“Course I can.”Laurie tried for his usual lithe spring to hisfeet, and almost made it, Sasha catching him and keeping himupright.“We have to get out of here, don’t we?”
“Either that or stand them down, and there’s half a dozen ofthem.I don’t think we can manage, even with...”Kucharski glancedat Elizabeth, who was waiting tensely in the corridor, keeping thewatch.At her sharp gesture, he pushed Laurie and Sasha ahead ofhim towards the door.“Even with Calamity Kate over there.Right.My cover’s shattered—I need to call in.I’m guessing out ofeveryone in this room, it’s Prince Laurence here who’s managed tohang on to his mobile...?”
Lauriedug in his pocket with the hand that still worked, at once pleasedto be of use and embarrassed that he was so predictable.He watchedthrough a dragonfly-wing haze while Kucharski dialled, waited,reeled off a brusque string of numbers and letters.“Okay.That wasmy bail-out request.I’ll be salvaged if I’m salvageable, but itcould take half an hour for help to get to us.”He paused,listening.“Not bloody soon enough.Come on.”
***
Thewoods were drowned in night.The same great lantern of a moon thathad lit up Laurie’s patch of the Mojave was all that saved him nowfrom utter blackness, from being the clumsy gajo between theInterpol agent and the two soft-footed gypsy refugees.He could seeenough to run.He even tried to place his feet carefully still, tomake sure he had space to move into.Not to let the branches whipback and hit John Kucharski behind him.Elizabeth and Sasha were onthe track up ahead.It seemed to Laurie that they were alwaysreceding, two graceful moon-carved shapes fading out of his view,and yet each time the panic rose in his chest, the weird heavythump and skip of his heart, one of them would stop and wait,gazing anxiously back down the path until Laurie caughtup.
Heshouldn’t need to be waited for.Kucharski clearly shared thisview.“Come on, son,” he whispered, giving him a none-too-gentleshove.“What did you do in the states—spend all your time eatingdoughnuts and hot dogs?”
“I was a vampire, not a...comedy cop.”Laurie sank a hand intoa patch of nettles and snatched it back.He didn’t mind the pain.He couldn’t really mind anything Kucharski said to him, either.“I’m really pleased you’re not dead.”
Kucharski gave a snort.“Well, the night is stillyoung.”
“How come, though?Gunari said you were, and ConstableFoster.”
“Don’t let her hear you call her that.She’s with Interpolnow—my best agent.A major witness in the Petrica case died, notme.Even with Sasha’s testimony, there was no way we could hold himand his gang...Look, can’t I tell you all this once we’re out ofhere?”
“Tell me a bit now.”Laurie stumbled.He landed on the numb armand had to let Kucharski hoist him back onto his feet.“I dunnowhat’s wrong with me.Not doughnuts, I don’t think...Talk to me.Why didn’t you help protect Sasha, if you were alive?”
“I had to be properly dead first.Another undercover man shotme with a blank during a raid, and we let the word go out that he’dkilled me.We wanted people like Gunari to know, people with linksto the Roma underworld in London.That prepared the ground for meto infiltrate Petrica’s setup here.As for your friend...”Hepushed Laurie ahead of him up a steep slope, Sasha reaching down tograb him from the top.“As for you, Sasha, I’m really sorry.Ouragents were watching you both from a distance—and we did provideguardianship for Clara—but we needed to draw your father out.Totempt him into making a move.”
Sashanodded grimly.“We were bait.”
“To catch a shark who was gonna hunt you through the water allyour lives.You would have been bait anyway.You complicated allthis for us by buggering off to America, but...Laurie?”
Lauriewas listening.He wanted to tell him so.The night air had floodedhis lungs, though, so cold he couldn’t get a word out.Themoon-dappled path made a jump at him, its pebbles leaping like ashoal of silver fish.Once more he made the mistake of breaking hisfall with his left arm.
“Laurie!Christ, what’s wrong?”
That wasSasha.For Sasha only, Laurie got his head up.He couldn’t havemoved a muscle for anyone else in the world.Then there was no needfor even that small effort: Sash was doing everything.Scooping himup out of the dirt, turning the moon so that she shone in herproper place again, high above the floating late-summer leaves.Sasha cradled him.Laurie could pick out oak leaves, the delicatescrolls of their edges.Ash, too, each frondy lobe edged in silverlight.Beneath them all, Sasha, whose wild foreign beauty was madefor the night, for streetlight and moonlight and stars.Laurie felthe had come home.
Handsunderneath him.Kucharski ordering Sasha to lift him, lift himhigher so he could see.“He’s hurt.It’s not just the face wound,he’s...Fuck.He’s got a bullet in his back.”
Laurieheard Sasha’s gut-punched little cry.That was the sound he wouldmake if you sprang fear or pleasure on him, his first responsebefore he got control.Laurie would have given anything to tell himnot to worry, but someone—Kucharski or Elizabeth, both of themcrouched at his side now—was turning him, probing under his coat.The shielding numbness that had let him run this far evaporated.Hejerked in Sasha’s arms, spine arching.
“Here.It’s here, up under his shoulder.”That was Elizabeth.Through hot bolts of pain, Laurie wondered what war zones she hadlived in, to sound calm for the first time now.Her hands werebrutally competent.“He mustn’t lose too much more blood.I need topack this out, get pressure on it.One of you give me your jumperor something...”A pause.Frantic movement around him, thenElizabeth continuing, the faintest rasp of laughter in her voice:“Oneof you.John,yours is fine.Alexandru, hold him.Keep him silent.”
Therewas no need.Laurie would keep silence for himself.Then there camea tugging at his shoulder, and a pain like nothing he had dreamedcould exist in this world burst up out of his nerves.Sasha’s handwent into the hair at his nape, lifting, helping him stifle theoncoming yell against his shoulder.Sasha’s voice, low and hotagainst his ear: “Hush, love.Quiet as the fox in the woods for menow.”A half-swallowed sob.“Oh, Laurie.Laurie...”
“There.That’s the best I can do.”
“Can we move him on?If Sasha and I carry him, andyou...”
“I don’t think so.The trajectory of the bullet—it’s gone upunder his shoulder blade.Could be somewhere near hisheart.”
Kucharski swore fiercely.“How was he walkingaround?”
“I don’t know.If it severed a nerve, he might not have feltit.”
A songof sirens drifted through the night.In the listening silence thatfollowed, only Laurie’s harsh breathing scraped the air.“Can’t bea response to my call,” Kucharski said.“It’s too soon.”
“Laurie talked to someone at Interpol earlier.I think theyknew where he was heading.”
“Too late for us anyway.I can hear Stefan’s lot—they’ll be onus soon.I’ll have to stand them down here.”
Laurie hung on tight to Sasha.Quietas the fox, Sash had told him, and so hewould be.His mouth was pressed against the fabric of the parka,the old coat he’d hated so much and now loved because it washelping him do the thing Sasha wanted.The hardest thing of all.Someone had harpooned him in the lung and a thousand screams werebottlenecking under his larynx.He rationed out breath through hisnose.He stared into the spaces beyond Sasha’s shoulder and triedto gather words out of the pain, enough to say what he had towithout sounding like a dying cowboy in a Western.I’m finished.You go on and saveyourselves.That was the kind of lineDouglas Brett would have given him.Through flickering shadows inhis mind, Laurie tried to rewrite it, but that was the essence, thething he had to tell the people around him, the brave agent and thewoman who’d come here to save her son, and...“Sasha.Sasha.”
