Part 41 (1/2)
Ja the accelerator to the floor, she clutched the wheel as the Jeep lunged forwards When its front wheels hit the uneven surface of the track, it bounced and nearly threw her out of her seat Hannah changed gears, pushi+ng the vehicle as hard as it would go A pothole unseated her a second tih the seat belt Tried to fasten it Secured herself
Wheels tearing up clods of earth, the Jeep powered up the gradient that led into the trees Within seconds, she was plunged into shade Bracken and ivy snapped and ripped Her tyres shredded dead leaves
A tight turn ahead She dared not lose any speed Dared not hesitate Like a wild thing, the Jeep slid and spat, clawing at the earth as it took the turn The steering wheel bucked and spun She would not let go The back end lost traction and slid The Jeep's right side slaainst theHard enough to dazzle her
Keep going Just keep going
As the car righted itself and accelerated out of of the turn, she saw a crow perched on so in the road ahead Sickened, she realised it was a man's body He could not still be alive A knife protruded fro was thrown across his body One side of his skull had been crushed
The track was too narrow On each side, the trunks of chestnut, oak, beech and birch crowded close She could not afford to stop and pull the h Ahead, the crow exploded into flight Hannah downshi+fted and accelerated
I'm sorry I don't knoho you are I'm sorry
The Jeep rocketed up the slope, pistons detonating like cannons Hannah forced herself to keep her eyes open as her vehicle thu her around in her seat
She smelled the smoke before she saw it acrid in her nose, bitter in her throat
When she turned into the next bend, she saw the first drifts of it hanging in the dappled light Another bend and the drifting s
She barrelled around the next turn Ahead, a boiling black soup obscured the entire track Hannah braked hard She slowed the Jeep to a crawl Beyond the windscreen, visibility dropped to a few feet Oily slossy as tar, billowed all about her Inching her way now, peering through the roiling mass, she strained to find its source A few feet A few feetplastic The shts on to full bea fros, she nursed the Jeep forwards Whatever had been reflected in its lights vanished as another ain Unmistakable now The back of a white Audi Q7
And suddenly she knew that this was the car that had brought Daniel Meyer to Le Moulin Bellerose, and that this was the car that Jakab had used to take her daughter away froh a break in the sht flooded its interior, she pulled up alongside the horribly wrecked Audi and found that her hands were shaking on the wheel, tre a kill, and she could hear in her ears the pounding of blood through her arteries, and all because Jakab had been here, and so had her daughter, and oh how could anyone still be alive inside that twisted and blackened ht the Jeep to a halt She switched off the engine, unbuckled her belt Opening the door, she slipped out of the car She took a breath Another Stared at the burning Audi Looked away Thought she ht be sick Wondered why she should care about that; about such a trivial thing
The black s in the direction of the fare she had built with Nate Hannah looked up and down the path She e
The vehicle had left the road at a sharp angle, as if the driver had swerved to avoid an obstacle Another few feet and it would have been out of the trees and into grassland Instead, the car had slammed head-on into an oak The iine bay had fused with the tree trunk S oil Dark flames licked metal
The Audi's windscreen had disappeared Inside, the driver's seat was stained black with blood There was so ed herself Forced herself to approach the car The passenger seat was eht and red and fresh And, she thought, wanting to close her eyes, wanting to die, it had to be Leah's
She may be close Shethere, wanting to find somewhere peaceful, so and the violence and the htened and wondering where you were, why you broke your promise, why you allowed this to happen
Hannah turned away Peered between the trees Peered through soot-grained eyes and tears and lost hope Leah wasn't there nobody was there And so she looked back at the car again, and that hen she saw the enaed in gold, pressed deep into the plastic of the Audi's dashboard She felt her chest swell, her throat tighten, until she doused with cold logic the hope that had wanted to surface
That the dragon scale was Leah's, she had no doubt But nothing here indicated that she had left this marker after the crash
Believe
Such a simple idea So difficult So monumentally difficult, after all that had happened, after all the dreams that had died
Believe
She would search for her daughter until she had no more breath And she would not take that last breath until Jakab Balazs was destroyed, utterly, was little more than a dark memory for the world, a filthy stain that time would bleach away
And if she confired to kill Jakab, what then? What would she do? What could she do if the last person on earth that she loved had been taken from her? What choice would she have?
You knohat you'll do Even now you're thinking it Even now Well, no one will begrudge you that, and likely no one will care You will have failed everyone that mattered
But whatever happens, you don't miss your appointment with Jakab The arms of those scales need to be balanced
Hannah stepped away fro from the sed froht caressed browned stalks A breeze whispered ast them To the south ran the river, and closer still the mill race, a man-made channel of water diverted from the Vezere to power the ht and half in shadow, a gnarled and age-warped three-storey construction of timber and brick and stone, stood the old watermill itself Le Moulin Bellerose
It had cloaked itself, at the river's edge, in a circle of thin trees Hannah felt the blank stare of its upper s They spoke of age and decay Of atrophy and ruin Of the inevitability of loss and the futility of hope
Nate had patched the roof to protect the structure frolazed all but one of the s That single black uano, the entry point for the colony of pipistrelle bats that roosted in the building's dusty rafters
A sound echoed throughout the forgotten structure, bouncing around its shell and spilling out of the brokenThe sound of a young girl's screaion, France Now The weight of conflicting ehter's cries threatened to overwhelrappled The alht with it terror that even now Hannah uish in those screaly acute, so ani, that her body shook, her teeth grated and her eyes felt like they would burst from their sockets Her skin rippled with electricity It rose into goosebumps It lifted the hairs of her ar and herrubber and plastic and oil
She had no weapons No gun, no knife In her flight frorab so hich she could confront Jakab
Hannah rubbed at her face with shaking hands Her skin felt both raw and nu back at the Audi, at the solitary red dragon scale pinned to the dash, at all it represented
And suddenly, le ena had been pulled somewhere deep within her, and all of her euilt and her hate were spiralling away, draining out of her like poison gushi+ng froht
She had to kill Jakab Balazs, or she had to die in the attempt And she had to do that today Now
Find a weapon Soood to Leah if you go in unprepared You have one chance One final opportunity For Leah For Nate For all of them
Catlike, she darted back to the Jeep, wrenched open its passenger door In the glove compartment she found an owner's handbook, a sheaf of papers from the rental co nut in a polythene bag No good
She slid her hand into the door recess Eearstick and checked the driver's door pocket Her fingers brushed against cloth Closed around so it out, she saas Sebastien's canvas ht to Llyn Gwyr Hannah dropped it on the seat and unrolled it Antiseptic wipes, painkillers, scissors, burns dressings Inside individual pockets she found a surgical scalpel, and spare blades in sterile pouches Separate folds yielded a tracheal tube, suture thread, a selection of syringes, a penlight torch