She leaped off the bed, grabbing at chunks of her hair, looking left and right. She couldn’t carry him. She’d have to drag him. He was wearing only boxer shorts but frostbite was not the immediate threat. She ran into the living room, pulled her coat and boots on, shoved anything in the backpack she could get her hands on, unlocked the door and dumped it on the grass beyond the steps. Now for Jamie.
Inside, she pulled him into a sitting position, flopped his arms over her back and tried to heave him off the bed. He was too heavy. He skidded onto the floor, his head whacking the bedside table.
“Sorry,” she squeaked. She straightened. “No, I’m not sorry. I’m not at all sorry.” At this rate, he wouldn’t be able to walk after she was finished with him.
The wheelchair. Oh God, the wheelchair in the trunk of the car.
A few minutes later she was bumping the chair down the stone steps onto the grass, Jamie slumped in it. He groaned.
“Oh, I’m not taking complaints from you.”
The wheelchair was a bitch to pull over the long, damp grass. Not designed for off-roading. She had to get him to the car, tip him into the back seat. She couldn’t drive out the way they came but she might be able to drive it a few hundred meters, hide it between a clump of trees. It was small enough. She sure wouldn’t get far heaving the wheelchair.
She got to the car and flung open the back door. The interior light flicked on. The key—where had he put the key? She patted her own pocket, reflexively.
The windowsill. He’d put it on the windowsill. And the gun—was it still on the kitchen counter?
A noise. She stilled. Not a car engine. It was in the sky, getting closer. A helicopter?
Not a helicopter. It was a gnawing buzz, like a whiny lawn-mower engine. A...droning noise.
A drone? InScotland?
She wasn’t imagining it. It couldn’t be anything else. The fog still hung thickly, so it couldn’t be merely a surveillance drone. It had to be operating on GPS, going after the phone coordinates.
Forget the car—too obvious a target. Ditto the shed. Her gaze rested on the overturned dinghy, gleaming like it was trying to tell her something. The car light timed off, leaving the outline of the hull imprinted in her blown vision. She spun the wheelchair and shoved it toward the boat. The buzzing grew louder. Did drones have thermal imaging? It’d have to have something, if it was flying at night. She never did Google them. It whined closer. Shit. She should have thrown Jamie’s phone into the loch, as far as she could. Too late now.
She tipped Jamie onto the grass beside the dinghy and dragged it over them, hauling him and curling up to fit between its plank seats. He moaned again.
“Jamie, wake up.” How long would he be out for?
The cold from the ground washed through her like she’d dived into a fridge. And she was dressed warmly. He was nearly naked. She grappled for him in the pitch blackness, pulled him on top of her as best she could and wrapped her arms around him. His back was goose pimpled. She clung on as the drone noise became louder, more like a generator. How long until the Peugeot got here? And what would they find—two charred bodies?
All the thought and care she’d put into choosing and securing her safe houses for an entire year, and she’d let Jamie bring her here—a dead-end road. If she’d been thinking straight, thinking about safety rather than screwing him, she’d never have chosen it. She’d put too much trust in him, believed that he could look after her better than she could. What a fool.
Regret, like a tail, comes at the end.Her grandmother’s words. A picture came to mind of her grandmother’s guest house in Harar, Ethiopia, where Samira and Latif had hidden. It was so remote it’d felt untouchable—until Hyland’s goons had killed Latif and flushed her out and forced her on a journey that was likely to end here, now.
The buzz crescendoed. Then, a whooshing sound. Her face prickled. The sound Latif had heard before he’d died?
And here she was, waiting for the end with her arms around another man. A man who had no idea he was about to die.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
ABOOMSTRUCKthe ground, bucking it like an earthquake. White light flashed through the gap between the grass and the lip of the boat. Samira held her breath. Thuds, cracks, glass smashing, wood groaning. Something clanged against the hull and the air rang. Jamie flinched and tensed, muttering into her chest like he was fighting to wake. She held tight while debris hammered—clonks of giant hail, then sleet, pattering off to drizzle. The light flared and subsided, leaving a dusty glow. Silence, bar a crackling. A fire? She dared to inhale.
She tipped Jamie to one side, lifted the dinghy and peered out. The skeletal tree burned, flames and smoke swirling with the fog to create an eerie light. The cottage looked like a medieval ruin, the roof and walls caved in on one side, the bedroom flattened. Dust and smoke coated the roof of her mouth.
Jamie groaned. He needed warm clothes—but first she had to get them somewhere safe. Safer. The Peugeot was still coming, and God knew what else. More drones? She hoisted the dinghy aside, crouched over Jamie, threaded her arms under his shoulders and heaved. If she could get him to the car, maybe they’d have time to—
The car. A massive stone had smashed through the back window and the tires were shredded. Her left boot slipped and she crashed butt-first onto the grass, Jamie sprawling on top. He rolled off—by design or gravity, she couldn’t tell.
She found the wheelchair embedded in a wild hedge and dragged it out, bringing half the foliage with it. Flattened. Jamie pushed up to hands and knees.
A car engine. Shit.
“Let’s get to the water,” she said, grabbing the boat. The hull was dented but intact. She could row him better than she could drag him, and if they could get far enough out, fog and darkness would screen them.
He crawled a few feet and collapsed. She half carried, half dragged the boat to the water and ran back. The engine grew louder. As she reached Jamie, he flailed for her like he was blind.
