‘We haven’t done anything!’ someone yelled from the back of the room. An older woman. ‘She’s crazy! Bella, don’t do this!’
‘Help!’ A young man was crying by the base of the bar, his hands wrapped around his head. ‘Please! Let us out of here!’
‘Stay calm.’ Kash was inching towards the stage. ‘Everybody just stay calm.’
‘There’s another bomb,’ Bella said, ignoring them. ‘It’s somewhere near. Maybe it’s here, in this building.’ She gestured to the audience below us. ‘Maybe it’s out there somewhere. Under someone’s house. In someone’s kitchen.’
‘Maybe it’s nowhere.’ I licked my lips. ‘And you’re lying.’
She nodded. ‘I guess you’ve got to consider that as an option. Look, trust me, it’s there. It’s the biggest one I’ve made. I used all my leftovers. All the fertiliser I ground up to make these.’ She tapped the bottle at my throat, making the liquid slosh against my windpipe. I winced, Dez’s death flashing again across the backs of my eyelids. ‘I’m going to give you a choice. You can save these people. Or you can save yourself.’
‘Harry.’ Kash’s eyes were desperate. I thought of him in the hospital in White Cliffs. His broken look. He put a hand out. ‘Don’t. Don’t do anything.’
‘I’m going to give you this mobile phone,’ Bella said. She reached around and put it into my hand. My fingers were numb. I didn’t know if I was gripping it too tightly, or not tightly enough. I imagined myself squeezing the phone wrongly, setting off the bomb at my throat before I had time to think. Bella smoothed my arm with her warm hand, stroking my bicep softly. ‘There’s only one button you need to press. The big one. Twice. I’ve programmed the number of your device into it. It’s the only number it has. Push twice, and you die.’
Bella looked at the people cowering below us, their stricken faces. This was what she’d wanted. Complete power. Complete control. This was her vengeance. They were listening to her now. And it was too late. Gloriously, hideously too late.
‘If you don’t push the button, I’ll push mine.’ She lifted another mobile phone and made it do a little dance in the air. ‘And someone else, maybe many people, will die.’
‘Harry, listen to me,’ Kash was saying. ‘You don’t have to do anything right now. We need more time. Bella, you need to give us more time. We need to talk about this.’
‘The time for talking is over,’ she said again. Bella stood and stepped back out of the blast zone. I looked at the phone in her hand. Her thumb was poised over the rubber button just below the screen, the biggest button on the phone. Her eyes searched mine. Exhilarated. ‘What are you going to do?’
I looked at her and pushed the button.
Chapter 122
WHITT STOOD IN the doorway of the boatshed, looking at the man on the pier. For a moment he tried to convince himself that the figure sitting there was a pile of ropes, a large barrel with some buoys lying beside it. Anything other than the shape of a man. It was impossible. But as he blinked his vision adjusted to the dark, and he looked at the bright outline of the shaved head, the gentle slope of the broad shoulders beneath the damp T-shirt. He was sitting with his legs crossed under him, his hands on his lap, looking at the water.
Whitt slid his mobile phone out of his pocket and looked at the screen. No reception.
‘It’s the power station,’ the man said without turning.
Whitt jolted at the sound of his voice. Around him, ropes hanging from beams shifted gently as the wind raced up the river. He took out his gun and actioned it. The man on the pier breathed in once, then out, coughed a little. He was wounded. Whitt could see that now. He was slightly crooked, favouring his right side.
‘The power station,’ the man went on, waving a hand, ‘up on the hill. It interferes with phone reception down here on the water sometimes.’
‘You’re Regan Banks,’ Whitt said. ‘Sam’s … Sam’s partner.’
Regan turned and stood. He was much bigger than Whitt. The detective couldn’t know if he was imagining or genuinely remembering it, but he saw a flash of this man in his mind coming up behind him in the car park of his apartment building. The smeared reflection of him in the stainless-steel doors of the elevator. His face was long, pointed. Expressionless. This was the man who had taken those girls. Whitt could smell it on him. The taint of dead dreams. He had none of Samuel Jacob Blue’s vitality, his nervous innocence. This was a being who snuffed out of lives.
‘We’re not partners,’ Regan said.
Chapter 123
IF I HAD to make the decision, I wanted it to be quick. Not two-pushes quick, but one-push quick, something I could do before I thought too much about the pain that was coming. Everything I would lose. The phone beeped. In my hand, I knew, the phone number for the bomb at my throat was listed on the screen, called up from the ‘Last dialled’ list. All I had to do was confirm the call. Send the electrical impulse through the machine, up to a tower, back to the receiver in the bottle at my throat. The people around me were watching, their jaws set, hands covering trembling mouths. My victims, if I wanted it so, if I deemed their lives less important than mine.
The strange thing was, I could see it. I could see me making the decision to save myself. No one is a hero in situations like this. The brain is trained to preserve the body, and as I sat there it was flooded with all the rage I needed to resist the temptation to take my own life in place of theirs. These were people who ignored the helpless in their midst, the man on the edge of their town who lived as though in exile. These were people who refused to believe that a predator walked among them, who ignored or misunderstood a desperate girl when she tried to confide in them. Nothing stays secret in places like these. In small towns, secrets are shared about, held close to hearts. This was a family. They protected their own, no matter how bad the blood.
Bella wanted to make a mark. To be remembered, the way Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris were remembered after the Columbine shooting, monsters on a rampage, cutting through young lives like butter. The way Seung-Hui Cho was remembered by every student who walked onto the Virginia Tech campus. If only one person ever remembered what Elliot Rodger did and altered their behaviour because of it, he’d have been happy with that. Bella had said that the time for talking was over. I would be her manifesto.
‘I can’t do it,’ I said. Kash was at the edge of the stage now, mere metres from me. If he came any closer, he’d be in my blast zone. ‘I have to push the button, Elliott. I have to.’
‘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.
Whitt shook off the temptation of unconsciousness and scrambled forwards, ignoring the dark shadows at the corners of his vision. He threw himself through the doorway and off the pier, into the cold, rushing water.
Regan was there, an impossibly heavy, impossibly strong monster, reaching up and encircling him in an embrace. They struggled in the thigh-high waves, Whitt’s arms and hands seeming sluggish, the blow to the head making him an easy opponent.
Regan’s hands came around his throat, and before he could utter a cry Whitt was under the water. The muddy, salty taste of it was at the back of his throat, in his lungs. He bucked and twisted, but in seconds the man had him pinned against the silty bottom. He scratched at the iron hands that held him, grabbed desperately for a rock, a branch, anything to hit him with. Whitt reached for the gunshot wound in the man’s shoulder just as the darkness began to close in again.
‘Fuck!’ Regan cried. Whitt had stuck his thumb into the hole, pushed upwards. Whitt rose out of the waves, vomited water. There were lights on the sand. He hadn’t realised how far into the water they’d been dragged. The river was sucking at them both, the water waist-high now, pulling on his tired limbs.
‘Put your hands up!’ someone screamed from the shore. ‘Put your hands up!’
‘No!’ Whitt turned, heard Regan’s gasp of surprise beside him. He put his arms out. ‘Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!’
The shore lit up with white flashes as they fired. Regan’s body jolted once, twice. He sank into the water.
Chapter 127
I LAY AS still as possible, my cheek against the floorboards, my whole body aching. Bella’s foot was by my face, her heel out of the glittery strap, the ankle tendons relaxed. I looked up and saw the phone lying in her limp hand, her thumb on the button. She hadn’t pushed it. The blast I’d heard had come from above. Higher, higher, I lifted my eyes to the second-floor railing where Officer Victoria Snale was standing with her arms hanging over the polished wooden banister. The rifle in her arms was still smoking from where it had dispensed a single shot straight down into Bella’s head.
I shifted up onto my knees, still trying to orient myself. The floor felt like it was tilting beneath me. Kash was there, taking the phone from Bella’s dead fingers and setting it aside. He turned to me, plucking at the tape around my wrists.
‘Get it off me,’ I begged. ‘Get it off.’
Someone handed him a pair of scissors and he slipped them between my sweat-soaked neck and the rolls of duct tape beneath my ear. He peeled the bomb from my throat and handed it off to someone. I could hear Vicky crying. I looked up in time to see a young police officer taking the rifle from her hands.
‘I killed her.’ Snale took in a hitching breath that came out of her in sobs. ‘I’ve never killed anyone before.’
‘It’s OK,’ the officer was saying, taking her hand as he led her down the stairs. ‘It’s all OK now.’
I sat numbly on the stage by Bella’s body and looked at the people around me slowly, uncertainly moving out of the pub, arms around shoulders, some stopping to hug just outside the doorway. In the movies, this would have been the moment for triumphant cheering. For half-humorous one-liners cracked with relief that would lead gently into the credits, the camera panning away from the town and into the night. But the dread wouldn’t lift from my shoulders. I couldn’t find the strength to move. Kash seemed to sense it and crouched beside me, putting a careful hand on the back of my neck.
‘Do you think you can stand?’ he asked.
‘I have to,’ I said, gripping on to his shoulder. He slipped an arm around me and brought me to my feet. ‘I need to get out of here.’
‘What?’ Kash said. ‘Right now?’
I nodded, let him help me to the door. Something deep inside me was telling me that all was far from OK.
Chapter 128
I IGNORED THE instinct still as the sun rose and I pulled the borrowed police cruiser over at the edge of the hillside topped by Jed Chatt’s ramshackle house. I shut off the engine. I hadn’t turned the radio on. I couldn’t bear to hear reports about what had happened in Last Chance only hours before. Neither Whitt nor Tox were answering their phones. As I’d l
eft the town, a couple of people were hounding Vicky as she sat on the edge of an ambulance, drinking water someone had brought her and trying to get over the shock of her first kill. I’d wanted to say something to her, something reassuring about taking a life to save another. That although the memories never leave you, and sometimes late at night the faces of your victims still come, the pain of it dies away in time. I’d killed. It wasn’t the worst thing I lived with every day. But instead I’d left Vicky sitting there in the care of a paramedic. She would be alright. She was stronger than me.
I hadn’t said goodbye to Kash either. He’d run off almost immediately to evacuate anyone in the town who was still in their house, to see if he could locate the device Bella had hidden out there. Her plan hadn’t worked. Zac Taby had been her last victim. As I was loading the car with my belongings, one of Snale’s neighbours got word to me that Kash and the other officers had indeed found an explosive device under a house on the edge of town. The bomb had been located right beneath their youngest child’s bed, under the floorboards. I knew Kash would deal with it. I had one errand left to run, and then I was going home.
It was my Day Zero. I could finally see my brother.
As I walked up the stairs to the porch of Jed’s house, my temples throbbed. I figured I must be getting sick. Just my luck to come down with something the moment I was about to re-enter the fight for my brother’s life. I knocked on the door and a voice inside told me to come in.