A whoosh above my head. He’d started firing.
I ducked and kept running, sailing between two huge boulders. Gunshots puckered and popped against them as I passed, showering me in dust. I screamed and rolled, staggered to my feet again. The sand before me went up in rapid puffs.
He was going to nick me. Wound me just a little – take off a foot. Blast at a knee. That was his way. I knew, somehow, that he would slow me down, and he’d follow my warm blood in the sand until he found me crawling in the desert, where he could finish me at his leisure.
That was his plan, anyway. It wasn’t mine.
There was no way I was leading him back to the camp, not while he was this disconnected to reality, this dangerous. He couldn’t tell the difference between real people and his enemies in the game. There would be nothing stopping him from taking out dozens of miners as they came to my aid. No, I was alone now. I was going to escape, or he was going to kill me out here in the dark.
I shifted the enormous rifle up against my shoulder as I ran, and tried to unscrew the silencer without slowing. If we were going to battle it out, I wasn’t going to have any unsuspecting EarthSoldiers who might be wandering around in the dark getting mixed up. I needed to take Gabe down swiftly and safely. I hoped a bit of gunfire might scare away any innocent bystanders.
One of Gabe’s bullets zinged past my shoulder, scaring me into a stagger, and then a fall.
‘I’m not going to die like this,’ I promised myself, gathering up the gun.
I wrenched the silencer off the barrel and let it fly out of my hands. The weapon was like a heavy child in my arms, clumsy, almost wanting to slip from me and fall. The glow before me was getting brighter. I pointed the gun in the general direction I thought Gabe was.
My arms shook with the gunfire, and for a moment the sand before me was lit white with flashes. I sent out another volley of shots, my ears ringing with their noise. It rippled out across the flat land like thunder.
I’d make him go to ground, and then I’d think of something. If I could just get some distance between us, I hoped I might survive.
Chapter 110
GABE WATCHED AS the green figure that was Harry fired to the left of him, still running, an explosion of white streaming upwards from her gun in his night vision. She’d ditched the silencer. What the hell was she doing? Stupid woman, wasting her ammo trying to scare him into hiding.
He picked up speed, firing off a couple of shots near her now and then as he ran, just to remind her he was on her tail and wasn’t backing down. He glanced towards the mine, a distant collection of smoke lit dimly from below, the top of the massive crane just visible as a blinking eye overlooking a collection of boulders. It was a mere three kilometres to the mine. She might have made it if she’d run hard enough. But no. Not Detective Blue. She’d never bring the danger back to the base just to save her own hide. She’d die out here before that happened. He smiled as he ran. Blue was definitely worth bonus points. A decorated hero, sacrificing herself for her people? She was going to be a good kill.
His smile disappeared as the lights appeared on the hill.
Chapter 111
IT WAS RICHIE and his crew. Gabe snarled, slowed to a stop. Harry’s gunfire had piqued their curiosity rather than driving them away. They’d jumped in the car, and were coming for her. He glanced at the stars. Yes, they were just north of their camp. The young men must have been driving back from Perth after their arrests.
The Soldier almost laughed. Stupid girl. Gabe had known Harry would be his biggest challenge, and she was living up to his expectations. Just when he thought she was sacrificing herself, making his mission easier, she threw hazards in his way. Her death was going to be almost too much for him to bear – a tragic but honourable end to a worthy adversary.
Gabe would have to slow her while he dealt with the new players. He aimed carefully at the graceful deer galloping across the horizon. She was waving her arms frantically, trying to warn the men away. He fired, and watched her fall, heard her scream carried towards him on the wind.
Richie’s headlights swung around to Harry, a hundred metres out. She stumbled to her feet, dropped the massive gun, knew that slowing her momentum and going back for it was too dangerous. Gabe gave a few pot shots to confirm her suspicions, and watched her sprint headlong for the car.
‘Don’t stop!’ she was screaming, waving her arms. ‘Don’t stop!’
The men in the car didn’t think she was waving them away. They saw the blood, and thought she was beckoning them.
Gabe stopped running as the car came to a halt, and let his gun spray into the vehicle.
Chapter 112
I HURLED MYSELF to the ground behind the four-wheel drive, hardly coming to a stop, the inertia of my run making me roll and skid on the gravel. The windows and tyres exploded as bullets hammered into the car, and I heard the men inside screaming, throwing themselves at the doors. Between the hammering rounds, their voices came to me. I tucked my body into a tight ball, my hands around my head, listening.
‘What the fu– . . . What the fuck!’
‘Go! Richie! Drive, man, drive!’
All of them ducked as the gunshots came again. I worked my shaking hands down the back of my right arm, feeling the damage done by the bullet that had whizzed behind me. It had blasted into the back of my bicep, taking a fist-sized piece of meat with it. I fancied I could feel bone, and when that thought took root in my frantic brain the retching started. I gagged and tried to breathe, wiping my blood-soaked hands on my shirt.
When the gunfire stopped, the men in the car were silent.
I got up and yanked open the driver’s side door. Richie slumped out of the car, hitting the ground with a thud.
‘Oh fuck,’ he groaned. He didn’t seem to have been hit, but the terror had paralysed him. I shoved him flat against the sand.
‘Play dead, idiot,’ I said, trying with all of my might to shove the driver’s seat back. I grabbed the gun hidden there and fell on the ground. I could hear footsteps on the rocks. One of the men in the car sent up a pitiful wail.
Chapter 113
GABE APPROACHED THE car and looked in at the bloody, tangled mess of men. The wounds were superficial – a finger taken off here and a chunk of flesh missing there – but they’d all flopped onto each other, numbed with fear, the eyes of the closest man wide and staring at the back of the seat in front of him. Gabe had seen this reaction in plenty of massacres he’d participated in. People fight, or they go limp. He lifted the rifle and pointed it at the nearest young man’s face, wondering if the barrel inches from his cheek would rouse him. He could smell piss. Someone had lost all control of their faculties.
‘Pathetic,’ he said. He wandered around the side of the car and looked at the blood there, great pools of it from the wound he’d given Harry on the run. Richie himself was there, lying on his stomach, his head turned away towards the ridge. He looked dead. Gabe followed the marks and blood in the sand and saw the very tip of one of Harry’s boots poking out from behind the right front tyre of the vehicle. She must have been lying on her back. He felt disappointment sweep through him.
Gabe reloaded his rifle and slammed the magazine shut.
‘Get up, Harry,’ he said. ‘Get to your feet and face me.’
Chapter 114
I WALKED AROUND the back of the four-wheel drive, watching Gabe as he took in the sight of Richie sprawled on the ground, the blood I’d left there congealing in the sand. I closed my eyes and wondered if he was going to shoot Richie. At this range, there’d be no surviving it. Was it a good enough performance? I heard the magazine sliding back into place with a sickening snap. He’d spotted my boot at the front of the car. Richie was safe.
‘Get up, Harry,’ Gabe said. ‘Get to your feet and face me.’
I stumbled forward in my remaining boot, rising behind the man I had trusted, the man I had slept beside, who had been my one and only consolation in this dark and terrible desert. I lifte
d the huge Smith & Wesson revolver and pointed it at his head.
‘Hey, SergeantKill,’ I said, watching him stiffen at the sound of my voice. I waited, and when he’d turned enough to catch my eye, I forced a tired smile.
‘Game over.’
I shot him dead.
Chapter 115
I LOOKED DOWN at my feet propped against the old leather padded footrest behind the front row of the gallery. I’d had to borrow the black patent heels from my neighbour, as I didn’t own any. The pointed tip of the shoes was crushing my pinkie toes. Why did women do this to themselves?
I looked up, glanced around, and met a hundred sets of eyes all staring back at me. Better to just focus on the shoes, Harry, I told myself. Forget about the packed courtroom. The media murmuring and whispering in their dozens on the mezzanine level like a collection of crows. The victims’ families and friends cuddling and sobbing on the other side of the gallery, now and then throwing hateful glances at me. The gawkers – law students and retirees with nothing better to do – filling up the uppermost level, standing-room only for the hungry public.
I’d never been as physically and emotionally uncomfortable as I was now. Not even out there in the desert, where the sweat rolled constantly and the sun sheared off every surface into my eyes, where my only allies were men I couldn’t trust. My outfit had been a poor choice. I’d wanted to look professional, so I’d abandoned my usual jeans and T-shirt for a pencil skirt and sleeveless blouse, completely forgetting about the fresh red scars that littered my right upper arm like lightning strikes.
Yes, yes, this is where a piece of my bicep went missing, and was replaced by a chunk of my calf. It’s nicely shaped, yes, but it’s the wrong colour. Yes, it still hurts. It has only been five weeks. No, my partner wasn’t so lucky.
I rubbed my scars self-consciously and waited for my brother to arrive. The old desire to cry was still there, but since returning to the city I’d not yet found the right moment to give in to it. Maybe now was the time, here in the court, right in front of a pair of gawkers who had been murmuring too loudly about me from the moment I arrived.
‘What the hell was she doing out there, anyway?’
‘Getting an incredible tan, by the looks of it.’
‘Do you think she knew about the brother?’
‘Pfft. You serious? How could she not know?’
There was a tapping sound, and the courtroom rose as one, shuffling feet and adjusting skirts and flipping back freshly flat-ironed hair. The heavy, brooding judge walked into the court and climbed the stairs behind his bench. No one spoke, not until a second door opened at the side of the room and a great hulking guard brought my brother into the court.
He was dressed in the bottle-green tracksuit of Silverwater Remand Centre, and he looked tired. His eyes caught mine, and for a second he seemed not to recognise me.
Before I knew what I was doing I’d rushed along the pew, almost knocking over the only other person who’d dared to sit in the same row as me, and flung myself at my chained and hunched brother. He smelled the same. After all this time, he smelled the same.
‘Sam, Sam, Sam, Sam,’ I gasped, squeezed him, crushed him to me.
‘Oh my God, Harry,’ he said. ‘Harry, I didn’t do this.’
I pulled him away from me, held his face in my hands. The guard was flapping at me, wanting to pull me off but not wanting to manhandle me in front of the hundreds in attendance.
‘But you –’ I fought for breath, locked onto my brother’s eyes. ‘The papers said you confe–’
‘I didn’t do this,’ Sam told me, reaching for me with the hands chained at his belt.
The audience thrummed with excited gasps and murmurs. I turned and pushed my way through the crowd at the doors and ran out into the hall. I couldn’t breathe. I grabbed at the collar of my stupid blouse, the bra that seemed wire-tight around my ribcage.
‘I can’t do this,’ I gasped, trying to get air down into my lungs, trying to keep myself upright. I put my hands against the cold sandstone wall nearest me, tried to get a grip on reality. ‘I can’t. I can’t. I ca–’
‘Harry?’ a voice said.
I turned.
Edward Whittacker was standing there watching me. His left shoulder was still immobilised, strapped up in a huge dark-blue sling to protect the muscles and bone that had been shattered by the bullet that entered his back. The last time I’d seen my partner he was still unable to walk, his first week in hospital filled with drugs and pain. I’d left him in Perth, a wounded creature confined to a hospital, to face my family battle in Sydney alone.
‘Oh.’ I wiped my eyes desperately. ‘Shit! Edward, what . . . what . . .’
‘I’m sorry I’m late.’ He glanced at the door beside us. ‘Have they started yet?’
I walked towards him, and though we’d never hugged each other, his good arm seemed to know what to do. It rose and enveloped me as I sank into him. I heard his surprised exhalation above me as I buried my face in his hard, warm chest.
There in the dark of his shirt, my face hidden from the terrible world, it seemed safe, finally, to cry.
OUT NOW IN
JAMES PATTERSON’S BOOKSHOTS SERIES
The prequel story to Never Never.
A beautiful young woman is found murdered on a river bank, and Detective Harriet Blue is convinced she’s the next victim of the worst serial killer Sydney has seen in decades.
But the more Harriet learns, the more she realises this murder is not what she first thought.
And her own life might be tangled up in the case.
BOOKSHOTS
Short, fast-paced, high-impact stories by James Patterson.
Impossible to stop reading. All killer. No filler.
PROLOGUE
TWENTY YEARS FROM NOW
ONE
VATICAN CITY
THE STORY HAD begun deep inside the Vatican, had leaked out into the city of Rome, and within days had whipped around the globe with the momentum of a biblical prophecy. If true, it would transform not only the Roman Catholic Church but all of Christianity, and possibly history.
Today was Easter Sunday. The sun was bright, almost blinding, as it glanced off the ancient and sacred buildings of Vatican City.
A tall, dark-haired man stood between towering statues on the colonnade, the overlook above St. Peter’s Square. He wore Ray-Bans under the bill of his cap, a casual blue jacket, a denim shirt, workaday jeans, and combat boots. The press corps milled and chatted behind him, but writer Zachary Graham was transfixed by the hundreds of thousands of people packed together in the square below like one enormous single-cell organism.
The sight both moved him and made him sick with worry. Terrifying, unprecedented events were happening around the world: famines and floods and violent weather patterns, compounded by wars and other untethered forms of human destruction.
The New York Times had flown Graham to Rome to cover Easter in the Vatican and what might be the last days in the life of an aging Pope Gregory XVII. The pope was a kind and pious man, beloved everywhere, but since Graham’s arrival in Rome four days ago, he had seen the sadness over the pope’s imminent passing and, not long after, his death eclipsed by a provocative rumor, which if true would be not just the turning point in one of the world’s great religions and the explosion of a media bomb, but, to Zachary Graham, a deeply personal event.
Graham had been born in Minnesota forty-five years before. He was the eldest son of a middle school teacher and a Baptist minister. He was no fan of organized religion, but he was fair-minded. He was a brilliant writer, highly respected by his peers, and clearly the right person for this job—which was why the Times, still the preeminent news machine of the twenty-first century, had sent him.
Now, as he stood in the shadows of Bernini’s massive statuary, watching the crowd show signs of panic, Graham knew it was time to go to ground.
He walked twenty yards along the overlook, stopping at the small, cagelike lift.
Other reporters followed him, cramming themselves into the rickety elevator. The doors screeched shut. Graham pressed the Down button, and the car jiggled and lurched toward the plaza below.
From there, Graham walked north through the colonnade, the harsh light throwing contrasting blocks of sharp shadow onto the worn stones. Moving quickly, he exited through the shifting crowd in St. Peter’s Square and headed toward an alley off Via della Conciliazione, where the mobile production trucks were behind barricades, tightly parked in a bumper-to-bumper scrum.
Graham flashed his credentials to get through security, then opened one of the rear doors of a white panel van.
He peered over a sound man’s shoulder at the large monitor and read so many expressions on the faces in the crowd: fear, desperation, and fervent hope that the new pope would bring much-needed change.
From the election of the very first “vicar of Christ” to the current Holy See, the pope had always been God’s representative on earth—a man. Could it be true that Gregory’s successor would be a woman? The provocative, unsettling story that had once been just a whisper was taking on more certainty by the moment: the next pope would be an American lay priest by the name of Brigid Fitzgerald.
The possibility of a woman pope was extraordinary, astounding, and if it happened, the consequences would be profound.
Zachary Graham had done his homework.
Legend has it that in the year AD 855, a woman who had disguised herself as a man was elected pope. Three years later, while in a processional through Rome, this pope had gone into labor and given birth. She was immediately tied to the tail of a horse, dragged through the streets to her death. Her baby was also murdered, and the two of them were buried beneath the street where they died.