She followed Sebastian up the ladder, and Jason was glad fear of heights wasn’t included in her long list of neuroses. He watched them both disappear through the little hatch and waited.
After about a minute of getting steadily wetter and colder, Jason suddenly wondered what the hell he was doing. He had just let Amy wander into a drug processing plant with only Sebastian to back her up while he stayed at the bottom of the ladder and...what? Waited for a gang runner to shoot him?
This was a terrible plan.
Someone tapped him on the shoulder.
Jason nearly jumped out of his wits and turned with his fists up to see Bryn’s grinning face.
“Don’t do that!” he whispered, scared to death.
“Why are you standing out here making a target of yourself?”
Jason waved his hand towards the ladder. “Sebastian and Amy have gone up the ladder for reconnaissance.”
Bryn stiffened, as if every fibre of his body had turned to stone. “Bas? Bas is here?”
Jason suddenly felt cold, an odd pricking feeling playing across the base of his spine. “Yes. He got here before you.” But Bryn was still unmoving, blank as a canvas. “You called him...didn’t you?”
“No. I didn’t.”
“But...but he said...”
A police officer. The mastermind was a police officer.
“Zook.”
Bryn was white as a sheet. “Bazooka. It was his military call sign.”
Jason was trembling from head to toe, goose bumps blossoming across his arms. “Bryn,” he said, mouth dry as grate ash, “I’ve sent Amy into that barn with a murderer.”
Chapter Forty-Six: The Lion Wakes Tonight
As she stepped into the hayloft, two men pointed machine guns at her.
It turned out that the drug dealers preferred a cosy hayloft to a freezing barn full of turnips. Who knew?
Amy held up her hands, just like in the movies, as Sebastian stood across from her between another two goons.
“Guess we picked the wrong door,” she said weakly.
“No. We didn’t.”
His face changed before her eyes. Soft lines grew sharp, his rosy skin dead and grey. He was a monster, and she was a scared little girl. How had she not seen it before? Those dark black holes he had for eyes belonged to a demon, not a man.
From the shadows, Madhouse Mickey emerged. He looked nothing like his photograph. “Who’s this, Zook?”
Zook. The name clanged against her brain, the one Jason had heard in his dying moments, a name to be whispered at midnight by unknowing thrill seekers. Bloody Zook, Bloody Zook, Bloody Zook.
“This is our new Damage.”
Amy’s jaw dropped open, as if the screws had come loose and she was incapable of shutting it. He had kidnapped her to code for him. And she had followed him here, like a biddable child.
But Jason was outside. Jason was a free man. He would save her. He always saved her.
“Mr. Corrigan, there’s some trash needs taking out behind the barn. Oblige me, would you?”
The heavyset man Amy recognised as the driver of the white van nodded and started towards the ladder that led down into the centre of the barn. Jason had only a precious couple of minutes. Her hope was fleeing.
“Don’t touch him.” Her voice quavered as she leapt forward on instinct, blocking Corrigan’s way. But the men merely laughed at her. Except Zook, who watched her with those cold black eyes.
“He cannot help you, Miss Lane. He was holding you back. You’re with me now. I know how to treat a lady of your talents.”
“I am not helping you sell drugs,” she said fiercely.
“Please,” Zook said, something resembling amusement twisting his lips. “We both know you’ve done far worse things. You were the blackest blackhat before you washed your hands of all that.”
“I said no!”
Zook suddenly rushed into her space and grabbed her upper arm in a punishing grip. “And no means no, does it? Is that a myth your mother taught you? It’s a lie, child. No is an invitation for you to be exploited on someone else’s terms. Say yes and it might actually turn out well for you.”
Amy looked up into his soulless eyes and smiled the smile of the clinically insane. “Fool me once, Sebastian.”
The backhand across her face knocked her against the barn wall. Her legs crumpled beneath her and she was a discarded rag doll in the corner, her head spinning round and round faster even than the drugs could take her.
“You’ll come round. They always do.”
He walked away. Warm, salty metal dribbled over her lip and down her chin, but she couldn’t raise her hand to wipe it away. The steady pounding of the rain on the barn roof sounded like gunfire, as if this were a war zone and she were another casualty.
The barn was swallowed up in all-consuming black, the panic overwhelming her in an instant. She bit her lip to keep from crying out, as the crushing knowledge of her impending doom enveloped her.
There was no hope, and no rescue. Amy’s worst nightmare had come true—she had left her sanctuary, and now she must pay the price.
* * *
Jason leapt for the ladder, and Bryn yanked him back by his T-shirt and into the shadow of the large tractor behind the barn. “You will get yourself killed, boy,” he said, shaking him.
Jason eventually stopped fighting him and settled down. “He has her, Bryn. Amy’s in there.”
Bryn’s mind was tumbling out of his control. Bas Rawlings, drug baron—the taste in his mouth was bitter betrayal, and abject horror. But there was no time to dwell on the sudden hole in his chest. “He knows you’re here. We have to move.”
He seized Jason’s arm and pulled him along the back side of the barn, away from the hayloft ladder. The moon was partially obscured by the rusted skeletons of old farm machinery, a mud-splattered graveyard. They emerged on the other side, a silage stack towering over them, a number of cars parked on the other side of the plastic-wrapped bales.
Jason moved before Bryn could grab him, sliding himself along the bales, black on black, before crouching down behind the cars. Bryn reluctantly joined him and they surveyed the scene.
“That’s Stuart,” Jason said suddenly, and Bryn followed his gaze to the scarred face of Stuart Williams among the crowd. “But it was Mickey’s boys we followed here—there they are, coming out the barn.”
Bryn watched the dance between the newcomers and the boys currently emerging from the barn. They joined their brothers-in-arms in building a bonfire and preparing what looked like a barbecue. The two gangs were known to each other, sure, but suspicion was rife, clear lines drawn.
“It’s a parley,” Jason said.
“Parley?” Bryn said. “That French?”
Jason looked at him scornfully. “It’s a pirate thing. Captain Jack Sparrow, Keira Knightley? Par-lay?”
Bryn shrugged. “Never liked those films.”
“It’s when enemies get together to talk. Like a negotiation. Or a series of complaints without nobody attacking each other.”
“You’ve done this?” Bryn asked him.
“In prison,” he said shortly, and Bryn decided not to pry further.
“We can work with this,” Jason continued, thinking out loud. “They know each other, mostly, but not every face. We can get in among the crowd, make each lot think we’re part of the other.”
“They all know your face, boy. And I’m old enough to be their grandfather.”
“I can do it.”
Bryn turned and clapped Owain on the shoulder. “Thought you were stuck in traffic.”
Owain looked mortified. “It’s far worse than that...”
“Cerys?” Jason’s startled whisper was followed by him grabbing his younger sister and shaking h
er. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“I came with Owain.”
Jason turned and glared daggers at the younger cop.
Bryn put an arm between them. “I think we all know that Cerys does as she pleases. Now can we get on, please?”
Cerys tore herself away from her brother. “They all know me,” she said, with a touch of shame. “It’ll have to be Owain.”
Within a minute, Jason had loaned Owain his T-shirt and Cerys had given up her oversized pale blue hoodie. She swept some paste out of her own hair to get Owain’s damp, floppy fringe out of his eyes and make him look less like a member of a boy band. By the time they were done, Bryn hardly recognised him.
“You’ll pass,” Jason said grudgingly.
Owain edged towards the end of the parked cars before straightening up and wandering casually past the chatting gangsters. He just had to make it inside the barn—without catching Zook’s eye. Bryn was confident none of his former arrestees would pick him out, but he’d been Bas’s partner....
Bryn cursed himself again for being so blind. How could he have let all this happen right under his nose? But he would have time for self-condemnation later.
“Fuck, this is a stupid idea,” Cerys breathed.
“He’s a brave stupid boy.”
Cerys suddenly turned to Jason in a rush of enthusiasm, her eyes bright beneath her soaked blond fringe. “Jay, me and Owain—”
“Is now the fucking time, Cerys?”
“I like him. I really like him.” The poor girl was in earnest. Bryn could only watch as Jason squirmed under the force of her passion.
“Then you should tell him that, shouldn’t you?” Jason said awkwardly. “At least he’s not Stuart Williams.”
Cerys paused for breath, and Bryn jumped in to get them back on track.
“We need a distraction,” he said.
“Fire,” Cerys and Jason said together, and Bryn remembered that these two had grown up together in the same rotten neighbourhood, cheek by jowl with the boys and girls in front of that barn.
“We could spike the bonfire, but it’s risky,” Cerys said.
“Might drive them all back into the barn. What about torching the barn itself?”
“Your boss is in there,” Bryn reminded him.
“Just out front and we’d have control of it,” Jason said confidently. “So long as we didn’t use accelerant.”
“We’d have to check there’s not a tractor in there.”
“Or an old oil drum.” Jason bent down and scrabbled at the grass. “There’s hay all about but the grass beneath it is damp.”
“We might need accelerant,” Cerys said reluctantly. “We could siphon it off the cars.”
“That van’s diesel.” Jason pointed to the white van in the middle of the drive.
“Too exposed,” Cerys said. “We’ll have to make do with petrol.”
As they moved along the row of parked cars, checking the hub caps and fishing a broken bucket out of a patch of nettles, Bryn stayed put beside the bales. Watching and waiting.
He tracked Owain’s progress with bated breath. The boy casually picked up a beer, bit off the cap with his teeth and sauntered through the crowd. No one paid him any mind, assuming he was with one camp or another.
He was closing on the barn door...twenty feet...fifteen...ten...
A cheer went up from the boys, beers raised in the air. Madhouse Mickey swaggered out the door, flanked by his cronies, and drawing every eye. Stuart Williams glowered and his hand strayed to his pocket. Bryn’s keen eyes recognised an ominous bulge beneath his coat.
But in the commotion, Bryn lost sight of Owain. Where was he? Where did he go? Did he get inside?
Bryn’s first thought was to grab his backup, even if it was two ex-gang kids with no training, and go over the top to rescue their lost soldier. He looked down the cars, searching out Cerys and Jason.
A shadow fell over him. Bryn looked up—
To find a man mountain looming over him.
“Zook says there’s trash needs taking out. Looks like you’re it.”
Something seemed familiar about him, the set of his shoulders, the fading bruise over his cheek—
Bryn drew himself up to his full height, back against the Range Rover he’d been using as cover, and gave his best DI glare. “Son, I’ve already nicked you once—you want to make it twice tonight?”
Lee Corrigan—yes, Corrigan, that was the boy’s name—stilled. He hadn’t figured on a cop. “I don’t know you,” he said, but the slight quaver in his voice gave him away.
“Oh, you do, son. That van you were driving for Mickey? Dead kid’s phone in the back? You remember now?”
Something in Corrigan changed. The fear melted from his face in an instant. “I remember you was with a tonne of boys in blue that time. Don’t see ’em now.”
His bravado had backfired. Corrigan realised the only way out was to silence him for good.
Corrigan swung a punch, slow and clumsy, and Bryn ducked. He’d never been much for rough and tumble but he’d been able to hold his own in a locker room. Mind, that had been twenty years ago...
Corrigan came at him again and Bryn wasn’t fast enough, taking the blow on his shoulder and stumbling back into the silage stack. Corrigan’s huge hand connected with Bryn’s neck, and he choked, bruised back against the bales and legs dangling.
With all his might, Bryn kicked out at Corrigan’s leg. The gangster loosened his grip and Bryn took his chance, running as fast as his forty-eight-year-old legs could carry him.
The ground at the back of the barn was slick with mud and Bryn slid, ankle-deep and sinking, as a hand landed on his shoulder and yanked him back. Bryn overbalanced and landed flat on his back in the mud, staring at the grim upside-down boy who was going to kill him.
“Think,” Bryn panted. “Killing a cop...that’s the end, that is.”
Corrigan smiled, cold and in control. “You think you’re different? I killed hard men and kids what crossed us. I ain’t afraid of your ghost, of the time. The buzz of life leaving under your hands—it’s worth it.”
And Bryn realised that there was no reason that would save him, that Death was dispassionate and cruel—and coming for him in the guise of Lee Corrigan. The sky split with lightning. The angels were coming. That was what his wife had told their daughters as the storms raged around their little house, the growl of thunder sending their little girls under their parents’ blankets.
Now his daughters would lose him in a grubby field in the middle of nowhere to a gang runner with a hard-on for violence. There were no angels to save him.
Thwack!
And then Death groaned and listed to the side, the vengeful spirit of Cerys Carr brandishing an axe handle behind him. Jason shouldered him into the ground, groaning as the guy toppled, before Cerys whacked him again and he went still.
Bryn was frozen, paralysed, as Jason stumbled over to him and peered into his face. “You dead?”
“No,” Bryn croaked, the cold mud starting to register against his blistering adrenaline-soaked skin. The lightning burned across the sky, the thunder close behind. Angels, indeed.
Jason reached down for his arm, trying to hide his wince as he pulled Bryn to his feet.
“Why did—”
“Because I knew you weren’t going to wait quietly and, when you didn’t show up, I knew something had to be wrong.” Jason grinned at him and ineffectually brushed at his mud-soaked sleeve. “You need a shower.”
“I need a pint.” Bryn glanced at the insensate Corrigan, worried at how still he was. “He alive?”
Cerys kicked him, and Corrigan whimpered and curled in on himself. “Just about.”
Jason leaned in, lifting Bryn’s chin to examine his neck. “Just
like the Colombians,” he muttered. He turned to the scum on the floor, voice like the thunder above. “Did you do for Damage too?
Bryn slapped his one pair of handcuffs around Corrigan’s wrist and an old hayrick, partially submerged in the mud. “There’ll be time for that after.”
Jason relented, his fury melting into pyromaniacal glee. “Let’s start a fire.”
Chapter Forty-Seven: Feint
When Amy came to her senses, she was alone. Except for one man.
He was leaning up against a stack of oblong packages, their brilliant whiteness dulled by the plastic overlay, and smoking a cigarette. He appeared to be playing on his phone, a series of sounds she recognised as some poor birds losing out badly to obnoxious green pigs. And he had a machine gun balanced carelessly across his knee.
She wasn’t entirely sure if he was guarding her or the stash, but he didn’t seem to be paying much attention to where she was crumpled in the corner. But she kept her eyes slitted and didn’t move a muscle, despite the growing crick in her neck. She was not ready to be discovered, her stomach the home of a nest of squirming octopi and acid gurgling at the back of her throat. She couldn’t let the panic take her again, even if the rage of the storm outside mirrored the one inside her chest.
The satellite modem and the iPad were warm against her stomach, but she hadn’t the faintest idea how she could discreetly call the police with them. She’d left the mobile phone in the car, even if it did miraculously have signal, and the chances of her successfully fighting her way through dozens of armed gangsters were significantly less than the likelihood that Frosty the Snowman would survive his tour of the Seven Circles.
There was, of course, Jason. He might be dim on occasion, but even he would soon realise something was wrong. Unless Corrigan had gotten to him, or Zook had lured him into a trap. Jason trusted that man. They had both foolishly trusted him.
Suddenly, she was angry and with anger came recklessness. Amy abruptly lurched to her feet, startling the boy with his phone.
“Oi! Sit down!”
She tested the steadiness of her stance and raised her hand to her head in a show. She didn’t trust her voice, staying mute, taking a couple of ponderous steps along the platform. How far was it to the bottom? Could she risk the jump?
Code Runner (Amy Lane Mysteries Book 2) Page 27