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“Fine, yeah,” Drew said. “But we’re staying here until you get it done.”
“Staying at my flat?”
“Damn straight,” Laverne said.
“Where do you think I’m going?”
“You disappeared once before. You could do it again. We’re staying. Now go get the money for us before Drew gets angry.”
Alex slowly nodded as if she were out of options. The truth was that she had plenty; she was just deciding which was best.
“Fine,” she finally said. “We’ll be roommates for a week.”
Alex walked to her bedroom, trying hard to look defeated. She slowed her pace when all she wanted to do was run. Once in her room and out of their sight, she headed straight for the closet. It had been Garrett’s idea for Alex to learn to shoot a handgun before she headed off to college. With her previous experience hunting pheasant and her proficiency with a 12-gauge, the learning curve was short. After a month of instruction and just a few hours at the range, Alex was more proficient at shooting targets with a 9-millimeter automatic than she had ever been shooting pheasants with a 12-gauge shotgun. But it wasn’t learning to shoot and handle the gun that was the problem. Obtaining one in the United Kingdom was. In fact, it was impossible to do legally. But Garrett had been adamant that Alex possess a way to defend herself, and he had flexed his considerable strength to make it happen. A week after she arrived in England and settled into her Cambridge flat, a man knocked on her door. Short and stocky, with a face pocked by acne scars, the man had barely spoken the day he showed up at Alex’s flat.
“If you’re caught with this, you’ll go to nick,” was all he said before handing Alex the heavy metal box and disappearing down the stairs.
Since that day, the box had sat untouched on the top shelf of her closet. Alex had never been motivated to move the gun to a more accessible location. In her night table drawer, for instance, where it would be instantly available should she need it. The truth was that shortly after the stocky man had delivered it, the gun had rarely found its way into her thoughts after she settled into her new life in Cambridge. So perfect was her escape from the towering shadow of the American version of Alexandra Quinlan that, despite a few times on campus early freshman year when fellow students inquired about possibly knowing Alex from a previous encounter, no one had come close to recognizing her. Fear, therefore, had never been an emotion Alex had had to deal with in her new life in England. But as soon as the crooked-toothed girl walked uninvited into her flat with Drew Estes, fear had gripped her and the gun had charged into her thoughts.
She reached for the box now and noticed her hands were shaking. Alex was happy to have avoided the further precaution of locking the box, since inserting a key would be difficult with her vibrating hands. She opened the latch and lifted the lid, revealing the Smith and Wesson M&P Shield 9-millimeter. It held eight rounds, and Alex knew it was loaded—it was how the gun had arrived. Just as she lifted the gun from the felt in which it was seated, she felt a hand on her shoulder.
“Two thousand. Not a pound less,” Laverne said.
Laverne’s touch startled her and Alex jumped, turning quickly and discharging the gun at the same time. The blast was deafening and brought her back to the night her family was killed. Her vision shrunk to a pinhole and then disappeared entirely when the sulfurous odor of gunpowder sent her senses spinning off to the night she hid behind the grandfather clock while the same scent permeated her home.
She was unsure how long she’d been blinded, but when her vision returned Alex saw two people. The girl named Laverne lay on the floor in front of her, and Drew Estes stood in the bedroom doorway with wide eyes and an open mouth, his hands raised in surrender. Alex spied him over the barrel of the Smith and Wesson, which, during her momentary blackout, she had pointed directly at him. Both her hands were firmly on the gun, her finger over the trigger, and the tremor nowhere to be found. She adjusted her aim from the middle of Drew’s chest to directly over his heart. One more correction brought her aim to just above his left shoulder. She pulled off another round that blinded her senses again and sent her back to the cold January night when her family was killed.
Although some time must have passed, Alex was unaware of it. The next thing she heard, when the ringing in her ears subsided and her vision returned, were sirens. The strange, cartoonish sirens she knew only from the movies. The two-toned sirens of the UK authorities that were so different from those embedded in her mind from a lifetime spent in the States.
Then she heard something else. Something closer. Outside the bedroom, the front door to her flat burst open, the deadbolt Drew Estes had sunk into place splintering the wood that secured it. Then she heard footsteps racing across the flat toward her bedroom.
CHAPTER 14
Saturday, October 3, 2015 London, England 10:05 a.m.
WHEN HER MUSCLES FINALLY RELEASED THEIR TONIC STATE, ALEX sank into the strange bed and fell asleep. Her mind, however, kept churning. The report of the gun returned, and its lingering ring echoed in her mind. Time and space morphed during her fitful sleep and carried her to her family home in McIntosh. This time, though, Alex was the shooter. This time, as Alex hid behind the grandfather clock, the shots that rang through the house came from the gun she was firing, again and again and again. One round after another as footsteps grew louder and the trench coat shadow crept toward the grandfather clock. Then, the face of Laverne Parker peeked around the edge of the clock and smiled at Alex with those crooked teeth. Alex lifted the 9-millimeter and pulled the trigger—bang, bang, bang.
“Up you go.”
Alex opened her eyes and Laverne Parker’s face disappeared. In its place was a heavyset man whose face held acne scars shaped like deep craters.
“Come on, let’s move,” the man said with a thick but straight British accent.
The remnants of her dream faded and Alex sat up quickly, realizing she had been sleeping in a king-size bed in a room she did not recognize.
“It’s been twelve hours,” the man said. “I figured that was long enough. We’ve got work to do.”
Alex blinked to bring him into focus. It took just a moment to place him. The stocky man standing over her was the one who had delivered the gun to her flat when she first arrived in Cambridge.
“What’s happening?” Alex asked, pushing the covers to the side. She still wore the clothes she had dressed in as she prepared to go out for drinks on Friday night.
“Just a bit of excitement, mate. Like a typical American, you shot up your apartment. I got you out of there just before the coppers showed up. We’re good now.”
“I don’t understand.”
“What’s not to understand, mate? I hustled you out of your flat so you didn’t end up in the nick.”
Flashes of the previous night came back to her. The gun. Laverne on the floor. Drew in the doorway, his silhouette visible over the barrel of the 9-millimeter. The blast from the discharge, the splintering of the door, and the heavy footsteps running toward her bedroom.
