mon, babe,’ Tye said. ‘You’re going to love this. Don’t be shy.’

Another sleepy giggle.

He positioned himself at her feet and slipped off her trainers and socks. ‘I’m going to make you look real pretty.’ He picked up a can of spray paint and shook it. The ball inside the can rattled, then her toes spasmed as a chill wave washed over the top of her foot. Her nose and mouth stung with the fumes of fresh paint.

‘Just wanted you to get an idea of the final effect, seeing as you won’t be around to see it.’ He lifted her foot to show her. She smiled inanely while her heart felt ready to explode with fear. When he let her foot go it fell to the ground with a thud as if it really was weighted with gold.

‘But where to put the end product?’ he mused. ‘Monty’s car perhaps? Now there’s an idea. I’ll just give you back to him, all pretty and posed—a pretty picture for him to dwell on while he rots in jail.’

Through slit eyes she saw him pick up the scissors and move to the outer seam of her jeans.

Now!

Her double-barrelled kick caught him under the chin, knocking him onto his back. He hit the concrete hard. ‘You bitch! You fucking bitch!’

She sprang towards the table, turned her back to it and seized the gun between her bound hands. Tye was on his feet and about to lunge when the pull of the slide and the sound of the chambered bullet stopped him in his tracks.

With her back to him and twisting her neck around as far as she could go, she knew the only chance she had of getting away was to kill or disable him now. But the swaying of her body told her that despite her efforts, she’d still absorbed some of the drug. The bullet could fly anywhere.

She couldn’t think rationally.

In the middle of debating the pros and cons of recklessly letting the shot fly, she became aware of feet clanging down metal stairs. Then Monty was bellowing her name and pounding on the door.

‘In here!’ she called, the feeling of giddy relief now compounding her dizziness. ‘Open the door and let him in,’ she commanded Tye.

He was frozen on the spot several metres away from her. He looked from Stevie to the door, shook his head and smiled, in control again.

The hammering on the door stopped.

Cramping pains shot up her neck as her body reacted to its twisted position. To unbolt and unlock the door she’d have to drop the gun and she doubted her reactions would be quick enough to coordinate both movements. Keeping the gun on Tye as best she could, she edged herself closer to the door.