Dani took a step closer to him. If she had even an outside chance of getting the Captor in his eyes, she had to be as close as possible, otherwise the wind would simply snatch the spray away before it got anywhere near Stokes’ face.
“Help me to understand, then. You said your mother did something to your sister—“
“She killed her.” The hard expression he’d been wearing on his face slipped away and was replaced by tears and a quivering lip. “She killed Ruth.”
“Okay, I understand why you’re angry, but this isn’t going to achieve anything. You’re killing people who have nothing to do with what your mother did.”
“Well, I can’t very well kill her, can I? Not while there’s an innocent life inside her.”
“Michael, you don’t have to kill anyone. If your mother has committed a crime, then let the police handle it. We’re here to help you.”
“No, you’re here to stop me.”
“I can’t let you hurt those women.”
Dani lunged forward, depressing the button on the Captor and flinging her arm out in front of her to get the canister as close to Stokes’ face as possible.
He instinctively flinched, bringing a hand up to his face.
The wind blew the stream of liquid away before it got anywhere near him.
Dani followed up with a downward blow of the torch across his arm, hoping to make him drop the shotgun.
He didn’t. Instead, he pulled the trigger.
The blast didn’t sound loud at all, which surprised Dani. She would barely have known the weapon had been discharged at all if not for the white-hot pain she suddenly felt on her right side. She didn’t dare look down to see what the damage was; while she was still able, she had to stop Stokes.
She whipped her arm up at his face, as if slapping him with the back of her hand. But it was steel, not flesh that contacted the bridge of his nose. The torch slammed into his face and sent him reeling, his hands going to his bloody nose.
He dropped the shotgun in the snow.
Dani stepped over it. She didn’t have time to stop and pick it up. She didn’t know how much time she had before she lost consciousness. Black dots swum in her vision and her legs felt unsteady.
She reached Stokes, who was leaning forward and trying to control his bleeding nose. Dani brought the torch down hard onto the base of his skull. He let out a whuff sound and collapsed onto the snow.
Dani angled away from him and now she went for the shotgun. Picking it up, she hurled it into the maelstrom. With one hand pressed against her side, she staggered to the quad bike. She felt as if she had a thousand stinging hornets in her rib cage. She knew she was about to pass out from shock, or maybe even blood loss.
Grabbing a roll of duct tape from the canvas bag, she began to make her way back to Stokes. She had to restrain him before she lost consciousness.
The world suddenly began to spin crazily around her. She dropped the tape and fell to her knees.
Don’t black out. Not yet.
Despite the amount of will she exerted to stay conscious, the black spots bloomed in her vision, blotting out everything.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Samuel woke with a groan. He had the worst headache of his life; the back of his head pulsed with angry pain. He got to his knees and surveyed the scene around him.
The detective was crumpled on the ground some distance away, a roll of duct tape lying next to her. She was already partly covered with snow and that made him wonder how long he’d been out of it.
It didn’t really matter.
The knock on his head, although painful, had brought him clarity. He now knew what he needed to do.
Climbing to his feet gingerly, he put a hand to the back of his head. Even through his glove, he could feel the swelling there. His nose also felt swollen, as if it was a tight balloon attached to his face. It had stopped bleeding, probably due to the cold temperature, and the blood had crusted over his mouth. He could taste its coppery tang on his lips.
He took a few tentative steps forward. The pain flared in his head but, despite that, he felt all right. No, better than all right; he felt good. He knew where he was going and what he had to do. His path was clear. He’d ignored it for too long, made excuses to avoid doing what had to be done, but no more.
He walked over to the detective. The snow beneath her body was tinged red but she was still breathing. He could see the front of her jacket rising and falling with each breath.
He’d known, when he saw her picture on TV, that she was pretty but she was even prettier in the flesh. She was also clever. He had no idea how she’d found him. But one thing he did know was that if one cop was here, then there were sure to be plenty more on their way.
He had to act quickly.
If all went as he planned, then it didn’t matter how many members of the Murder Force, or whatever it was called, came here. All they’d find would be a dead body and he would be long gone, on his way to be with Ruth forever.
Leaving the detective in the snow, he climbed onto the quad bike and started the engine. The machine rumbled beneath him, powerful and purposeful.
The woman and the girl in the bunker started shouting again but he ignored them. He’d wasted too much time avoiding the one thing he should be doing. Killing Tanya Ward hadn’t brought him any relief from the torment that tortured his mind; the knowledge that he’d let Ruth down by not killing their mother in time.
The woman and her daughter were distractions, sent by the Devil to mislead him, just as Tanya and the girl who’d jumped from his van had been.
He took the knife out of the canvas bag and held it in front of his face. His grandad’s knife. The knife Ruth had pressed into his hand and begged him to use. The blade reflected his bloodied face.
Stowing the knife inside his coat, he turned the quad bike around and headed towards the house. The wind was at his back, as if speeding him to his destination. Even the snow, which had blown into his face on the way to the bunker, now seemed to be dancing in the air around him, creating patterns that he couldn’t decipher but that he knew were telling him to hurry up and complete his task.
Whether she had a baby inside her or not, his mother had to die. The knife that Ruth had given to him would now be used exactly as she had asked.
Their mother would pay for what she had done to his sister and then Samuel would go to the cliff where he’d spent so much time with Ruth and end his own life with the same blade. He would be with Ruth forever.
Maybe, after it was all done, the police would find her grave behind the barn and dig her up so she could be buried properly. Maybe they’d even bury her with him in a cemetery. A shared grave. That sounded perfect.
He saw the farmhouse lights through the swirling patterns of snow and grinned.
Soon, everything would be put right.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Tony checked his watch. Dani had been gone ages. He’d thought that a woman as capable as she obviously was, would find Michael and take him down quickly. He hadn’t even considered any other possibility, and Battle’s order to keep an eye on Vera had kept him here in the house.
Now he was thinking that he should have gone with his colleague. Vera wasn’t going anywhere. She had no idea that the same Murder Force she’d seen on TV was, at this moment, headed for her front door.
And Tony wasn’t sure how many more cups of tea he could manage. He was already dying to go to the loo. “Do you mind if I use the bathroom again?” he asked.
Vera tore her eyes away from the TV and nodded. “Of course. You know where it is.”
In fact, he didn’t know where it was, since the last time he’d ventured upstairs, he’d wandered into Vera’s bedroom, but he was sure he could find it. He got up off the sofa and went upstairs, taking his phone out of his pocket. He was about to call Dani when he realised he had her phone.
He reached the landing and found the bathroom. It was indeed on the right, but Vera hadn’t mentioned that i
t was the second door on the right.
After he’d rid himself of five cups of tea and was washing his hands, he made the decision that when he got back downstairs, he was going out to find Dani. He’d find Vera’s car keys and take them with him to keep Battle happy, but he was sure she wasn’t going to budge from the sofa.
Besides, the team would be here soon, surely. Even with the bad weather, they’d had plenty of time to travel the few miles between Grantham Farm and here.
Looking at his reflection in the mirror and nodding to it as if confirming his own decision, he left the bathroom and crossed the landing. He was going to find Dani. He’d thought she’d deal with Michael Stokes no problem but he, more than anyone, should know that it was a terrible mistake to underestimate killers.
When he got to the top of the stairs, he froze for a second. The air felt colder, as if someone had opened a door to the outside. He peered down at the sofa. Vera wasn’t there.
“Shit!” She’d done a runner after all.
He vaulted down the stairs and called, “Vera? Are you there?” Opening the door that led to the hallway, he was surprised to find the front door closed. Returning to the living room, he peeked out through the window. Vera’s red Nissan Micra was still parked where it had been when he and Dani had arrived, and it was still half-buried in the snow.
Tony went into the kitchen. She’d gone out of the back door and left it open. Why? She wasn’t going to get very far on foot.
He heard an engine start and rushed outside in time to see a white van parked at the side of the house, engine running. Vera was in the passenger seat and, behind the wheel, Tony could see a young man wearing a New York Yankees baseball cap.
Vera saw Tony through her window and stared at him with worried eyes. She mouthed the word “help” before the van pulled away, ploughing through the snow and heading for the front of the house and the road that led away from the farmhouse.
“Michael!” Tony shouted. “Stop!”
But the van kept moving, driving away into the snowy night.
Tony sprinted back into the house and searched frantically for Vera’s car keys. “Where would she keep them?” he asked himself over and over as he opened drawers and cast his eyes over every surface in the kitchen and living room.
“The front door,” he told himself. “A lot of patients who suffered from mental issues could be forgetful, and one of their coping strategies was to keep items in a place where they’d be found when needed. Vera would need her keys if she was going out the front door.
He strode to the hallway and found a blue, ceramic ashtray sitting on a small table by the front door. A selection of keys lay inside, including a black fob with the Nissan logo embossed on it in silver plastic.
Tony snatched it up and returned to the living room to grab his coat. Putting it on, he left the house and ran through the snow to the half-buried car. Opening the driver’s door, he started the engine and put the heater on full blast. Closing the door again, he swept the snow from the windscreen and the headlights.
Michael had come back to the house, so did that mean Dani hadn’t found him? Or was the truth something much worse?
He dragged his phone from his pocket and called Battle.
When the DCI answered, Tony said, “We need an ambulance. I think DI Summers is down. Stokes has escaped in his van. He’s taken his mother.”
“We’ve got an ambulance with us and we should be there in a couple of minutes,” Battle said. “Which way is Stokes headed?”
Tony looked towards the road, but he couldn’t see it because of the trees. “I don’t know.” Then he remembered the photo of Michael on the cliff near Whitby Abbey. If Michael knew he’d been found out, he was probably carrying out some sort of end game. He’d most likely choose somewhere he knew well to do that.
“Whitby Abbey,” he told Battle. “He’s probably going to Whitby Abbey.”
“All right. I’ll send some of the team there while the ambulance attends DI Summers. What condition is she in?”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure where she is. I shouldn’t have let her go out there alone. I should have gone with her.”
“Calm down, Tony, we’ll be there in a minute. Just wait there.”
“No, I’m going after him.” He ended the call and got into the Micra. He had to push the driver’s seat back to fit inside. As he reversed away from the house, the snow that had been on the roof slid over the windscreen. Tony found the wipers and switched them on.
The car skidded as he spun the wheel so that he was facing the road that led through the trees. Even though he wanted to gun the engine and get the car up to speed, he applied pressure to the accelerator pedal gently. There was no point in spinning the wheels and going nowhere.
The Micra set off down the road at a steady pace. The van’s tracks were clearly visible in the headlight beam, but Tony was sure he knew where Michael was going. When the farmhouse road intersected with the main road, he realised he didn’t know the way to Whitby from here.
He dug into his pocket and retrieved his phone, stabbing at the screen until he got the GPS app. As he typed his destination into the app, he realised how much his hands were shaking. Images of the Lake Erie Ripper’s house, the front door open and waiting, flashed into his mind.
Trying to ignore them, he managed to get the destination into the phone and turned up the volume before tossing the phone onto the passenger seat. A woman’s voice told him to turn left.
He did so, and noticed that the van tracks also led in that direction.
He pressed the accelerator as much as he dared. He’d be no good to anyone if he skidded off the road and ended up in a ditch.
Peering through the windscreen, he tried to pick out the rear lights of the van that was somewhere ahead of him, but the snow was too thick to see much of anything.
If he didn’t catch up to Michael soon, he had no doubt that by the time he arrived at Whitby Abbey, both Vera and Michael would be dead.
* * *
Dani came to when she heard an engine start up somewhere nearby. Her eyes fluttered open and she winced at the pain in her side, which felt like she had white hot coals burning under her skin. As the engine noise receded, she sat upright in time to see Michael riding away into the storm.
Her heart sank as she realised he might have Teresa and Gemma with him.
Getting to her knees, she took a moment to orientate herself. She must have passed out from the shock of being shot. Her body had chosen the worst time to shut down.
The snow where she’d been lying was stained with blood and more was leaking from a ragged tear in her jacket. She picked up the roll of duct tape and wound it around herself tightly. She didn’t have time to inspect the wound in her side. She had to find out if Teresa and Gemma were still in the bunker and get them to safety.
If they weren’t, she had to get back to the farmhouse, anyway. She couldn’t stay out here; she’d die of exposure before too long.
With the duct tape cinching her ribs, she picked up her torch, got to her feet, and made her way to the open hatch. “Are you still down there?” Her voice echoed in the darkness below.
“Yes, please help us,” Teresa’s voice replied.
Gritting her teeth against the pain in her side, Dani lowered herself through the hatch and found the ladder with her feet. When she got to the bottom, she had to lean against the wall as she shone her torch around the room.
Teresa and Gemma were tied to a bed by the far wall. They both had wide-eyed expressions of fear on their faces that Dani had seen many times. At least they were fully clothed in winter gear; Stokes must have made them put their coats and hats on before taking them from their house. It wouldn’t fit his plans if they died of exposure down here in the cold and dark.
“My name’s Dani,” she told them as she pushed away from the wall and approached the bed. “I’m going to get you out of here.”
“Where is he?” Teresa asked.
“He’s
gone. He’s not here.” She thought of Sheridan at the farmhouse. She had no way of warning him that Stokes was probably on his way there. She shouldn’t have given the psychologist her phone before coming out here, but she hadn’t been thinking straight at the time. All she could think of was saving Teresa and Gemma.
Holding the torch in her mouth, she worked at the knots in the rope that secured the women to the bed. It took a while, but she finally untied them and stepped back, leaning on the wall for support again while they clambered off the bed.
“Thank you,” Teresa said, shaking her arms as if trying to get the blood flowing into them. “I didn’t think we’d ever get out of here.”
“We’re not out of the woods yet,” Dani told her. “We’re in the middle of nowhere and it’s a long way back to safety. Are you both able to walk?”
They nodded quickly. There was no way they were going to spend any longer down here than they had to.
“All right, let’s go,” Dani said, shining the torch at the ladder.
They climbed out one by one, and when they were all out and standing by the hatch, Dani pointed at the quad bike tracks in the snow. “We follow those,” she said, raising her voice so she could be heard above the wind.
Teresa and Gemma nodded their understanding and all three of them set off into the swirling storm, their eyes fixed on the tracks at their feet.
We’re going to make it, Dani told herself. Just stay conscious. Ignore the pain. With every step, a sharp stabbing pain flared in her ribs. She couldn’t remember ever being in this much agony; not even when she’d given birth to Charlotte.
After taking a couple more steps, her legs gave out and she tumbled into the snow. Teresa and Gemma knelt next to her with concern in their eyes.
“Are you all right?” Teresa asked.
“Just give me a minute,” Dani said through gritted teeth. “I’ll be okay.” Even as she said the words, she knew they weren’t true. Something inside her was broken; probably one or two of her ribs.
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