The Hunt: ‘A great thriller...breathless all the way’ – LEE CHILD. T.J. Lebbon

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СКАЧАТЬ future, however bleak, seemed further away than the next drink. She had cast aside initial doubts and suspicions, trying not to worry about just how she had bumped into him, how someone like him happened to find her. She’d even asked him. His response had been that, sometimes, people like them washed up on the same shores.

      So she had assigned their meeting to coincidence. And he had made such promises.

      ‘At first I thought you just wanted to fuck me,’ she said.

      ‘Is that what most men want of you?’

      ‘Hah!’ She shivered, drew a hand over the sweat beading her brow. ‘Only if they’re desperate. And I’ve never let them. Not once.’

      Holt shrugged and stared from the window. Rose couldn’t even remember the name of the little town where they had met, but here in Sorrento it was scorchingly hot, the streets bedlam, and the smells of delicious cooking and rank sewage wafted through the curtains with each breath of sea air. Her mouth watered and her stomach rolled. Four miles east of them people lived in cheap, chaotic housing, while in the harbour’s à la carte restaurants holidaymakers spent a local’s daily earnings on a plate of imported meat. A site of such contradictions seemed a perfect place to hide.

      ‘It’s been a long time since I had a cause,’ he said, turning to face her. He was very still when he spoke, only his mouth and eyes moving. Every movement was spare and necessary. ‘Sometimes my causes were convenient because they paid well. That’s the definition of soldier of fortune, I suppose. On occasion, just now and then, I believed in something. But what you tell me happened to you … ’ He sighed. ‘It’s the children. Not you. Not your husband. Don’t care what one adult does to another, because it’s the adults who run the world. We can make our own choices, mostly. But when the children are hurt, that’s when I become sad. And angry.’

      The children, she thought. Less clouded by alcohol than she had been for a long time, yet shaken by the burning need she still felt for blessed oblivion, her memories were becoming richer by the hour. Molly, stabbed behind the ear and left sitting up as if still waiting for her mummy. Isaac, lying in his own blood. Alex, one little hand still clasped in his father’s and his face a mask of dried blood. There were flies on them. They’d been there for so long by the time she found them that time had moved on, and nature had moved in.

      ‘You have children?’ she asked.

      Holt stared from the window, silent. It was as if she’d never asked the question at all. Maybe he’d had children and they were gone, but she could not ask him that. She knew how that would burn.

      ‘I’m ready to learn from you,’ she said. ‘Everything you know. All of it. And I’ll pay you, somehow, one day.’

      Holt turned to her again and his face creased into a smile. He had a beautiful smile. ‘I have almost three million dollars in a bank account in the Seychelles.’

      She raised her eyebrows.

      Holt shrugged gently. ‘What’s a man like me to do with beaches and blue seas?’

      ‘How long will it take?’ Rose asked.

      ‘What?’

      ‘To train me?’

      He laughed as if the very idea was faintly ridiculous. Then he looked at her, really looked at her for the first time, and she had never been scrutinised like that before. It was so thorough that he must have seen into her, to those imprinted memories that she had never been able to escape. She was naked beneath his glare, stripped of clothing and skin, flesh and bones. He saw to the heart of her, and then he seemed to relax in his chair a little, drinking some more water as he looked from the open window once more. He stared out at the view across the city rooftops to the sea beyond. He seemed hesitant.

      ‘Holt,’ she said.

      ‘Yes,’ he said softly, as if answering a silent question of his own. Then he turned. ‘Yes. I’ll tell you some things that will help. A few tricks. How to fire a gun, how to fight, how to watch. Some knife work, some fist work. It helps that you’re already away from the world. And you have violence in you already, Rose. I see where it simmers. I’d say you’re halfway there.’

       Chapter Eleven

       ambush

      As soon as they dropped off the hunters, Rose knew that the Trail would come for her.

      She drove as hard as she could up the mountain road, and when the helicopter passed overhead and continued down the valley, she slammed on the brakes. Gun nursed in her lap, she used the remote wing mirror control to track the aircraft’s progress. It was not slowing or turning. Of course not, not yet. It had its cargo of rich arseholes to disgorge first.

      Part of her wished that she’d stayed with that poor bastard Chris Sheen. She could have run with him into the hills, and by nightfall she could have killed at least half of the hunters, if not more. But mere blood was no revenge, even if it was the blood of those who’d murder someone for nothing more than the sick thrill. And it wasn’t the hunters she wanted, but those who’d sent them on their way.

      The ones in the helicopter, for a start.

      She hoped that Adam would be proud of the action she was taking. He’d understand, she was certain of that, because they’d once had the conversation that many couples have after a glass or two of wine, when life is good: If anyone hurt you or the kids, I’d happily kill them, he’d said. They’d laughed about it, imagining all manner of action-hero scenarios, and although she hadn’t verbalised it at the time, she’d always thought the same. So yes, she believed that Adam would approve.

      Her children, though? Rose doubted they’d even recognise her any more. That made her so terribly sad. It felt like a betrayal, but as a mother she knew that sometimes a parent had to do what was right for their children, however cruel or harsh it might seem.

      ‘I’m still a mother,’ she whispered, and no voices rose in dissent. ‘That’s why I’m doing this. I’m looking after my children.’

      She drove on, alert to movement or the flicker of reflected sunlight. It was possible that the Trail had placed other members to ambush her as she escaped the scene of the drop-off. With a sniper hidden on a hillside close to the road in both directions, whichever way she went she’d have to pass them. Even an average shooter would be able to put a bullet through her windscreen.

      But she hoped they’d not had enough time to arrange anything. The whole hunt for Chris had been set to take place in the city south of here, so her enforced change of location, and her killing of three of their members, must have caused them a massive headache. Perhaps they’d take her sudden appearance as an unexpected bonus. But they’d be out of sorts, confused, and fucking angry. And that’s just how she wanted them, because the angry made mistakes.

      She scanned the wild hillsides as she powered up the winding road towards where it passed over the ridge between two mountains. She’d already scouted out the place where she’d wait for them, on one of her several trips up here over the past few months. It had always been her own intended hunting ground for them when the time was right, and with good reason. She’d been here on holiday СКАЧАТЬ