‘Craig, don’t take this the wrong way, but right now you’re the least of my worries.’ He hung up.
The instinct to race back to the car and drive, drive was overwhelming. But Sam made himself pause. His gut was the wrong guide now, because he cared too much. The question was: what did he need? And the answer was clear. A gun, he needed a gun.
Marianne kept guns. Back in LA. Most of the madams did. A jealous husband or unsuspecting boyfriend, a john who was high and wanted more, a pervert who got off on harming working girls, even killing them. It was black out there, in a black business. He didn’t think she’d have dropped that habit out here. Once you were in the life, you always had to be afraid that someone would come and find you.
In LA she kept the guns in a concealed drawer under her desk. Sam vaulted the reception desk and felt around, tapping. It was there: a hollow space to the left, the thin plywood meeting his knuckles with a different sound from the rest of the desk. He looked above and saw a drawer. It was locked. A quick scan around the area revealed no key. He shouldn’t be here; a guest could drop by at any time, and a couple of feet behind him was the mistress of the house with a bullet in her forehead. Sam couldn’t wait. He smashed his elbow through the thin wood under the drawer, and caught the small Smith & Wesson as it tumbled through the hole. It was loaded. He felt around inside the drawer with his fingertips; she had kept a spare clip too. Thank you, Marianne, he thought. He examined the gun briefly as he moved to the door. The model 4040, popular with women because it was a standard 9mm, single-stack magazine and slim grips. A good choice for her, he thought, and felt a pang. What a waste her life had been. He and Lisa had to do better.
The slightness of the gun would make it harder for him to shoot; he had strong, powerful hands and long fingers, not designed for something delicate and fiddly. But it was a hell of a lot better than nothing. He palmed it a little, trying to get used to the weight and the grip. Thinking about returning the favour for Marianne, using her own weapon. Even without Lisa in the mix, he’d have been pleased to do it.
And now here was the car again. Soon he would have to dump this and get another. No Avis, though, no nice normal car hire. Something untraceable. Something cheap. But for now there was no time. The killer was out there, looking for Lisa. And Sam had to find him.
Chapter Ten
Lisa looked at the phone in her hand. It was a lifeline, and she didn’t want to throw it out. But she had to. How did these things work? They tracked you, right, they could track you with GPS. She’d just made a call. Maybe he knew where she was right now. She needed to lose this phone. And she had no idea when it would be a good idea for her to get another.
Reluctantly she moved forward to the edge of the garage. Cars drove past intermittently. That was the trouble with the night-time: you were so obvious when there were fewer people around. But she had to get rid of this thing. She dropped it in a trash can mounted on the street corner, venturing into the full view of the street lights . . .
And then she saw him.
Afterwards, she wasn’t sure how she’d known. But it was immediate. The face . . . yes, the face was slightly familiar, although she could not place it, yet it hit her that they had met before. It was more the way his eyes were on the road. How he swept the street, not just looking. Scanning. Not just on the road, but all around it.
He was maybe forty. Dark, thinning hair. Normal build. She only flashed on him as the car went past. But she felt a great sense of evil. His car stopped at the lights, and she saw his profile, a Roman, aquiline nose. The lights changed; he drove through. She stood fixed, staring after him. Like she was paralysed. And then he spotted her.
Lisa knew instantly. Just a slight turn of the head, to pick up something in his peripheral vision. But his eyes glanced back, and they picked her up. And although his car was driving forwards, he had got her, he had found her.
In another second he would be stopping. Terror and nausea welled up in her heart. She started to run, back behind the garage, leaping over the barbed wire in the darkness. There was a little street behind her. She raced down it, sobbing.
Fucking hell, there she was. That was her, that was his little bitch, staring at him like a lovestruck teenager, and he loved her for it, the nice easy target giving herself away. She was no pro, she was nothing. She was a ripe apple waiting for him to jostle the tree, just a little, just slightly. Like he said, he was lucky.
Felix wrenched the wheel to the left and parked the car. The extra second it took to do that would lessen attention. No woman could outrun him anyway. He was a male at the peak of his fitness. She was a soft society belle. He wasn’t concerned. He jumped out of the car and turned around, running in the direction she’d come from, by the garage. She wouldn’t be dumb enough to run down a main street. He went behind the garage, saw a patch of scrubby land with a depression in the barbed-wire fence hiving it off. Yeah . . . that’s where she’d gone. Short cuts, side alleys. The smarter ones tried those first. He leaped over into the scrub, and put his hand into his pocket, withdrawing his Glock, the other hand effortlessly attaching the silencer. There was a street ahead of him, narrow, lined with shops, leading up to the older quarter of the town. He forced himself to stop a second, and listened. His acute hearing was one of his greatest assets. And there it was, faint but still perfectly audible. The light, sharp footfall of a woman running. He turned his head, pinpointing the sound. She was on higher ground, to his left. He ran towards her.
Sam drove around the streets, feeling helpless. The cars and trucks on the roads looked normal to him. There was nothing unusual. Even in a country the size of a postage stamp, they could be anywhere. His girl, and her killer. He had a gun now. He had evidence that could clear her. And none of it was any use.
Think, think, damn you, he told himself. He’d be following her . . . and she was on foot. A car . . . he was looking for an abandoned car. If he saw Lisa, the killer wouldn’t take his time parking it . . .
Sam drove a little further, and then he saw it. Right by the garage. A black Mercedes, a car that stood out in this part of Vaduz, away from the financial centre. It was parked, but the angle . . . that was wrong, it wasn’t neat, it smacked of a hurry . . .
He stopped his own car at the side of the road opposite and got out. Behind the garage was a stretch of waste ground, and past that, a narrow street leading up towards the castle. Sam scanned to his left. Wide, floodlit roads. In front of him was a large roundabout, and past it more well-lit hostelries. To the right he saw a squat Lutheran church, with nothing but a parking lot and more bright lights. OK. If this was the car, then logically she’d have run in the only direction where there was cover. And that was across the waste ground. Sam started to run, and adrenaline surged through him. It was so easy to do it when your hormones carried you through. He thought of Lisa, scared and helpless, and this man bearing down on her. He visualised his finger on the trigger, squeezing, merciless, making the problem go away.
He entered the narrow street and raced uphill, looking to his right and his left, trying to hear anything, see anything. But there was no sound. They would have gotten ahead of him, though. It wasn’t much of a clue, the car and the landscape together, but it was all he had, so he kept running.
Lisa moved as fast as she could. She tried to keep in the shadows, to run by the sides of buildings. All the locked doors in the street! God, if only it were day, and she could duck into one of them! But there was nowhere. At the top, it widened out again, and now she was running between chalet-style houses, a little closer together than in the modern town. But still, no place secure to hide . . . nowhere to go . . .
Felix pounded up the street. Her footfalls were getting closer. So far he’d been lucky; there was only one way she could have run. The town itself was herding her, helping him. But at the top, a few hundred yards away, it opened up. Easier to see her, but more places for her to go. That wasn’t so good. He paused for a second, catching his breath. It would save time
just to hear her . . .
Only he didn’t pick just her out; he heard something else. Something annoying. Somebody running, and the weight and thud of the feet said it was a man. He was being pursued. A goddamn distraction now, when he was so close. Who the fuck could it be? The journalist . . . Murray? He didn’t think his skills were up to much. But it was possible. A cop? Presumably even Liechtenstein had some of those. And there likely wasn’t much for them to do. What if some elderly hausfrau had seen him from her window, running, disturbing the peace. Called it in. Or worse, some guest had noticed him at the cheap, tacky little hotel, maybe found the fat bitch who owned it . . .
That was possible; like it was possible she had a man, a husband or something, somebody who objected to him doing the world a favour and slamming a bullet into her brain. Felix debated briefly what to do. Should he wait, take the guy out? But no, that might lead to Lisa getting away. She was one slippery little bitch. There’d be plenty of time to kill this fucker later. He’d leave him the body to find, stripped below the waist, exposed and humiliated in death. Maybe put a shot right through that pussy, since he wasn’t going to have time to fuck it. Yeah. A surge of anger and testosterone raced through him. This man was going to cheat him of his rape; well, he’d leave a cute little surprise for him, something to give him nightmares for the rest of his strait-laced life.
Felix listened again, stripping one sound from the other. The lighter footfalls were heading west, above the hill. He followed.
Sam ran, higher, pushing himself. He was fit, but working at his maximum. He gasped for air. Liechtenstein was no place to run and hide; the houses were spaced too far apart, it was prosperous and well-lit at night. He thought of Lisa, trapped like a rabbit frozen in front of a car. Christ. He had done it, he had left her . . .
He took out the gun, held it ready in his right hand as he sprinted. And then he heard it. The sound. Way above him. A man, a man running. Running after his girl. Sam breathed in deep, and forced himself to go faster, much faster, to attack the pavement, the gradient of the hill. His lungs screamed for mercy, but he ignored them. His heart was thumping and pulsing. None of it mattered. Only Lisa mattered. Right now, he thought, if he lost her, nothing else in his life would ever be worth shit ever again.
Lisa tried to slow her breathing. Panting like this would give her away. She looked round wildly. She could hear the guy coming. God, at that pace she could not outrun him. He was a man, stronger than her. She was going to have to hide, hide and pray. The houses here were mostly Swiss chalet style, relics of the fifties, with ordinary cars parked out front or in their garages. They had balconies, for decoration. Inside, families were sleeping. They didn’t look the type of houses to be fitted with burglar alarms or security lights.
She thought about where he would look. He’d run around and conclude she had hidden. And then he’d try to find her. Where was the best place to hide? That was the first thing. Quickly she noted the carved balconies, with their curves and turrets, protruding from two houses facing each other across the street. Made by the same builder, long ago. Those would be good, obvious places to hide. Then there was a copse of trees a little to her right. Perhaps a smart girl would run in there, even climb up into the branches. Open garages, too, offered some darkness, some refuge. All great places to hide. She could not use any of them.
Parked up by the side of the road leading to the castle was a truck, a freight lorry of some kind. Forcing herself to walk very quietly towards it, Lisa looked underneath its wheels. There was a deep, dark shadow between the two front wheels, a narrow slot where a body could curl. She was small, slim. She muttered a silent prayer, then lowered herself to the road and the dirt and noiselessly slipped under the truck. She made herself tiny, curled up. Her head was turned, her eyes fixed on the blades of grass on the verge, the thin trickle of water running along the gutter, right by her head. It was the only sound, apart from her heart crashing against her chest, the terrified breathing she was fighting to still.
And then there came another sound. Hard, intense footsteps, a man running, pursuing her. She heard him race to the top of the street; then they stopped, and she heard him panting. This was the man who had killed her husband. Now he wanted to kill her.
Sam kept running. The other guy had stopped. That meant he was close to Lisa. He wanted to yell out, scream, shout, but there was no breath left in his lungs to do it. He moved at a steadier pace. He needed to recover his pulse, to be fit to take this guy on. A professional, a hired killer. And he didn’t want to clue him in to where he was.
Sam had almost reached the top of the narrow street, where it opened up into the old town. He listened: silence. The guy wasn’t running, Lisa wasn’t running. So she was hiding, and he was looking for her. His sharp mind processed that the killer had probably heard him in pursuit, but decided to finish off Lisa first. So he was very serious about this mission. He wanted to get it done.
But guess what. Sam wanted to get it done too. And having the man here, in the open, hunting, was an opportunity. Sure, he was afraid for Lisa. But you couldn’t kill what you couldn’t see. And this guy was waiting to be removed. He just didn’t know it yet.
Sam moved into the shadows and looked ahead of him, carefully. In another minute he would be around the corner.
Felix scanned the ground. It was summer, so no obvious footprints to help him out, in snow or mud. She had stopped running maybe sixty seconds ago. She was hiding. He was very aware of the cop, or whoever it was, coming up behind him, but if he moved fast, no amateur would track him unless he wanted to be caught.
The ugly chalet houses had nice accommodating balconies. That was the place to go. And Lisa had to feel her odds were good, because there were five or six of them within climbing distance. Any one he picked was likely to be wrong. But she didn’t understand how this worked. He moved to the nearest house, put his strong hands on the lip of the woodwork and effortlessly, like a gymnast, hauled himself over the top on to the flat wood of the balcony. She was not in this house. Wooden shutters were closed on the bedroom window right behind him. Noiselessly - Felix had started out as a cat burglar, and nobody did quiet motion like him - he moved around the side of the balcony and started to climb up to the roof of the house, hand over foot, his sinewy body finding a purchase on the least little outcrop, windowsill or ledge. If it wasn’t smooth glass, he would find a way to climb it. From high up on the roof, he would be able to draw his gun, and at his leisure spy every balcony, every tree, every pool of shadow within a five-mile radius. He had infrared goggles in his jacket pocket, along with ordinary binoculars and a foldaway scope. He would see her, and his shooting would be dead-on accurate. When Prince Charming turned up, Felix would see him too. And take him out.
At last. A surge of pleasure rippled through him, to have her somewhere in his vicinity, to have a good gun and a crisp target. He reached the top of the roof and straddled his legs across it, settling in a shooting position. Then he pulled out his mobile phone. His fucking client. He sent a text, grinning to himself as he pressed the send button.
Found her in Liechtenstein. Taking her out. Not in job. Wire another million, no tears. Nice doing business. F.
Another million? Why not. He deserved it; this was a pain in the ass. It ought to have been specified that Lisa Costello, naïve and unwilling bride, was part of a package deal. Now he’d had to waste weeks of his life and get stressed and anxious over loose ends, when it had nothing to do with him. Of course he wanted more money. Whatever they’d agreed. And the client would pay. It was justified, and no client ever wanted you turning around and hunting them instead.
Now. He twisted on the roof. The naked eye revealed nothing. That was fine; it was dark. She might have been in black clothing. Felix didn’t think she was clinging to the wall on any of the house balconies. Well, that would have been just too easy. If she was there, or hiding in scrubland, or in the woods, he would find her. He put his hand in his pocket and took out the infrared gogg
les. These were top-notch, an experimental, lightweight version designed for the US Special Forces. He put them to his eyes. There was nothing on the balconies, not even a mouse. He saw a fox streak off towards the woods, but there was no human there, in the trees, or on the ground. Frustrated, he turned in a complete circle . . .
There was a figure . . . hanging back against the wall of the pharmacy at the top of the narrow street. His heart sped briefly, but it was not her. It was a man, the man. He lowered his goggles and used the binoculars again. The guy was edging around the corner of the building; he disappeared from view, then came back in sight again. Felix knew the gait, the build, immediately. It was not necessary to see the face. That was indeed Sam Murray. The fucking hack writer. Jesus. He must have the hots for this broad. Didn’t he know what he was getting into?
He was about to find out. The plan was to get Lisa, but she must be in a garage or something. He couldn’t see her. Murray was right there. He fitted the sights to his pistol, angled it, and fired.
Lisa twisted her head under the lorry. She didn’t want to move too much. This man was an assassin, looking for her. Movement would attract him. She believed it. But she wanted to see. She had heard him arrive, then tiny, quiet sounds. Not coming near the truck. She looked on the road, right ahead of her. There were no feet, no boots. So she’d been right; he’d climbed up to one of the balconies, and he was hunting her there . . .
And then she saw something. And crammed her fist into her mouth. Sam’s shoes, his plain John Lobb shoes, the ones she’d recognise anywhere, coming around the top of the street, standing in the road. She could tell, instantly. It was Sam. He’d found her . . . God knew how, but he’d found her. And now here he was, come to fetch her back. Only the killer was around . . . maybe on a balcony . . . above Sam. With a gun.
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