Sanctus and The Key: 2 Bestselling Thrillers. Simon Toyne

She stifled a yawn. ‘Where we headed exactly?’

      ‘Ruin,’ he said, steering away from the traffic and down a service road. ‘Where else?’

      Then, through the crackle of storm static, her first message started to play.

      47

      ‘Hello … er … Miss Adamsen. This is Inspector Arkadian. I just wanted to say again how sorry … for your loss … e-mailed some photos to a Detective Berringer … Newark PD …’

      Liv pressed the phone hard against her ear as the static rose, swamping parts of the message.

       ‘He’ll call you in the … formally ID the … He can deal with everything his end … don’t hesitate … call me if you have an …’

      The message ended and her eyes jerked to the man sitting behind the wheel. If Arkadian had sent pictures for her to ID, it meant he didn’t think she was coming. So why would he send someone to collect her? The second message started to play.

       ‘Hi, my name is Detective Berringer with the Newark City Police Department …’

      She didn’t wait to hear the rest.

      He’d said his name was Gabriel. He’d said he was a cop.

       No.

      He’d never said he was a cop. He hadn’t shown her his badge when he’d introduced himself. He just said Arkadian sent him and she had assumed the rest. Stupid. She’d been suckered by her own exhaustion and by the fact that he was nice-looking and polite. So who the hell was he?

      ‘Everything OK?’

      She looked up and met his eyes in the mirror.

      ‘Yeah,’ she said, suddenly aware that her face must look a picture of concern. ‘Just work. I hopped the flight here in a bit of a hurry. Didn’t have time to finish off a few things before I left. My boss is real pissed at me.’

      His eyes flicked back to the road as a van hissed past in a cloud of spray. A squeal of tyres and the interior flooded with red. The van in front had braked hard. Too hard.

      Gabriel followed suit. The Renault’s wheels squealed across the greasy surface of the road. There was a violent jolt as its front bumper smashed into the back of the van. Liv was thrown forward hard against her belt. There was a sharp crack and for the briefest of moments, before the airbags deployed, she thought she’d been shot.

      Then everything went into slow motion.

      48

      Before the driver’s airbag even started to deflate Gabriel was beating it down, unclasping his seat belt and reaching for the door. He kicked it open as hard as he could, rolling into the rain before it had time to swing shut again. It happened so fast that Liv was still looking at the empty driver’s seat when her own door opened.

      She turned, and came face to face with the muzzle of a gun.

      ‘Out!’ a voice shouted from somewhere behind it.

      She looked past the black hole of the barrel at the young man holding it. He wasn’t much more than a boy. Acne scars showed through the fuzz of a sparse blonde beard and rain poured from the peak of a baseball cap pulled low over pale blue eyes.

      ‘Out!’ he shouted again.

      He leaned forward and grabbed her with his free hand just as the glass behind her exploded, showering the interior with tiny, glittering shards. The boy jerked backwards, pirouetting as if someone had yanked hard on a rope attached to his left shoulder. Liv glanced back to see Gabriel framed in the jagged remains of the window.

      ‘Run!’ he shouted, then in a flash of movement he was swept from view.

      Liv whipped her head back and stared through the open door at the pale-eyed boy lying where he had fallen, staring up at the stinging rain. A shower of glass jewels fell to the floor as she fumbled for the release button and her seat belt slid across her body. She splashed past the corpse towards the shadows on the far side of the street. She expected to hear the crack of a gunshot behind her at any moment and feel the thump of a bullet punching her in the back and spinning her to the ground.

      She made it to the sidewalk and skidded across it to a verge of low bushes and grass. Given two years’ growth and kind winters the wiry shrubs might have offered some sort of cover, but in their current state they served as little more than obstacles. She zigzagged between them, slithering over ground so saturated it was like running on ice. She shortened her stride. Risked a glance behind her.

      Visibility was practically zero through the thick curtain of rain. She could just make out the outline of the car and the van in front of it, but nothing else. Something whacked into her, throwing her violently backwards. She lay there for a few moments, blinking up into the rain as the coldness of the earth seeped into her body. For the second time in as many minutes she thought she’d been shot, then she became aware of a shape in front of her, stretched across the darkness like a huge spider web. She followed its faint outline until she saw something thin and sturdy jutting up from the ground. A post. She’d run smack into a chain-link fence.

      She risked another glance in the direction of the two cars and saw her cell glowing on the ground near her head, thrown from her grasp when she’d fallen. She grabbed it, terrified that its meagre light might act as a beacon for whoever might be stalking her. She smothered the display with her hand, pressed hard on the off button. From her new position she could no longer see the car or the van. It made her feel better – but only for a second.

      A shot rang out, followed by the sound of an engine starting up and the tortured shriek of tyres on tarmac. She heard the whine of bullets against metal from somewhere down the street and a window blowing out. The fleeing vehicle powered round a bend and was gone.

      She looked back up towards the road. Saw nothing but the yellow haze of the streetlights. She imagined someone standing beyond the shallow ridge, gun in hand, scanning the darkness. Looking for her. But who was it? One of the guys who’d ambushed them, or Gabriel? All she wanted was to lie perfectly still, not run, not draw attention to herself. But when she had bolted from the car she’d headed straight to the first bit of cover she’d seen. She hadn’t even run at an angle. She was lying in the first place whoever was up there would look. She had to move.

      She looked to her right, in the direction they’d been driving. A row of service buildings marked a junction. Storage units, most likely. Full of luggage or freight, and maybe even people working night shifts – just a few hundred yards away from her. In the other direction the glow of the airport terminal highlighted the underside of the low cloud. She had no idea how far away it was, but it was a lot further than the service buildings. She listened out for someone approaching. Heard the hiss of the rain. Her own rapid breathing. Nothing else.

      She took three quick breaths, scrambled to her feet, and ran. The logical thing was to head for the nearest units and try and raise the alarm, so she went the other way. Back to the warm, brightly lit concourse, and the crowds of tourists staring blankly up at the departure boards, and the two cops with the semi-automatic weapons slung from their shoulders.

      She crouched low, keeping the fence to her right, hoping to God that whoever was up there was looking in the opposite direction. A sudden flash of lightning split the night, burning an image on Liv’s retina of everything that lay in her path: the gate in the chain link fence about sixty feet in front of her, row upon row of parked cars beyond it. If she could just make it amongst the serried ranks of bullet-stopping family saloons and weekend runabouts, she might be safe.

      Thunder rumbled overhead. The gate was now just forty feet away and the verge to her left started to flatten out as it dropped level with the entrance road. She was losing what little cover she had on that side, but there was nothing she could do about it.

      The black-and-yellow stripes of