Fifty Fifty (Detective Harriet Blue #2)(77)

‘Really?’ Bella sneered. ‘You’re really going to die for these idiots?’ She looked at Kash, incredulous. ‘She can’t be serious.’

‘Harry,’ Kash said. ‘Just wait. Wait.’

‘The bomb might be anywhere,’ I told him. ‘It might be under Mary Skinner’s house. She’s in there now with those kids. It might be out there,’ I looked at the people beyond the windows, huddled together, just as Bella had known they would. ‘I can’t. I can’t risk it.’

‘You don’t even know these people,’ Bella murmured, her eyes pleading with me. Begging me to prove her right. To prove that, like the people of Last Chance, I was only out to protect myself. ‘Think about everything you have to lose. Think about your brother.’ There was a smile dancing at the corners of her mouth. This was what she had wanted. A hero laid bare before the undeserving mob. Surely I’d save myself. Surely I was selfish, just like the rest of them.

‘I have a lot to lose.’ I nodded at the girl who would be my killer. I thought about Sam and the tears threatened. ‘But I didn’t take this job to protect myself.’

It was the only way I could think to say it. That being a police officer was the one thing about myself that I thought was worthy. From the moment I’d been born, I’d been a problem. An inconvenience. A failure. A burden to be shifted from place to place, only for as long as I avoided causing unacceptable levels of trouble. When I became a cop that feeling went away. Being a cop was my purpose, my penance.

‘I’m sorry,’ I told Kash.

I pushed the button a second time and heard the phone beep.





Chapter 124


‘YOU … YOU’RE NOT partners?’ Whitt said. He could hardly talk. The words seemed stuck on the tip of his tongue. The gun in his hand was trembling as excitement coursed through him. A strange, electric joy he knew he had to contain. ‘You framed him. You framed Sam Blue.’

‘Yes.’ Regan nodded, his hands out by his sides, bracing. It seemed he was ready to take the bullet Whitt was threatening him with. ‘I framed him. Sam is innocent.’

Why? Whitt wanted to cry out. But no, he could get the story later. ‘Put your hands on your head. You’re coming with me.’ Right now, Whitt needed to take this man into custody.

He couldn’t believe he’d finally stumbled onto the solution to it all. Here, right before him, stood Sam’s freedom. Harry’s redemption. Justice for Tox. Whitt felt giddy, off balance. He steeled himself. This was it. He was going to end it all. Save everyone.

‘Put your hands on your head,’ he repeated, stepping forwards.

Regan had been waiting for the approach. He reached up, and in a movement so fast that Whitt barely followed it, he lifted the loop of the rope hanging by his side off of a hook on the wall.

Whitt heard a whizzing noise above him. The clunk of the kayak smashing the top of his skull was almost drowned out by the sound of the gun going off in his hand.





Chapter 125


THE SOUND OF the beep seemed to echo, to stretch on forever. I found my eyes were squeezed shut, my lips drawn back and teeth bared. I listened for the whump sound, expecting pain. But all I heard was the thumping of my heartbeat in my ears, the cracking of my teeth as they ground together. I opened my eyes. A long, low howl escaped my lips as the air rushed out of my lungs. Relief and terror intermingled in one hard, hot knot in my stomach.

By sheer automation, my limbs working at a will of their own, I pushed the button again. And again. The people around me were realising what was happening, but I wasn’t. All I knew was that I should have been dead and was not. No further thoughts would come. My thumb kept plunging down and the phone kept beeping, even as everyone in the room leapt into action.

The people rose to their feet all at once, as though spurred by a starter’s gun, making for the doors. Kash threw himself at Bella, who was staggering backwards, knowing he was coming, lifting her phone, the one connected to a bomb somewhere nearby. Her thumb coming down.

Kash grabbed her ankle with one hand and yanked her off her feet. The phone crashed and slid on the boards of the stage away from me. I dropped onto the floor, trying to shift forwards on my knees towards it. I had to get it before she did.

I heard Kash and Bella struggling on the ground before the stage, her squeal of rage.

‘Get off me!’ she roared. ‘Get off me!’

I lost my balance. Fell on my chest. The duct tape around my wrists seemed impossibly tighter. My phone had failed. There was no way we would be so lucky with Bella’s. If she got a hold of it, she would detonate the bomb hidden in the town. I was only an arm’s length away from the device lying on its side near the back of the stage. I heard Kash cry out. He’d lost his grip on her. The stage shuddered as Bella ran over the top of me, her hands reaching for the phone.

I saw, as if in slow motion, her fingers lifting it from the ground.

I squeezed my eyes shut as the sound of the blast rang through my skull.





Chapter 126


THE GUN SLID out of Whitt’s hands as he hit the floor of the boatshed, the weight of the kayak that had been slung across the ceiling knocking him into the ground like a nail bent beneath an enormous hammer. The gunshot took Regan in the shoulder, spinning him backwards. Whitt looked up in time to see the man fall, his boots slipping on the wet pier.