“I’ve got you.What is it, love?”
Theywere closer to the edge of the woods than Laurie had thought.Hegazed through the tangle of branches to the place where a mixtureof moonlight and streetlamp orange was shifting on...
Yes.Metal and glass, barely thirty yards away up by the road.Lauriebanged a palm off Sasha’s shoulder.Hot copper salt was blockinghis throat.He cleared it with a drowning effort, and Sasha criedout in fear as the blood spilled, mercurial black in the moonlight.“Sash, over there.The car.The Merc.”
Chapter Twenty Eight
“He must’ve lost his keys somewhere.They’re not in hispockets.”
Sashalooked up.He didn’t care where Laurie’s keys were.All he caredabout was the wiped-out blank of Laurie’s face, the task of liftinghis shoulders off the ground without shifting the bullet near hisheart.Kucharski was hefting Laurie from behind the knees.Sashadragged his mind back to the needs of the moment.Kucharski hadbeen willing to stand here and defend them all against thepredators crashing towards them through the woods.Laurie had givenhim a flicker of hope before passing out—the surreal existence ofthat red Mercedes, a God-given getaway car.“If they’re not in hispockets...”Sasha paused, getting his balance, nodding to Elizabethas she pushed aside the brambles to let him through.“Knowing him,he might have left them in the ignition.”
“Jesus.How does a boy like that end up in a gunfight withRomani gangsters?”
“He turned the world upside down to keep us both away fromthem.”Sasha eased out onto the track.Laurie’s head was resting onhis arm, his face serene beneath its splatter-mask of blood.“He’sgot to have an ambulance.Now.”
“I asked for medical backup with my extraction.And if thosesirens are for us...”Kucharski listened for a moment.Sasha knewwhat he was thinking, the calculation between the rescue ahead ofhim and the wolves behind, betweentoo farawayandtoo damnclose.“Foster will have paramedics enroute to us.We just need to meet them halfway.”
Theywere almost at the car.Elizabeth had run ahead.She tried thedriver’s door: swung it wide and stared back at Sasha andKucharski, her eyes wide.“He did!The keys are here!”
Kucharski chuckled.“Did you ever hear the Eastern Europeanstory, about...villages who treated their idiots like saints,because they knew that one day they’d do something to savethem?”
“Yes,” Elizabeth said with distracted tenderness, darting roundto open the back doors too.“We entertain our idiot angelsunawares.Get him into the back seat, both of you.Alexandru, staywith him—keep his shoulders elevated.John, come into the frontbeside me.I’ll drive.”
“The hell you will!”
“For God’s sake...I’m not stealing your toy car.You’re abetter shot than me, that’s all, and if these guys have their ownvehicle and try and pursue us—”
“All right, all right.Sasha, can you get him in your side?I’ll come round and help you shift him over.”
Sasha nodded.He could just about manage to hoist Laurie ontothe Merc’s afterthought of a back seat.Never thought you’d need it for this, did you, though we didhave nervous sex in here off a back road near Brighton, becauseyou’d never made out in a car and you wanted to give it atry...Kucharski reached in from the farside, took Laurie’s deadweight by the armpits and helped ease himinto Sasha’s lap.Then he jumped into the passenger seat besideElizabeth, who had already worked out the gears and biting pointand was revving the engine.“Easy!Don’t push her sohard.”
“Her front end is down in the mud.I need to back her out fastor she’ll stick.”
“Fine.Anyone chasing us who hasn’t already noticed abright-red bloody sports car...”
From adistance Sasha listened to them bicker.His frightened imaginationprovided for him a sharp, absurd vision of a normalchildhood—irritable father chewing out his wife for her drivingskills.The Merc bumped backwards out of the trees, found purchaseon tarmac and squealed round.Sasha let the vision develop.IfKucharski was the dad—and Sasha could think of worse fates thanthat for a kid, especially by contrast with Stefan Petrica—thatmade Elizabeth...
Laurie’sbreathing hitched and rasped.Sasha leaned urgently over him.Theonly family he’d ever known or cared for was the man in his armsright now.“There’s a casualty department at Uxbridge.I can directyou down the back roads if you—”
“No,” Kucharski interrupted sharply.“Head towards East Hill,fast as she’ll go.I can see blue lights coming up along thebypass.If they’re coming here, we’ll intercept them.”
Fast as she’ll go.Sasha had alreadyfound out how fast that was.Blazing out along the motorway withthe top down, Laurie behind the wheel, his exultation edged with afever Sasha now understood...Laurie had been on the run even then,from himself and from Petrica’s wolves.“I’m sorry,” Sasha toldhim, wiping fresh blood from his mouth.“I didn’t know.Please hangon, love.”Elizabeth glanced into the back.Her jaw set grimly andshe revved the Merc up through the gears.Acceleration pressedSasha back in his seat as she laid her foot to the floor and toreoff down the long straight stretch of the East Hillroad.
Always such a deserted place.Laurie had told Sasha how he’donce gone out there on his own, missed the last bus and had to walkhome.Watching the streetlights throw wingbeats of light into hislover’s sleeping face, Sasha envisaged that journey.The road musthave stretched out forever to the lonely city boy who had once hada chauffeur-driven limo at his command.Iwas looking for you.But you weren’t there.Laurie, who could make a narrative drama out of a trip to thecorner shop, told all the stories of their first separation in suchsimple terms, often avoiding Sasha’s gaze, looking out of thewindow.The road was empty.I didn’t see asoul all the way.Elizabeth looked over hershoulder again, one swift check.“If I’d taken him with me he’dhave been killed,” Sasha said, as if he’d known her forever andcould be sure that she of all people would understand.“I took himwith me tonight.”
She fixed her gaze on the road.“No.Hecamewith you, Alexandru, all byhimself.Don’t you think that sometimes people need to take thatchance?”Her voice rasped oddly and she swallowed, steadying thewheel.“Wouldn’t you have preferred it yourself?”
Sashadidn’t have time to take in the question.Oncoming headlightspierced the darkness up ahead.Kucharski leaned forward to find theMerc’s hazards.“This is it.Slow up, Elizabeth—pull over to theside.”
“It’s just another car, isn’t it?”
“Look behind.There’s two others, and I think the third’s anambulance.If that’s Foster, she’s making the right approach—gotthem all strung out like normal traffic.Blue lights to get themhere quickly, but now...”The oncoming car began to decelerate,headlights flickering a response.Kucharski grinned and lifted ahand to the unseen driver.“Silent running.Stop here.”
Elizabeth obeyed, and he sprang out into the road.Throughthe windshield Sasha watched him, lit from behind in pulses oforange, the vehicles closing around him, coming to a halt.Thefirst three were police cars, unmarked except for theirroof-mounted lightbars.The fourth...“Please,” Sasha said, barelyable to get the words out past the stone-cold hollow in his chest.“That’s an ambulance.Tell them we need them, Elizabeth.I can’tfeel Laurie’s pulse any more.I can’t.”
But there was no need to tell anyone anything now.Kucharskiwas gesturing back at the Merc.Paramedics were spilling from theambulance.Elizabeth scrambled out, pulled the back door open andbeckoned to them frantically.And that was enough: that was all ittook to lift Sasha’s world out of his hands.Green-clad armsreached into the back seat, reflective sleeve-strips bouncing backthe hazards and headlights.They closed round Sasha, not Laurie,half-lifting him back out of the car.They were kindly but brusque,making sure he was steady before they let him go, then abandoninghim absolutely.Questions echoed on the night air—easy stuff Sashashould have been able to answer.What’shis name, please?How old is he?What happened to him?He couldn’t get a word out.He leaned his hands onthe Merc’s warm bonnet and tried to breathe, but it didn’t reallymatter.Elizabeth was answering for him, businesslike and clear.“His name’s Laurie.He’s about twenty one.He has a close-rangegunshot wound to his left shoulder at the back.I packed it, but helost a lot of blood before then.I don’t think he’ll surviveanother move.”
“Right.We’ll treat him in the car.Mike, go get thegear.”
