Harlan Coben - Long Lost

So now what?

Stay calm. Wait for Win. He was good at this stuff.

“Payback is a bitch, don’t you think?”

The refined accent, the calm tone. I flashed back to Mario and those damn holes, the unfathomable pain while hearing that damn refined accent. How long had that gone on? How long had Mario had to endure the pain? Did he welcome death in the end, or fight it?

Sirens crackled in the distance. The police heading to Mario’s maybe.

I don’t wear a watch anymore, so I checked the time on my cell phone. If Win was accurate-and he usually was-he was still three minutes from arriving. What to do here?

My gun.

I wondered if the blonde had seen it. I doubt it. As Win has pointed out, firearms are rare in the UK. Whoever was inside that house would probably figure I would be unarmed. Hard as it was, I put the gun away, back in my leg holster.

Three minutes.

My cell phone rang. The caller ID showed me that it was Terese’s phone again. I said a tentative hello.

“We know you are outside,” the refined voice said. “You have ten seconds to walk through that door with your hands up or I shoot one of these fine ladies in the head. One, two. .”

“I’m coming.”

“Three, four. .”

No choice. I jumped up from my crouch and sprinted to the door.

“Five, six, seven. .”

“Don’t hurt them, I’m almost there.”

Don’t hurt them. Duh. But what else was there to say?

I turned the knob. It was unlocked. The door opened. I stepped inside.

The refined voice: “I said, hands up.”

I put my hands high in the air. The man in the mug shot stood across the room from me. He had white tape across his face. His eyes were the black you get from a broken nose. I would have taken some satisfaction in that, but for one thing, he had a gun in his hand. For another, Terese and Karen were on their knees in front of him, hands behind their backs, facing me. They both looked relatively unharmed.

I glanced left and right. Two more men, both with guns trained on my head.

No sign of the blond girl.

I stayed perfectly still, hands up, trying to look as nonthreatening as possible. Win had to be close by now. Another minute or two. I needed to stall. I made eye contact with the man I’d fought with in Paris. I kept my tone even, controlled.

“Look, let’s talk, okay? There’s no reason-”

He put the gun against the back of Karen Tower’s head, smiled at me, and pulled the trigger.

There was a deafening sound, a small spurt of red, absolute stillness; a moment of suspended animation followed, and then Karen’s body dropped to the floor like a marionette with her strings cut. Terese screamed. Maybe I screamed too.

The man began to swing the gun toward Terese.

OhmyGodohmyGodohmyGod. .

“No!”

Instinct took over and it was a mantra: Save Terese. I dived, literally as though I were in a pool, toward them. Bullets from the two guys on my left and right rang out, but they had made the common mistake of covering me by pointing their guns at my head. Their aim ended up being too high. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Terese rolling away as he started training the gun on her.

Had to move faster.

I was trying to do several things at once: keep low, avoid bullets, get across the room, pull the gun from my leg holster, kill the bastard. I was closing the gap. Zigzagging would have been the preferred route here, but there was no time. The mantra kept ringing in my head: Save Terese. I had to get to him before he pulled the trigger again.

I screamed louder, not out of fear or pain, but to draw his attention, to make him at least hesitate or turn toward me-anything to divert, for even a half second, his goal of shooting Terese.

I was getting closer.

Time was doing the in ’n’ out thing. Probably a second, maybe two, had passed since Karen’s execution. That was all. And now, with no time to think or plan, I was nearly on him.

But I was going to be too late. I could see that now. I reached out, as if I could cover the distance that way. I couldn’t. I was still too far away.

He pulled the trigger again.

Another shot rang out. Terese went down.

My scream turned into a guttural cry of anguish. A hand reached into my chest and crushed my heart. I kept moving forward, even as he turned the gun toward me. Fear was gone-I moved on pure, instinctive hatred. The gun was almost pointed in my direction, almost on me, when I ducked low and slammed into his waist. He fired off another bullet, but it went wild.

I drove him hard toward the wall, sweeping him off his feet. He swung the butt of the gun down on my back. In some other world at some other time, it might have hurt, but right now, the blow had all the impact of a mosquito bite. I was beyond pain, beyond caring. We landed hard. I let him go, scooting away, trying to get a little distance so I could go for the weapon in my ankle holster.

That was a mistake.

I was so consumed with pulling out my gun, with killing the bastard, that I nearly forgot that there were two other armed adversaries in the room. The man who’d been on my right was running toward me, his weapon raised. I jumped back as he fired, but again it was too late.

The bullet hit me.

Hot pain. I could actually feel the hot metal rip into my body, stealing my breath, knocking me flat on my back. The man aimed again, but another shot rang out, striking the man in the neck with such force it nearly decapitated him. I looked past the fallen corpse, but I already knew.

Win had arrived.

The other man, the guy who’d been on my left, turned just in time to see Win spin and pull the trigger again. The big bullet hit him squarely in the face, and his head exploded. I looked over at Terese. She wasn’t moving. The man in the mug shot-the man who had shot her-started running away, slipping into the drawing room. I heard more gunfire. I heard someone yell to freeze and stop. I ignored them. Somehow I crawled toward the drawing room. Blood poured off me. I couldn’t tell exactly, but I figured the bullet had landed somewhere near my stomach.

I clawed through the opening, not even checking to see if it was safe. Move forward, I thought. Grab the bastard and kill him. He was by the window. I was in pain and maybe delirious, but I reached out and grabbed his leg. He tried to kick me off, but there was no way. I dragged him down to the ground.

We wrestled, but he was no match for my rage. I gouged his eye with my thumb, weakening him. I grabbed his windpipe and started to squeeze. He started to flail, hitting me in the face and neck. I held on.

“Freeze! Drop it!”

Voices in the distance. Commotion. I wasn’t even sure they were real. More like something from the wind. Might be something I was hallucinating. The accent sounded American. Familiar even.

I still squeezed the windpipe.

“I said, freeze! Now! Let him go!”

Surrounded. Six, eight men, maybe more. Most with guns aimed at me.

My eyes met the killer’s. There was something mocking in them. I felt my hold slacken. I don’t know if it was the command to let him go or if the bullet wound was ebbing away my strength. My hand dropped off him. The killer coughed and sputtered and then he tried to take advantage.

He brought up his gun.

Just as I hoped.

I had pulled the small gun from my leg holster. I grabbed his wrist with my left hand.

The familiar American voice: “Don’t!”

But I didn’t really care if they shot me. Still holding his wrist, I took my gun, pushed it under his chin and fired. I felt something wet and sticky hit my face. Then I dropped the gun and fell on top of his still body.

Men, a lot of them from the feel of it, tackled me. Now that I had done what I had to, my power and will to live drained away. I let them turn me and cuff me and do whatever, but there was no need for restraints. The fight was out of me. They flipped me onto my back. I swiveled my head and looked at Terese’s still body. I felt a pain as enormous as any I had ever known consume me.