A Window Breaks

by C. M. Ewan

  You know who we want.

  That was what the smaller man had said to Brodie when he was tied to the chair.

  At the time, I’d assumed he was talking about Rachel, about us, but I realized now – with a slow, choking dread – that I’d been wrong.

  53

  Rachel believed the men had come here to stop her from investigating Michael’s death, and maybe that was part of it. But it wasn’t their only reason. They’d also come because of the man held captive in that room.

  My head spun. I thought again about the questions the smaller man and the bigger man had asked Brodie. They’d wanted to know how to get into the wine cellar. Because they’d believed this man was locked inside with us. They’d wanted to free him. But when Brodie had told them there was no way of getting into the cellar, the smaller man had been prepared to burn everyone on the other side of the steel door. And the bigger man had been willing to go along with that. Reluctant, but willing.

  Why? Why try to rescue someone you were prepared to let die?

  My eyes slid to the framed photograph of Jennifer. I felt another jolt. The man who’d murdered her had escaped unpunished. According to Rachel, Lionel hadn’t wanted us to suffer the same fate.

  They weren’t supposed to be here yet.

  So, what exactly? Rachel, Lionel and Brodie had discussed a plan to abduct the man and hold him captive here? Why? So they could make him own up to his role in Michael’s death? Record his confession on the camera in the secret room?

  The idea made me feel physically sick but I supposed it was possible. Outlandish? Yes. Wildly irresponsible and dangerous? Undoubtedly. But possible, and the smaller man and the bigger man must have thought so too. Perhaps that’s why they’d been willing to let him die. Maybe they’d wanted their secret contained here, whatever it took.

  I didn’t know how to feel about what I’d seen on the monitor. Disgusted? Appalled? Or something else? Was there a tiny part of me – a part I didn’t want to recognize right now – that might have wanted ten minutes alone in a room with that man?

  And what about Rachel? What had she wanted from this? She was a mess next to me, clawing at her hair. It hurt me to see it. One look at her could trigger so many memories. The way she used to curl up in front of the TV under a blanket on Sunday evenings. The way she’d comb the tangles out of Holly’s hair after a bath. The smell of her skin when I kissed the freckles on her neck. And now . . . this.

  The man in the coveralls jerked his shotgun towards Lionel, snapping me out of my thoughts.

  ‘I’m going to need you to take me to that room now.’

  ‘You know I can’t do that.’

  ‘I could shoot you.’

  ‘You could.’ Lionel nodded and gazed up at him. Lionel wasn’t a short man, but he appeared slight in comparison. ‘But then how would you find it?’

  My body went cold. Rachel lowered her hands from her face and looked up.

  ‘Lionel,’ I pleaded. ‘Just tell him what he wants to know.’

  ‘I can’t, Tom. Don’t you see? I’m trying to protect you. All of you. You have to believe me when I tell you I have your family’s best interests at heart here. I know that may be a hard thing to accept right now, but it’s true.’ He didn’t look at me as he spoke. His attention remained on the man with the shotgun, like a referee studying a wrestler in the middle of a bout.

  ‘Here’s what I think,’ he said to him. ‘If you really wanted to shoot me, you would have done it already. You could have shot Holly out in those woods. But you didn’t, and I bet if I played back the footage from all these cameras we’d see that you spent most of your time outside the lodge. I’m not sure you want any part of this. I wonder if you ever did.’

  I thought about that. If my thinking so far was right – if the man with the shotgun was one of the men from the silver Vauxhall that had followed Michael and Fiona – then he had to be the one who’d been sitting in the rear. In the image taken from the speed camera, only his shoulder and upper arm had been visible because he’d been leaning back from the men in front. He hadn’t been crouching forwards between the two front seats. He hadn’t been talking with them. He hadn’t been participating. And, unlike the man who’d been in my car with Michael and Fiona, he hadn’t held a gun on my son.

  So maybe – maybe – Lionel was on to something. Maybe the man was just a reluctant player in all this.

  ‘For what it’s worth,’ Lionel told him, ‘I didn’t want to be here tonight, either. Things have spun . . . out of control. But together we can resolve this mess. These are good people. You know the trauma they’ve been through as a family. Holly here is just thirteen years old.’

  The man watched Lionel carefully, like he was considering his words and trying to spot the hidden trap that lurked within them.

  ‘Tom,’ Lionel said, from the corner of his mouth. ‘I think it’s probably time I gave you some answers. And perhaps I should begin by introducing our guest here. Though, of course, the two of you have met before.’

  54

  Met before? I felt a rush of fear and confusion as I stared at the man in the coveralls. I strained to form some kind of picture in my mind. All I could see were his eyes, eyebrows and cheeks as he loomed over us. It wasn’t enough.

  ‘You don’t think I know who you are?’ Lionel asked him, shaking his head. ‘Who all of you are? Or, in the case of your two friends, perhaps I should say were.’

  The man stiffened at the shift in Lionel’s tone. He took a step towards him, crowding him, like he’d finally felt that hidden trap begin to snap closed.

  ‘Lionel,’ I warned.

  I didn’t know why he was pressing the man’s buttons like this. It was almost like he was being deliberately antagonistic all of a sudden.

  Almost deliberately . . .

  Tingles of unease streaked up and down my arms and legs. I glanced past Holly towards Rachel. She was inching forwards on the sofa, one leg twisted at the knee, a look of tense anticipation on her face.

  Oh, hell.

  ‘You know,’ the man said to Lionel, ‘you’re really beginning to—’

  I moved before Rachel could, launching myself off the sofa as the man took another step forwards.

  ‘Dad, no!’ Holly screamed.

  The man swivelled. I panicked. I had no kind of plan. But I was committed now and I made a grab for his shotgun, clamping both hands on the barrel. I felt like I was looking up at a giant. My heart thumped in my chest. My palms were slick with sweat. I pushed up with the heels of my hands, shunting the gun crossways against the man’s wide chest, trying to slam him back against the wall behind him.

  He didn’t budge.

  Rachel got to her feet, watching us, taking little half-steps forwards and back.

  ‘Tom, he’s going to shoot!’

  The panic in Rachel’s voice was like a shrill alarm bell in my head. The man was so much bigger than me. It felt like I was trying to hold up a wall. I could feel his immense strength as he pushed down against me. My biceps burned. I tried another kind of ramming, shoving move, aiming to force the shotgun up towards his throat.

  Didn’t work. The shotgun didn’t move.

  Then a searing white flash of pain filled my head and the next thing I knew I was down on my backside on the ground. I must have blacked out for a half-second or so because it took me a moment to realize the man had headbutted me. The crunch reverberated through my skull. It felt like my forehead had split open.

  I peered up, groggy now, my head throbbing. I could see two hazed men in white coveralls, two shotguns, two muzzles swinging my way.

  Terror exploded in my chest.

  I glimpsed a pink blur of movement. I heard Holly’s frenzied scream.

  ‘Stop!’ the man yelled, and he turned with the shotgun, swinging it fast.

  My vision snapped back into terrible focus. A judder of pure horror tore through me. Holly crashed to her knees, her hands in the air. The muzzle of the shotgun was pointed down at her c
hest. The man hadn’t pulled the trigger. Yet.

  ‘Don’t shoot!’ Rachel screamed. ‘Oh my God, don’t shoot!’

  Time stopped.

  Everything – my whole life – suspended in a moment.

  Rachel looked down at Holly, pure black terror in her eyes. My body went numb. My heart simply ceased beating. Every detail became vivid and clear. The snag and catch of Holly’s breathing. The soundless scream that was frozen on her lips. The way the shotgun was digging into her coat, pushing her backwards from her hips. The way the man’s finger was tightening on the trigger.

  Limitless space opened up between the seconds. It was a space where my deepest fears lived.

  We think we have so much time in life. Time to make mistakes. Time to fix things that go wrong. But every so often it hits us – the worst things happen when we have no time at all.

  I watched.

  Paralysed.

  My daughter didn’t dare move.

  ‘Baker,’ Lionel said, his voice very tight. ‘Wasn’t that the name of the officer you impersonated?’

  My vision seemed to warp and distort. My ears hummed at a disabling frequency.

  Baker?

  The man growled and shook his head, sighting down the barrel. His swollen knuckles bunched around the shotgun. Sweat coated his brow.

  Holly was blinking her eyes over and over. Tears streaked down her face. Rachel tried to reach out to her, but when the man told her to stop and demanded again that we tell him where the secret room was, she stepped back, her face collapsing, clutching her hands to her mouth.

  I looked between Holly and the man, the barrel of the shotgun connecting them in the worst possible way.

  Baker.

  Thoughts cascaded in my mind. I realized I’d mistaken the third intruder for the bigger man earlier because, well, he was big. Broad shoulders. Large hands. A thick neck. I thought of how imposing Baker had looked in his uniform in the hospital. Of how he’d seemed to tower over me. This man was the right size, right height, right weight.

  And, thinking about it now, he’d only spoken to me at the hospital, not Rachel or Holly. He hadn’t asked me to sign a statement. He hadn’t suggested photographing Holly’s injuries. He hadn’t swabbed any of us for DNA.

  Because he was never investigating the mugging. He already knew what had happened. He’d wanted to find out how much I knew. He’d wanted to stop us from filing an official report.

  The smaller man had held a knife on Rachel in that alley. He’d punched Holly. And this man – whoever he was – had been sent in to clean the incident up.

  It was grotesque. Appalling.

  Then I thought of something else. The phone call from Baker I’d taken on speakerphone in the Volvo on our way here. Is there anyone you know who might want to harm you or your family? Do you have any enemies? Again, he’d been trying to gauge how much I knew. How much we, as a family, knew.

  ‘Enough!’ Rachel slashed her arms through the air. She shook her head frantically. ‘That’s enough. Stop this. I want you to stop pointing that gun at my daughter. I’ll take you to the room. I’ll show you where it is.’

  55

  We scaled the boulders at the side of the pod and stepped onto a patch of soaked grass next to the woods. Holly was in my arms, her face nestled in my shoulder. She was crying silently. My forehead ached. My thick ear burned. My back and arms were straining. But it was nothing compared to the cramping pain in my chest whenever I thought of that shotgun barrel being pressed into my daughter’s body. It killed me that, no matter how tightly I held her, I couldn’t stop her from shaking.

  I’ll take you to the room. I’ll show you where it is.

  It was like I’d feared. Rachel had known a lot more than she’d told us. How much more was there still to come?

  Above the trees to the east, the sky was beginning to lighten from the full black of night to a watery grey dawn. The storm winds had faded but the early morning air was damp and chill. I shivered in my soaked clothes, feeling dazed and undone, like a stranger blundering around in my own skin.

  Rachel stepped up next to me and reached out to Holly, but Holly pulled back again. I saw the hurt bloom in Rachel’s eyes. I felt the ache in my heart. Rachel had been so focused on trying to redeem Michael. Maybe now, for the first time, she was starting to understand how much Holly had suffered because of it.

  ‘Holly, please. I never wanted you to get hurt in any of this.’

  Holly hid her face. Rachel looked at me bleakly. I didn’t know what to say to her. Michael’s death had broken her. I suppose I’d known that already, but I hadn’t come anywhere close to appreciating quite how badly. I knew she was responsible for a lot of what had happened here tonight but the truth is I felt responsible too. Maybe if I had got her help at the beginning. If I’d been there . . .

  ‘You’re making a mistake, Rachel.’

  Lionel was standing a short distance away from us, the breeze lifting his hair, the swelling to his temple beginning to yellow above the weeping cut below his eye. He hadn’t looked at me directly since the man had held the shotgun on Holly and I hadn’t been able to bring myself to approach him. Even thinking about it made me shake with rage.

  ‘No,’ Rachel muttered. ‘My mistake was trusting you.’

  ‘Not me,’ he said, and shot her a loaded look.

  I waited. Rachel held her ground for a few seconds, then stared down at her feet.

  ‘I wanted you to do this,’ Lionel told her. ‘You know that. I don’t deny it. But I was waiting for you to decide. Like you wanted.’ He paused. ‘Not everyone was so patient.’

  Rachel slumped, like she was wilting, and I found myself thinking again of the way Brodie had looked at my wife. According to Rachel he’d been reporting back to her for months now, giving her hope, restoring her faith in Michael during the same period when I’d bailed on my family. I could see how that kind of commitment would be seductive to Rachel. And I could easily understand how Brodie might fall for my wife.

  I’ve done things I wouldn’t normally do. Things I regret.

  Oh, Rachel.

  The pounding in my head got worse. I could feel the bitter logic of it all hardening like a tumour in my brain.

  Rachel had told me that Brodie had warned her the situation was escalating when we’d got here, but only he’d known how badly that was true.

  ‘The moment I found out what had happened, I travelled up here immediately,’ Lionel said. ‘I got to Brodie’s place late last night. You can’t imagine how angry I was. I told him we had to come to the lodge right away. I wanted to see for myself. We had to let you know what he’d done. He didn’t like it but I insisted. I got in his car and next thing I knew . . .’ Lionel touched a hand to the bruising on his head. ‘I think he panicked. He didn’t want me to tell you anything before he could explain it himself. I came to on the back seat. Some loud bangs had woken me. At first, I was terrified by what Brodie might have done. I saw you and Holly sprint out of the trees. I didn’t know what to do. Then I heard the blast over by the pod and, well . . .’ He glanced at Holly. ‘I got here as soon as I could. Not soon enough.’

  ‘Shut it!’ The man with the shotgun jumped off the boulders onto the soggy ground. ‘All of you shut up and just tell me where we’re going.’

  Rachel considered Lionel through narrowed eyes.

  ‘Don’t do this,’ Lionel warned her.

  ‘The lodge,’ she said quietly, turning to the man. ‘I’ll show you where when we get there.’

  I felt a skittering across my spine. The lodge? Really?

  ‘Adams,’ Lionel said, lifting his chin. ‘Your real name is Ross Patrick Adams.’

  ‘Lionel.’ I turned with Holly in my arms to try and shield her from what I was afraid might come next. ‘What are you doing?’

  The man swore and marched towards him, sighting down the barrel of his shotgun. Lionel tried to hold his ground but as the man advanced on him he began to stumble backwards, raising his hands
in the air.

  ‘You can threaten us,’ Lionel said in a hurry. ‘You can wear those coveralls. Hide your face in front of the cameras. Put gloves on your hands. It doesn’t matter. Don’t you understand? It’s not just me who knows who you are. There are others. My investigator for one. He keeps detailed records. Lots of backups. It’s called a contingency.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘Is it?’ Lionel bumped up against a tree. He rose up on his toes, turning his face from the gun. ‘Are you willing to take that chance?’

  The man leaned over Lionel and shoved his jaw forwards, studying him intently. He didn’t say anything for several long seconds. Then he reached up, pulled down his hood, removed his mask.

  I gulped air. Lionel had been right. This was the man who’d introduced himself to me as Baker at the hospital. The man who’d reassured me there was nothing more I could have done in the alley. Even now – even after everything that had happened – I felt ill to have been so duped.

  Ross Patrick Adams.

  Lionel had said he knew everything about him but I still knew very little. Who was he? Who were the other men who had come here with him? Who was the man held captive in the bare, cell-like room?

  What had drawn my son into their orbit?

  My head hurt, and not just from the way Adams had butted me.

  Over by Lionel, Adams scrubbed one gloved hand over his face, itching at the deep marks the mask had left in his skin. Lionel inched up the tree trunk, pressing his spine into the bark.

  ‘You really don’t know when to shut up, do you?’

  ‘You should listen to me,’ Lionel told him. ‘Because you still have a choice here. You can leave right now. You should just go. Because if you kill us, I guarantee you your name will be made public. You’ll have nowhere to hide. You came here to cover something up that can’t be covered any longer. But with my help, your name can be left out of it.’

  ‘Your help? Really?’