“You don’t expect me to use that?” she hissed.
He tapped along the internal wall, behind the bedhead. It made a hollow sound. “Ever used a camera?”
“Of course, but—”
“It’s pretty much the same.” He stepped back and raised the bat. Thunder rumbled. “Point and shoot—but not at me. Camera shy, you know.”
Downstairs, a sliding noise—a key in a lock. They had a key? What did that mean for the theories of what had become of her?
The front door squealed open. Jamie charged at an internal wall. It caved but held. Shouts, downstairs. He swung again and light appeared through a crack. A clatter. A boot on the bottom stair. She swiveled, gun shaking in her hands, as Jamie again raised the bat. With her gloves on she couldn’t even be sure where the trigger was. Should she take them off? How much force would it need? If she twitched, would it go off? She’d fired plenty of guns in games but hadn’t touched a real one. A smash, behind her. She jumped and the gun exploded, knocking her back, an echoing crack popping her hearing. She dropped the weapon and it skidded to a halt at the top of the staircase. Shit.
She equalized her ears. It sounded like she was underwater. The footsteps seemed to have stalled. Urgent voices, downstairs. Jamie kicked down a sheet of plywood, making a portal into the neighbor’s living room. Next thing she was being shoved through, his hand on her back.
“The gun!” she whispered. She couldn’t even hear herself.
“Leave it.”
The staircase clanged. She ran ahead through the living room and started down a flight of stairs, her surroundings narrowing to sage wallpaper and framed photos. At least three voices behind them—two men and a woman. Multiple feet. A gunshot cracked. Samira’s throat closed. At the bottom of the stairs, an opaque glass door opened into a yard of overgrown grass, enclosed by a high brick wall. God, her sense of direction was skewed—she’d expected to be back at the road.
Jamie leaped onto a rusty grill beside a crumbling part of the wall, looked over the top and held out a hand to her, his eyes narrowed against the driving rain. As he launched her over the wall she caught a glimpse of movement at the door they’d come through. The blond guy. She landed on a spiky bush. Another gunshot—or was it thunder?—and Jamie thudded onto a lawn beside her, on his feet, knees bent, still holding the bat. He pulled her up.
They were in another yard, smaller, backing onto a terraced brick house. A muffled scream. Inside, behind a glass sliding door, a woman leaped off a sofa and stared, hand over her mouth. Jamie pretty much threw Samira over the next wall into an identical yard, and then another wall, another yard, another wall, another yard, like some recurring nightmare. Footsteps and shouts seemed to close in from all directions. She tried to picture the block they’d walked around. Did the terraces go all the way to the end of the street? Were there any gaps between them?
In yard number six—or five or seven or twenty—Jamie strode to the house. “Fuck this,” he muttered. Unlike the others they’d passed, this was unrenovated, with an old-fashioned door on one side, leading into a kitchen. A window revealed a living room. He pulled out his lock picker.
“What if someone’s home?” she whispered, catching up.
He pointed through the window. A crucifix, on a wall above a fireplace. “I’m taking a stab they’re at church.”
He made quick work of the door. Once they were inside and Jamie confirmed no one was home, she allowed herself to release a full breath. A siren wailed. Oh God, police?
“The cops won’t be sure what they’re looking for,” Jamie said, as she followed him along a hallway to the front of the house. “Like at the hospital. We just need to not look suspicious.”
“That woman in the house—she got a good look at us.”
Jamie strode into a living room, pressed his back against a wall next to a bay window and peered out into the street, rubbing his left shoulder like he’d injured it—which was highly likely given his spontaneous demolition job. Thunder cracked. “A police presence might help. Hyland’s goons won’t want the hassle of being arrested any more than we do.”
She flattened against the wall beside him. “You say that like it’s a parking ticket, not breaking and entering and vandalism and prowling and—Oh my God, I fired a gun.” Her hands still trembled.
“Which stalled them just long enough for us to get away. It was smart.”
“It was a mistake. And I lost your gun.”
“It wasn’t my gun. It was the goon’s, from the hospital.” He pulled his hand from his shoulder. It was coated in blood. His jacket sleeve was shredded.
“Jamie. You’ve been shot.”
“Just a flesh wound. A ricochet, I think.”
A siren crescendoed and cut out. Several more approached.
“Sounds like they’re surrounding the block,” she said.
“Aye. We’d better get out before they bring in the ARVs. If they’d had reports of shots fired, they won’t muck around.”
“ARVs?”
“Armed response vehicles. And they’ll bring dogs.”
