History repeating.
The last time a crazed knifeman attacked her, she’d almost lost a hand. She’d definitely lost a fiancé and a career, and an innocent clerk had lost his life. And all because fear and indecision made her freeze a fraction too long before she had used her gun. The same could be said now, because she froze again, and her arm never managed to get close to deflecting the killing blow. But that was all for the best. She froze, only because she’d caught Torrance’s dim reflection in the brushed-steel door, halting her instinct to turn and face her attacker. If she had done, the meat cleaver would’ve found the soft skin of her throat and that would have been the end of Teresa Grey.
Coming out of her initial jolt of terror, she sprawled. The cleaver whipped through the space vacated by her skull and slammed into the doorframe. She scrambled for her life, kicking and pushing, her heels against the thigh of the dead man, and she launched herself out from under Jacky Torrance as he wrenched the blade loose with a snarl of rage. She rolled on her back, and as he came at her for a second cut, she booted his knee out from under him. Torrance fell on the corpse, his legs entangling with it. He fought to free himself, then stood, but already Tess had squirmed away. She was crushed up against a cabinet, the Uzi digging painfully in her side, staring as he aimed the cleaver at her. Her right hand was wedged under her thigh, and she couldn’t move in time to avoid another cut.
‘We should’ve taken you into the swamp and gutted you instead!’ Torrance spat. In hindsight, Crawford Wynne was killed for nothing. What could Wynne say now that could prove troublesome for Sower, when the maniac had already damned himself? Torrance had apparently come to the same conclusion, and wanted to direct his frustration on a deserving target.
‘You should have stayed in Louisiana,’ Tess countered, giving him something to think about while she relaxed her leg, freeing her arm. ‘You came back here for this? To be part of a psychopath’s last desperate attempt at notoriety? Look at you, Jacky! Is it worth dying for Albert fucking Sower?’
Torrance blinked. He looked down, following the nod she’d aimed at his torso. His shirt was bright red, sopping wet. Alex had hit him with those opening rounds. He pressed his left palm against the hole in his chest, grimacing as if noticing the horrific wound for the first time. He lifted his hand, inspecting it. ‘I’m not dying,’ he said, but he was unsure. Something wormed behind his features, a shiver of understanding. Now conscious of his mortality and how fleeting it had become, his face darkened, as he raged against the inevitable. ‘You did this to me! You shot me! But I’m not the one who’s going to die. You are!’
With a howl he lurched at her, the cleaver rising high overhead as he built momentum for a savage chop.
Tess didn’t try to escape. Calmly she drew the revolver from under her thigh. ‘Don’t do it, Jacky!’
Torrance saw the gun and realized how wrong he was. But what could he do? He brought down the cleaver in a whooshing arc. Tess shot him in the forehead. His head snapped back, and his last breath was expelled heavenward, though Tess doubted he’d be welcomed there. Torrance’s knees folded, and he collapsed down on his butt before flopping sideways. The meat cleaver clattered harmlessly against the tiles.
She couldn’t lower the gun. Her forearm was seized tight, the flexor muscles employed to pull the trigger contracting so violently that she experienced physical pain. In the next instant she began to shake, and then it was the exact opposite. Her arm went numb, nerveless, and it flopped by her side. A moan escaped her, a brittle sound of regret. It would be a long time before she’d be able to shake the image of Torrance’s brains exploding from the back of his skull. No! God damn it! He deserved exactly what he’d got. No remorse, no regret, she told herself. You’re alive, Tess, and if that bastard had his way it would’ve been your brains on the floor.
Get up!
Get up, because Po needs you.
She forced herself to stand. She also forced herself to look at the damage she’d done to Torrance. Her arm hung uselessly at her side. No, it was psychology at play. Her arm was fine, and it could support the weight of the revolver. To prove the point, she brought up the gun. It was such a simple task. The adrenalin flooding her body caused the only trembling she was aware of now.
As a child, she’d been in her grandfather’s workshop, watching him as he stripped down an outboard motor. He stood, wiping fuel from a spark plug with a rag. Spotting a spider crawling on the bench towards her, she’d shrieked and jumped a foot in the air. Smiling, her grandfather had walked over, held out his finger and allowed the harmless arachnid to climb aboard. He’d offered the spider to Tess to pet, and she’d almost curled up and died on the spot. ‘Tess,’ he’d said in that wise way he had, ‘there’s only one way I know of getting past fear. If you’re afraid of what’s waiting in the cave, walk inside and laugh in its face.’ Hell, her grandfather’s aversion therapy had been right. She should’ve shot a murderous bastard in the forehead months ago! That thought almost made her laugh, but she fought against the impulse. If she began laughing, she might not be able to stop.
Instead she moved away, adjusting the Uzi on its sling so it didn’t bump annoyingly against her ribs. It was only as she stepped over the man with the slashed throat, pushing through the door he’d blocked, that she realized that something had changed.
Everything had fallen silent.
It was probably a result of her shooting Torrance. The noise exploding from within the building, and perhaps even his yelling beforehand, had told the others that another of their enemies had gained entrance to the Macedon. She imagined them taking cover, waiting to ambush her, or anyone else stupid enough to go back through the way she’d come. Thankfully there was nobody lurking in the corridor she had entered. The lights were off, but there was enough of a glow from a fire-exit sign to see by. She passed the door, noting a plastic security tag on the push bar hadn’t been disturbed. No one had left via that route. She paused at the end of the passage, with two choices of direction. One went to the right, back towards the dining area, and the other allowed entry through a door to a set of stairs. The stairwell was positioned oddly, and she could only assume it gave access to space above the jutting prow of the building. Going up there might be tantamount to suicide, because hemming herself in the confined stairwell would give even a poor shot a sitting target. She was about to turn away, but a smear of blood on the doorframe changed her mind. Earlier she’d decided that the blood couldn’t have been Po’s, but now? She’d found neither hide nor hair of her friend, and by the relative silence in the kitchen and dining areas she doubted he was in either location. She pressed the door open with her fingertips, poked her head into the stairwell. From above came the thump and rumble of feet. Tess went up.
The stairs ended on a short triangular landing. At the narrowest point small windows allowed a view across Smuggler’s Cove. Tess got a sense of the surging ocean outside, but there was time for nothing else. She rapidly moved around the landing and found another set of doors. Out of sight and reach of the public, they were cheap and flimsy. One carried a brand-new hole, where it appeared somebody had kicked their way through. Po, she assumed, chasing someone. His quarry had to be Welshy, because she hadn’t come across the man yet, dead or alive. After Po broke the neck of the man outside, had he then pursued Welshy, and the man had sought escape on the upper floor? There had to be another way down, probably at the far end of the building. She contemplated whether to go on, because the earlier ruckus had dissipated. Had the fight returned to the ground floor? Yes, she was probably wasting time up here.
A screech tore through the upper floor.
It wasn’t the scream of a man. Not of pain or anger, or even fury. It was the voice of a woman, one teetering on the edge of insanity.
Emma Clancy!
It could be nobody else.
Tess had given up on finding Emma alive, and she’d been wrong to do so. This was the woman Tess had wondered about, if she were in cahoots with Sower, using and manipulating her, but the soul-wrenching scream proved all her suspicions were not only unfounded but also ridiculous. Emma wasn’t an enemy; she was Tess’s boss, and her brother’s lover and now, more than anything, to be saved.
Without pause, Tess plunged through the broken door, and into a dimly lit attic space, which was almost the length of the building. The huge room had been used primarily for storage, and defunct fridges and freezer units made geometric shapes down one side. Spare tables and chairs were stacked along the opposite wall. Boxed items and sundry equipment had been left in random piles, some of them blocking a view of the entire attic. But she could see movement, and the commotion of earlier resumed: thuds, bumps, and rattles. And Emma Clancy screamed again. The breath caught in Tess’s throat, and it took a moment to shake off the fresh feeling of ineptitude that assailed her. Cave. Enter. Laugh. She rushed forward, holding her revolver before her, but any insane laughter was wedged beneath the lump in her throat.
Her feet drummed on the floorboards, then made a skidding, rasping noise as she stumbled to a halt, seeking a viable target.
Two figures writhed in combat, too closely wrapped up in their private battle to offer her a clear shot. One of them was Po, his black clothing now making him distinct alongside the second man, who was bizarrely dressed in a yellow slicker, and bright orange waterproof trousers and gumboots. The second man was dark-complexioned, with short, wavy black hair, flecked grey at the temples. His face was lumpy with scars – no good would come from looking into that face, it had once been described. Tess had never seen him before, had never viewed a photo of him, but instinctively knew who he was.
Albert Sower’s killer. Sower’s mutilator.
He was the one responsible for dismembering Sower’s enemies, the one who’d abducted them, who’d tortured and then violated their corpses. He was the one who’d decapitated Crawford Wynne, displayed his headless corpse like a gutted fish, gelded him, and stitched his genitals inside his mouth. He was a monster, and he was trying his hardest to kill Po.
Po was trying his best to kill him too.
Tess had witnessed fights before – too many to count – but she’d seen nothing like this outside of a choreographed battle royal. Both men were evenly matched in skill, and to Tess’s horror, evenly matched in weaponry. Both stabbed and cut with their respective blades, even as they kicked and punched, elbowed and head-butted. How could anyone withstand such maltreatment to the body? Any one of those strikes was enough to put anyone to sleep, and yet they shrugged them off and came back for more. Their knives whipped in and out, and blood dripped and spattered from their gouged arms and legs.
The fight took them from one side of the attic to the other, then back again. They went to the floor, but fought back to standing. Tess was caught, both awestruck and horrified by the extremes of violence. Only when the two staggered over a third figure, and Emma Clancy squalled in terror did Tess snap out of her trance.
Clancy was dressed in panties, but that was all. Her body was bloodied from what looked like a thousand small cuts, and her hair was tacky and adhered to her face, and some crimson-stained strands were stuck in the corner of her open mouth. Her eyes rolled wildly, and even when her gaze swept over Tess, there was no sense of recognition, only terror. The strong, intelligent, self-confident woman … reduced to a mewling child by Sower’s killer.
Tess rushed towards her, even as Po slammed an elbow into the killer’s chest and drove him back from his prey. The two combatants spilled towards the wall where the tables were stacked. They crashed among them, and the grunts and thuds told Tess their fight had taken a different direction now. She grabbed for Clancy’s arm, to haul her out of harm’s way. Clancy howled, snatching her arm out of Tess’s grip. The investigator, now reduced to a wounded thing, wrapped her arms over her head and cried.
Tess felt the rush of air behind her.
The killer’s slicker coat slapped rubbery and wet against her arm. Tess croaked, and threw herself out of his grasp, going down on top of Clancy. Clancy screeched, writhing wildly to be free of this fresh torment. Tess rolled off her, trying to bring around the gun. The fight had moved on. Briefly she watched as Po kicked at the legs of the man, and then had to swerve aside to avoid the thrust of the other’s blade. The knife caught in Po’s jacket, yanking it open, before Po stabbed at the killer’s neck and missed by a hair’s breadth. Then they were a series of juddering shadows in the corner of her eye as Tess again grabbed for Clancy.
‘Emma! Emma! Listen to me. It’s Tess. I’m here to help.’
Clancy’s fingernails went for her face.
Tess backhanded the assault away.
‘Aw, hell,’ she snapped, and with no recourse, she snagged a handful of Clancy’s bloody hair and hauled the woman to her feet. She shook Clancy’s head savagely. ‘I said listen to me! Emma. Do you understand? It’s me! Tess Grey. I’m going to get you out of here!’
For extra measure, she gave Clancy another brain-rattling yank on her hair. ‘Listen! Alex is waiting for you downstairs. Do you want to see Alex or not?’
Clancy’s eyes were rimmed with blood, but for the first time there was a glimmer of awareness in them. She mewled, but now there was a different tone. Hope?
‘It’s me. Tess! Do you recognize me, Emma?’
‘Oh God … Tess?’
‘Yes. You have to come with me. Now. C’mon, Alex is waiting.’ Tess took Clancy’s arm in hers, determined to lead her out. Clancy wouldn’t move. She tried to dig her bare heels into the floor. But Tess knew why.
Kenneth Jones – Welshy – loomed directly in front of them. The first time Tess laid eyes on him at the airport in New Orleans, he’d presented as clean cut, almost handsome with his blond hair and smooth features. Now he was a mess. His hair stood in ratty tufts, and his clothing was ripped and soiled. Worst of all, his face was slashed to the bone, a wet rag of skin hanging from his left jaw, displaying the bloody teeth inside. He champed his jaws in fury, and fresh blood pulsed down his neck, joining the sodden pool he’d already lost. He was seriously wounded, but very much alive. He must feel terrible, but it served to fuel his anger. He jammed the barrel of a gun to Tess’s forehead.
‘Drop the gun, you goddamn bitch,’ he snarled. ‘Or I’ll blow your brains all over the floor.’
Tess felt her mouth open, but no words would come. Beside her, Clancy pressed tightly to her body, burying her face in Tess’s shoulder. Tess slipped her left arm around her, even as she held her revolver out to one side, and let it drop with a clatter to the boards.
‘Kick it away,’ Welshy ordered.
Tess toed the revolver out of reach.
‘That’s better,’ Welshy said. ‘Now get over there.’ He waved his gun at the stacked tables, now knocked awry. His eyes scrunched as he checked beyond his captives, weighing the odds on the outcome of the fight raging behind them. ‘We’re going to wait this out. Doesn’t matter who wins; if it’s your man, I’m going to blow his fucking teeth out for what he did to me.’ He tapped his gun barrel against the cut in his face, then scowled at his stupidity.
So Welshy’s dishevelled state was courtesy of Po? Tess’s only regret was that Po hadn’t finished Welshy off before engaging the killer in mortal combat. Never mind. It was down to her, and it was one task she wouldn’t shirk from.
‘You don’t even get to look at my man the wrong way,’ Tess snarled.
‘Who’s going to stop me? You?’ Welshy laughed, and he couldn’t resist a gloating look in Po’s direction. His attention was off her, and that was all Tess needed.
In one move she thrust Clancy aside with her hip, even as she hauled up the Uzi that had been concealed by the woman’s naked body. There was no need to charge the weapon, or to turn off any safety catches or anything else, because the gunner had seen to all those inconveniences before Alex shot him dead. Tess was already pulling the trigger as the gun swept up, and the blistering rounds tore splinters from the floor in one instant, flesh from bones the next. Welshy performed a strange disjointed jig, before the force of the bullets ripping him apart carried him off balance and threw him flat on his back. He was dead before his skull whacked the floorboards with resounding finality.
Ignoring the dead man, Tess looked for Clancy. She was huddled a few feet away. Safe from harm. Tess swept around.
Fifteen feet away, Po and the killer had spilled apart.
They were almost as shocked by the thunderous roar of the machine gun as Welshy had been in the instant before he died. They stood, aware of the other, but watching Tess. Po had his left hand on his chest, stemming a deep cut, and another slash wept blood under his left eye. He offered the tiniest nod of appreciation at her handiwork, before shifting his attention to the killer.
The man was eyeing Tess with the strangest of expressions. It wasn’t hatred, surprise, or even respect at what she’d achieved. The look was one that sent a trickle down her spine, worming and oily. She aimed the Uzi directly at his chest.
‘Drop the knife, you sick son of a bitch!’
The killer shook his head, and an amused smile crept over his lumpy features. He pointed the knife at her. ‘I watched you after leading you to Crawford Wynne, and was tempted to take you then,’ he said, his voice heavily accented. ‘I wanted to take you deeper into the swamp with me. I would have stripped the hide from your body, hollowed out your skull and left it for the snakes to nest in.’
Po didn’t move. But he was coiled taut, ready in an instant.
‘You didn’t.’ Tess returned the killer’s smile. ‘You couldn’t, because my friend would’ve stopped you, the way he stopped you hurting Emma. You’re not going to get another chance at either of us now.’
‘I’m not?’
‘Move an inch and you get what Welshy did.’ She jabbed the muzzle of the Uzi at him for emphasis.
‘Aah, Welshy. He has served me well, and I had such high hopes for him. Such a shame about my friend.’
‘Was he your friend, though? You do know that he called you a greaseball behind your back?’ Tess waited for a reaction, but got none. ‘Where are you from? You’re Bolivian, right? Like Alberto Suarez?’
The killer didn’t reply. He didn’t have to.
‘Who is Sower to you?’ Tess demanded.
‘The man who once saved me.’ His free hand touched his scarred face, and Tess wondered if he’d been on the receiving end of similar torture to the one he’d been performing on Emma. ‘I swore my life to Alberto, and any other lives he claimed. But Alberto’s had all he will from me. Now it’s my time to take back what is mine.’
‘If he’s had all he’s getting from you, why do his bidding like this now?’
‘I don’t do Alberto’s bidding. I’ve repaid the debt I owed my brother.’ His face tightened in resolve. ‘Now I do what I choose.’
‘But in doing so, you choose to do exactly as he says? I get it. So basically you’re as crazy as he is?’ Tess waited a beat. ‘That’s good: it means you can keep each other company when you’re incarcerated in the same insane asylum.’
‘Alberto is behind bars, yes, but I won’t be caged.’
‘You will. Don’t you hear that?’
From below them there came a chorus of commands, shouted orders, and the crash and thud of a dynamic entry by the responding ESU tactical team. Tess even thought she could pinpoint Alex’s voice as he called for her and Emma with equal desperation.
‘You’re finished, asshole,’ Tess told the killer.
‘I told you. You have Alberto and can keep him. But I won’t be caged.’ He eyed her as if she was a prize on a shelf. ‘It’s my time again and I’ll take what’s mine!’
He sprang towards her, lifting his knife, as though inviting suicide by her hand.
No. His reckless attack was for another reason. He wanted a live hostage, and who better than Tess? The bastard had noted that the Uzi had locked open, the magazine now empty.
His blade was inches from her when Po crashed bodily into the killer and knocked him sideways. Again the two men spilled apart, and when Po stood it was to shield Tess with his body. His hands were empty, curled into fists.
The killer also stood. He still held his slick blade firmly in hand.
Po’s knife handle jutted from the front of his yellow coat. Before, the rain slicker had been covered in stringy wet rivulets of gore, but now a fresh river flowed down it and dripped to the floor at his feet. The killer gave a grunt, and pressed his fingers to the handle of the knife as if to pluck it out. He allowed his hand to drop away, then lifted his other hand and inspected his blade. He nodded in a last-ditch decision, then rose up, emitting a defiant shriek, and again launched himself at them.
The crack of a gun broke his war scream.
The killer crashed down, his face smacking down at Po’s feet. Po stepped back to avoid the splash of brain matter leaking from the hole in the back of the killer’s skull.
Beyond them, Emma Clancy still aimed Tess’s dropped revolver at the corpse, and the look on her face was expectancy, as if the mutilator would rise again like the unstoppable creature from a horror movie. She shuddered, the barrel wavering. Tess reached slowly and placed her hand on the barrel, meeting Emma’s tortured gaze.
‘He was going to take everything I want from me,’ she croaked.
‘He’s finished,’ Tess assured her. ‘You’re safe now, Emma. It’s over.’
Emma’s eyelids slid shut, and Tess took the gun gently from her. Then Emma fell against her, and held on. Tess returned the hug.
Behind them Po grunted something, and Tess turned to check on him. He sat down heavily on the floor, his long legs splayed. His turquoise gaze had dimmed from the familiar twinkle. He squeezed out a smile, but then his head drooped and he looked at where his hands were cupped over his belly. His hands were now ingrained with blood, and Tess’s heart hitched in her chest when she saw more bubble out from between his fingers.
‘Oh no,’ she moaned, and pulled from Emma’s embrace.
Po slumped on his side. His right hand flopped alongside him, and cupped in his palm was a pool of his blood. Tess lunged for him, dropping the gun, and going down on her knees. She ignored the dull pain in her knees; it was nothing to the sharp jab of despair jolting through her. Any niggling doubt she’d ever entertained about where his loyalties lay dissipated in a flash: he’d taken the stab meant for her and in that instant she understood how deeply he cared for her, and she did for him. ‘Po? Po!’ She grasped at him, pulling his torso over her bent knees, both hands cupping his face.
‘Got me good …’ Po’s voice was thin. She felt the strength go out of him, his weight sinking down over her thighs as she tried to prop him up. His lids slid shut, his bottom lip hanging low.
‘No, no, no.’ Tess scrabbled at his clothing, tugging at his shirt, then ripping it away to disclose a wound in his abdomen. Like the cuts on his face and chest it didn’t look too severe, being less than an inch wide, but that was the surface damage only: his innards could be sliced open. Blood pulsed out of him. He’d traded stab for stab with the killer to save her, and paid dearly for it. Emma had come over to them, but she was dazed by everything that had occurred and stood numbly, her pale face framed by her unruly blood-matted hair.
‘Emma! Emma! Do something for God’s sake!’ Tess yelled. ‘Go downstairs and find Alex. Fetch a paramedic. Now! Go before Po dies!’
Emma blinked down at them, and her mouth dropped open. She looked down at her body, as if aware of her nakedness for the first time in an age. Her skin was nicked and sliced, covered in drying gore, and vivid bruises covered her arms and thighs. She was hurt, but not dying. It was as if she abruptly became aware that she had survived. And yet her saviour might not. She nodded hard, and then turned. She screamed for Alex as she ran down the stairs.
‘Po! Stay with me,’ Tess urged, shaking him with one hand while she pressed down on his wound with the other. ‘Don’t you dare die on me. Help’s coming. Stay awake! C’mon. Let me see those beautiful twinkly eyes again.’
His eyes opened a slither, and she caught a flash of turquoise, as if looking briefly into a deep pool of tropical water. They twinkled. Tess made a noise that was part joy, part relief, and she folded over him, holding him tightly.
‘If you … keep squeezing me so hard … you’re going to have every last drop of blood outta me,’ Po croaked.
Tess reared up from him. Her eyebrows almost touched her hairline. Po looked at her for a drawn-out moment before his mouth made a little quirk at one corner. He winked, but it was an effort. Despite his blasé attitude to his mortality, he was seriously injured. But apparently his death wasn’t imminent.
‘Oh, thank God. I thought you’d died on me,’ Tess whispered.
‘Nah. That crazy man knifed me good, but not as good as I got him. I plan on sticking around a while yet.’
‘If we don’t stop this bleeding—’
Po laid a hand over hers on his wound. But it was to knit his fingers with hers. ‘I can spare a pint or two,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry, help’s coming. In the meantime, you can tell me how beautiful my twinkly eyes are again.’
‘Oh! So you heard that?’
‘I heard.’
‘Well, what can I say? They are beautiful.’
He didn’t reply, just placed his other hand on the back of her head and pulled her down to meet his lips.