The ground had been harder than it looked, but she was off it now. She’d been expecting a kick in the ribs but he’d been relatively gentle, if you didn’t count the punch in the head. Instead he’d produced a gun and crouched next to her, barreling it into her neck. From a distance, you’d assume she’d tripped and he was offering aid.
“Where’s the kid?”
Emma shook her head.
“We both know how this goes. You don’t want to tell me, and I don’t want to hurt you. But at least one of those things will happen. Let’s not make it both.”
She thought that was pretty good for what sounded like a second language.
Her hands were pressed against the cold earth. She tried to grasp a handful, because every weapon counts, but it was too hard, too compact.
He said, “Let’s try this. You decided to split up. You were going for help? So I know they’re back there, the way you came. Take me to them. This can all be over really fast.”
She shook her head.
He said, “It’s only the boy we’re after. I don’t even have to kill him. Just convince him he made a mistake in pretending he saw something, whatever it was. You want to hear something funny? I don’t even know what. Not my business.”
It would all have sounded a lot more reasonable without the gun poking into her neck.
“What do you say?”
She shook her head.
He sighed, and dropped the relatively gentle approach, banging the side of her head with the weapon so that Emma saw flashes: lightning brightening the trees, as if an angel were passing. But the light faded, and no heavenly messenger arrived. Pity. A flaming sword would have been nice.
“I can keep this up for longer than you,” he said. “Nobody’s coming. Don’t kid yourself about that. The place is deserted.”
Emma’s mouth had filled for some reason. Head trauma. Side effect. Little phrases, mostly relevant. She wanted to spit, but had to swallow. It didn’t taste like blood.
“One more time. Where is he?”
It was probably worth being hit again.
In the event, it didn’t feel like it.
The way Anton saw it, the clock wasn’t so much running as sprinting—if they didn’t find the kid soon, it wouldn’t be a matter of keeping him quiet so much as buying his memoirs in paperback.
One kid, two women. It shouldn’t have turned into Stalingrad.
He was in his second barn, and finding no sign of recent habitation. The first had been occupied, but only by a local woman and some of her cows: she’d been perturbed to see him, but not because he was a strange man on a violent mission; rather because it was snowing and he looked lost. Did he need feeding? For a moment, the possibility of a different life had floated before Anton, as if a doorway had appeared in the snow: he could step through it and enter a different existence. But none of that was really in the cards, so he just said something about needing to get back, and crossed that barn off his list.
And now he was in this one, and it didn’t look so different except for being empty. It contained an animal smell, though, as if it too had recently sheltered cows. He wondered where they were now. And then reached for his phone to check in with Lars, but stopped halfway.
A noise outside, round back.
He eased his gun free instead, and stood with his back to the wall by the side of the open doors.
Louisa said, “Okay, time to go.”
Lucas stood in the doorway of the shed, and looked out on the world as if it had just got bigger.
“Aren’t we waiting here?”
It seemed safe to him because they’d spent hours here. Anywhere you slept unharmed became sanctuary. But if the men looking for them had any kind of plan, it would involve checking places off a list, and they’d only be looking in those places they hadn’t searched yet. Louisa could have told him this, but didn’t think it would help. What Lucas needed was instructions; the knowledge that somebody else was in charge.
“No. We’ll go further along the estuary. If they come this way, it’ll most likely be from the other direction.”
From the town, she thought. The way Emma had gone.
“Maybe there’ll be people there,” he said.
There might, but Louisa had the feeling civilian cover wouldn’t offer much protection. Just a larger set of targets.
“Come on.”
She was shivering—they both were—but decided that was a good sign. If they weren’t, it would mean they’d grown numb. Numb wasn’t good. Creaky wasn’t great, but she could live with it. Or hoped to have the opportunity to do so.
Hunger, that was the big thing.
She scooped snow from a low branch in passing and ate or drank it, making each individual tooth in her head complain, but at least she wouldn’t die of thirst.
“That’s kind of disgusting,” Lucas said.
“. . . Seriously? All that’s happened these last few days, and me eating snow is disgusting?”
“Trying to keep my standards up,” he muttered, reminding her unbearably of Min.
The pair reached the track and checked both ways. No one in sight.
Coat flapping round her knees, Louisa led the way.
