The Final Minute by Simon Kernick Read Free Book Online Page A

am, and by the way, who the hell am I?’ But I didn’t. ‘Yeah, he’s still here.’
    ‘Get him out of there. Now.’
    I glanced over towards the door, keeping the gun trained on it. ‘What’s going on?’
    ‘The location’s been compromised. Don’t ask me any more questions. Grab our man, get him out of there, and set fire to the place. We don’t want to leave any evidence anyone was ever there. Understand?’
    There were a million more questions I wanted to ask but I knew that now wasn’t the time. ‘Sure. I’m on it.’
    ‘If you can’t find Alison, leave her. We can find her later. And be quick. We haven’t got much time.’
    He rang off and I put down the phone, going over what he’d just said. I remembered it pretty much word for word. The irony was that I had a great short-term memory, but on its own, it wasn’t going to help me find out why I was being treated like some hugely valuable commodity – a man with priceless information I didn’t even know myself.
    I was still pondering that as I approached the bedroom door, gun in hand.
    And that was when I smelled it.
    Smoke. It seemed like someone was already ahead of the man on the phone in deciding to torch the place.
    I yanked open the door and jumped to one side, just in case someone was waiting there to ambush me. But the landing was empty and the air acrid. I could hear the angry crackle of burning wood as I ran over to the top of the stairs. Smoke was pouring down the hallway from the direction of the front door, while flames gouted through the open lounge door. Unfortunately, there was also a thick black cloud of smoke billowing out of the kitchen as well, effectively trapping me up here. I cursed myself for leaving Pen alone down there. She must have regained consciousness and, rather than tackle me now that I had her gun, decided to burn me alive.
    Already the smoke was making it hard to breathe, and Jane’s house was all wood panelling, so it was going to go up like a tinderbox.
    Putting a hand over my mouth, I ran back to my bedroom. At least I knew I could get out that way. I shut the door behind me, cutting off the worst of the smoke, and went over to the window I’d sneaked out of earlier. Someone had been up here and shut it, so I opened it again quietly. I took a quick look out into the night and didn’t see anything untoward, so unscrewed the gun’s silencer and chucked it on the bed, before shoving the gun down the front of my jeans, saying a silent prayer for it not to go off accidentally, and climbing out the window, leaving my bedroom and the only life I really knew behind, for ever.
    This time I didn’t hang about but dropped immediately to the ground, rolling over in the grass and gritting my teeth silently against the pain of the impact.
    Still I didn’t see anyone. I could make for the safety of the trees and wait for my pursuers to leave, because they were going to have to now they’d set the house on fire. Even in an isolated place like the peninsula the fire would be seen for miles around, and already the flames were beginning to take hold. But the thing was, I didn’t want to be anywhere near this place when the police and fire brigade turned up, because I’d have a lot of very awkward questions to answer and no real means of answering them. It seemed best then, now that I had the keys to Jane’s BMW, to make a getaway on wheels. I knew I could drive. I had plenty of vague memories of being behind the wheel of a car and I’d got Jane to let me have a go in the BMW with her in the passenger seat a couple of weeks back (even though she’d taken a lot of persuading). I could remember what to do perfectly.
    I got to my feet, pulled the gun from the front of my jeans and moved across the grass in the direction of the detached garage on the other side of the house, listening out for any signs of danger. As I rounded the corner, the garage appeared in front of me twenty feet away. I looked round quickly, then ran