Fifty Fifty (Detective Harriet Blue #2)(46)

She heard him groan as he crouched.

Yes, Caitlyn thought. A little closer now.

Hidden between her chest and the ground, Caitlyn clutched the chunky hexagonal fixture at the end of the long, thin steel rod she had extracted from one of the old beer kegs. The weapon was blunt, rusty, but it was all she had. She balled her fist around the handle as she felt his breath on the back of her neck.





Chapter 64


‘OH MY GOD,’ I stammered, reading the note in Zac’s hand. He pointed desperately to the back seat. I stepped sideways and looked in. There were three huge propane gas bottles sitting like round white passengers strapped into the seatbelts. I put my hands on the glass and Zac put his on the other side, staring into my eyes, terror making his whole body shake.

‘I didn’t see the note until I got into the car!’ he screamed. ‘I didn’t see the gas bottles!’

‘I know,’ I shouted. ‘I know. It’s OK. It’s OK.’

I looked to my partners. Snale was standing well back, her hands over her mouth. Kash was circling the car, looking in the windows. He dropped to the ground in front of the engine and examined the underside of the car. Both were panting like me, the adrenaline rushing so fast through my veins I could hardly think. My mind split into fragments, thoughts racing in different directions. Three or four times the ludicrous impulse jabbed at me to just open the door and pull the kid out.

‘ Don’t panic!’ I called, unable to keep the fear out of my own voice. My mind was begging me now to get away from the car. There was no telling when it would explode, what might cause it to go off. I stopped touching the windows. ‘Just. Just, uh. Oh God! Just don’t panic!’

I looked at Kash, and the expression on his face didn’t settle me. The back of his hand was against his mouth like he might be sick. He came to the driver’s window, his steps shaky, uneven.

‘What happened when you got in?’ he shouted.

‘I heard a click when I sat down,’ Zac called, his voice muffled by the glass. ‘Like a, like a, a sound like things snapping into place!’

‘Can you hear anything now? Like a ticking or a whirring? Anything?’

‘I don’t know! I’m scared! Don’t leave me here! Please!’

The boy burst into tears. On the front passenger seat beside him I could see the black plastic and duct-taped package. He’d tried to sneak out with the gold. Tried to take off, into the glorious sunrise, a ridiculous bid for a new life that could cost him his current one.

I backed up a couple of steps with Kash, my hands gripping my hair.

‘What is it?’

‘It could be a number of things.’ He licked his sweaty upper lip. ‘We know from the bomb on the hillside that the killer’s new at this. So I’m leaning away from complex chemical-reaction devices. It’s probably a circuit-breaker. Mercury tilt-switch, maybe.’

‘What? What the fuck? How do we disarm it?’

‘ I need to know more about it,’ he said. The big man before me was trembling gently all over, but his face was hard with focus. ‘It might be connected to the seat. It might be connected to the doors.’

‘How much time do we have?’

‘There’s no telling. We need to find out if there’s a timer and what kind.’

‘You figure that out,’ I said. ‘I’m going to do a quick lap around the immediate area. This is a spectacle. There’s no way the killer would miss this.’

I dashed towards the house, wincing as I heard Zac call out after me.

‘Don’t leave me!’ he screamed. ‘I don’t want to die!’





Chapter 65


CAITLYN ROLLED, USING the momentum to push herself up, her shoulder, arm, hand shooting upwards, the metal rod flashing out. There was less resistance than she anticipated. The end of the rod went straight into his eye socket, seemed to shudder as it cleaved through bone and came to rest in his brain.

She got up and staggered back as the man groaned and flopped away from her, limp as a fish. He lay there on his back, the rod sticking grotesquely from his head, bloodless, his mouth agape. Caitlyn shivered, her eyes darting over his ragged clothes and filthy boots, the long thin tendrils of grey and brown hair running from the sides of his otherwise bald scalp.

A homeless man. One of the people who must have come into the hotel and left the trash she’d seen in the hall. She could hear that it was raining hard, now that the door to her prison room was open.

She stumbled, trying not to gag, her stomach rebelling against the sensation now cemented in her memory of the rod going up, the breath coming out of her victim. Fighting her revulsion, there was a white-hot excitement pulsing through her at the sight of the dark gaping doorway. She could feel sobs pushing their way up her throat but couldn’t hear them. Her ears were ringing. It seemed an age before her hand finally reached the doorframe and she looked down the long hall.

He was there.

Eyes fixed on the unlocked door, flicking now to her face.

Caitlyn’s captor marched towards her.





Chapter 66


I DIDN’T WANT to leave Zac. But I knew if I could find the killer, I could force him to tell us how to disarm the bomb. My teeth were gritted as I bolted into the house and grabbed my gun, Snale running after me with the diary from the kitchen table. The rage rippling up through my throat was almost a growl. I was going to find this sick fuck and make him reverse the trap he’d put the child in. If I had to beat him to within an inch of his life to make that happen, I would do it.