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She and Alex had never planned for this. He’d never told her how to deal with this.
Alex.
Her heart lurched. She remembered what the man had said. He couldn’t be dead. She would know it, deep within herself. She would feel it.
The clock continued to count the time.Tick, tock.She wrung her hands over and over. Not sure how to leave. She had both guns. There was no other evidence she’d been there, except for the dead man on the floor.
No, there would be fingerprints. Her fingerprints. Sarah pulled the jacket down over her hand and started rubbing the sides of the washing machine she’d grabbed to launch herself off when she kicked his head. What else had she touched? The door handle on the way in? Anything else? Sarah tried to retrace her steps but she couldn’t think.
She had to get out of there. The walls were closing in on her and every horror movie she’d ever seen started replaying in her head. The smell of the blood was stronger now, and she couldn’t get the sensation of his cold, waxy, dead skin off her fingers, where she’d felt for a pulse.
Sarah rubbed the door handle with her jacket on the way out and made sure the door locked behind her. She quickly checked for security cameras outside the launderette and up and down the alley. She couldn’t see any.
Head down and arms folded tightly around her, Sarah walked briskly away from the scene of her crime.
ChapterThirty-Four
The airport was well outside the city walls and thankfully serviced by the train. Sarah found the station and tried to read the signs. She knew the name of the stop she needed to get to, and the train line. But she couldn’t make her eyes focus or her mind make sense of the words. Finally, she sawParc Expoand the platform. Last train this evening, leaving in two minutes.
The train pulled in right on time and Sarah sank gratefully into a seat at the back of a carriage. Overwhelming tiredness enveloped her like a weighted jacket pulling her underwater. She wanted to make sense of what had happened but her eyelids were lead. No. She had to stay awake. Alert. Someone could be watching her.
Sarah rubbed her face and surveyed her surroundings. She was sitting at the back, against the wall so no one could sneak up behind her. A woman who looked to be in her late forties, dark ponytail, jeans and sweater under a cheap vinyl maroon jacket, sat four rows in front with her feet propped on a suitcase. She was engrossed in her Facebook feed. A younger man, early twenties perhaps, was dressed in a tracksuit and work boots. He had dumped his duffle bag on the floor and was lying across the seats, seemingly asleep, his legs sticking out into the aisle.
Satisfied her travel companions were not assassins in disguise, Sarah dropped her gaze into her lap. A brownish smear on her jeans caught her eye. Blood. She must have knelt in it when she was checking for a pulse. Frantically, she checked herself over. She couldn’t see any other tell-tale signs she had recently spilled the blood of another human being.
Except for the smell. It was following her.
Logically she knew there was no way they were both leaving the launderette alive, but it was still unsettling to know she’d killed him. Worse yet, maybe she’d even meant to. What did that make her? Would she end up like Alex now?
She felt numb. And so tired. She got up from her seat and stood near the doors. She had to stay awake. She couldn’t risk falling asleep and missing her stop. Sarah leaned on the center pole and willed herself to keep her eyes open. It should only be a few more minutes.
Keep it together, Sarah…
Which meant she shouldn’t think about it. The one thing that she refused to believe could be true. Alex was not dead.
He’ll be waiting at the airport.
That’s what she had to believe. He was waiting for her and they would jump into Tom’s car and drive to the safe house in Florence. The man in the launderette, he’d been hot on her heels. He couldn’t know what happened to Alex.
Just have to get to the meeting point.
Sarah watched from the door as the train pulled into the station. The platform looked deserted. The doors slid open and she waited until they started to close before slipping through them. She walked directly to the turnstile, keeping her eyes on the ground to avoid the security cameras she knew would be watching her.
She quickened her pace and headed out of the station onto the street then turned left without pausing to consider where she was. She was relying on Tom’s hurried directions. Turn left, keep walking until you reach the big apartment block in the middle of nowhere that had once been accommodation for pilots in training. She didn’t want to slow her pace, had to make it seem like she knew where she was going.
The building loomed in the dark. She went down the side, avoiding the front and found the entry she was looking for. She banged her open palm against the wooden door, paint flaking off as she did.
It opened immediately, Tom stepping back to let her in.
Inside the light was low, but so much brighter than outside. They were alone, it seemed.
‘You like to cut things fine. Time’s almost up.’ His expression changed and he looked behind her. ‘Where the hell is Alex?’
Sarah met his steady gaze.He gestured towards the table and chairs against the nearest wall and they took a seat opposite each other. She took a breath and began her story. How The Devils had beaten them to the apartment. Alex telling her to go. Running, the gunshot echoing as she didn’t look back. Finding the launderette only to be followed in. Giving away the only ground she had. Sarah didn’t falter as she recounted how he had pushed her up against the washing machine, intent on raping her. How she had used the machine to leverage herself up, kicking him not once, but twice in the face. The moment she had realized he was dead - that she’d killed him. How she gathered the guns, wiped away her fingerprints and fled to the train station.
When she finished her story, Tom’s face betrayed no emotion, no trace of collusion or condemnation.
‘And Alex?’
