Click.
Muscle memory taking over, I hit the magazine release catch with my thumb and the clip drops out of the pistol’s butt into my left palm.
There are no bullets inside.
‘For Christ’s sake,’ I say under my breath.
‘Empty,’ he says, pulling another of the slim black magazines from his pocket, brass bullets glinting at its top. ‘But this one isn’t.’
My arms and legs are buzzing with adrenaline, my head spinning, thoughts crowding each other out.
‘So in the car when you threatened to shoot me, it was empty then too?’
‘You wouldn’t have come with me if I’d just asked nicely, would you?’ He shrugs. ‘I had to get you to co-operate. But I’m not an animal.’
‘No, you’re just the kind of guy who beats women up. Kathryn had bruises all up her arm, I saw them.’
‘You have no idea what you’re—’
I sweep the gun up in a quick diagonal arc, cracking him across the side of the head with the barrel. He drops to the floor, the loaded magazine spinning out of his hand. I step over him, reaching towards it, and it’s there, inches away when he grabs me from behind, shoving me hard so I slam face first into the door, pain exploding above my eye. I turn and swing out wildly with the pistol again, feeling the ridged steel butt connect with flesh and bone, a groan as he hits the floor and then he’s on his hands and knees, a long sticky string of blood between his mouth and the floor. I kick him as hard as I can in the ribs, anoofof pain escaping from him as he collapses sideways onto the floor. I’ve lost sight of the loaded magazine.
Go.
I shove the gun into my jeans and scramble over to where Mia lies on the sofa, still sucking on a corner of her muslin cloth. I gather her in both arms and kick the swinging doors open. A wide corridor full of shadows, almost no light apart from the moonlight slanting in through high windows. In one direction a row of doors fading away into darkness, in the other, a flight of stairs. Which way? I had the hood over my head on the way in but instinct tells me to go left. I head for the stairs at a run, scratchy office carpet beneath my feet, gritting my teeth against the fresh stab of shooting pain that comes with every step. I run to the stairs, taking them as fast as I dare in the semi-darkness. There’s something wet on my face, stinging in my eye. Blood. I swipe it away.
An explosive crash – a door handle being hurled back into a wall – echoes through the building. A shout of rage follows it, an animal sound of anger and frustration, hurt and fury, that seems to come from right above me at the top of the stairwell.
I stumble and almost fall forward onto the first floor landing, staggering to keep myself upright, arms wrapped around Mia’s body, one hand cupping her hot little head. I recover my balance and run around to the next flight, following the stairwell down and back until I get to the ground floor.
Another furious shout from the floor above. Coming nearer.
‘Come back!’ he shouts. ‘You can’t take her! She belongs with me!’
In front of me, the corridor splits left and right. Left is in almost complete darkness. I go right, plunging down a wide corridor studded with closed doors. Another crossroads. I continue straight on, the agony of the cut in my left foot a rolling thrum of pain. I run past a faded sign that saysSTUDIO 7, half-illuminated in the watery moonlight, an arrow pointing in the other direction.
Thundering footsteps behind me, on the same level now. Closer.
‘Ellen!’
Shit. I can’t outrun him with the baby, stumbling around in the dark. He knows this complex; he’s going to catch up. I pass another stairwell and stop, doubling back, tucking myself into the shadows beneath the stairs, holding Mia close. I squeeze myself into the darkest corner, sliding back to a sitting position, lifting my left foot and feeling along the skin, slick with blood.There. I find the edge of another sliver of broken glass, grip it between my bloody thumb and forefinger, and with a silent grimace, ease it out of my flesh.
The footsteps are slower and clearer now. He’s almost level with us, the beam of a torchlight sweeping back and forth across the corridor. Mia makes a low contented gurgle that sounds horribly loud in the stillness of the abandoned building.
‘Shh,’ I whisper into her ear, heart thundering in my chest. I rock her gently and stroke the downy hair on the back of her head. ‘Shh, baby.’
Mia coos and squeaks.
I stroke her cheek with a fingertip. My hand brushes something laid over her shoulder. The muslin cloth, half wrapped around her body. I take a corner of it and touch it to Mia’s lips.
Please be quiet. Please, Mia.
She instantly latches onto it, falling silent as she begins to suck on the cloth again.
The footsteps slow to a stop and then he’s there, maybe fifteen feet away from my hiding place. A shaft of moonlight glinting off steel. The knife. He is turning his head from side to side, listening for the slightest sound. As soon as Mia makes another noise she’ll give us away.
The beam of his torchlight probes the darkness a few feet from our hiding place.
I reach into the pockets of my jeans for a coin, a key, anything. All I have is a tube of lip balm. I ease it out and throw it as hard as I can, launching it in a long arc down the corridor. The little plastic tube skitters and clacks in the darkness and immediately the torch beam shifts that way, towards the noise.
