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

across to the door, keys in my spare hand, unable to stop my shoes from crunching on the gravel. I found the right one, unlocked the door and, as quietly as possible, lifted it up on to its runners. At that moment, I didn’t want to look round, just in case someone was creeping up on me, gun in hand, ready to put a bullet in my head. It was almost better not to know.
    But I did look.
    And saw the big man in the shadows of the burning house, maybe fifteen yards away. In his black clothes he was almost invisible in the darkness and smoke, but it was definitely him. And he was definitely pointing a gun at me, his arm perfectly steady. I couldn’t see Pen anywhere, but knew she wouldn’t be far away.
    ‘Stay where you are and drop the gun,’ he called out, because he knew I’d seen him and I assumed he needed to get closer to get a better shot at me. This was the first time he’d spoken and, like Pen, he had an American accent.
    For a second I didn’t move. Then, as he took a step forward and called out the words ‘He’s here’ over his shoulder, I leapt into the welcome darkness of the garage, swinging the gun up behind me and giving the trigger a hard squeeze. The gun kicked as I fired three times in his general direction, hoping to put him off balance, before fumbling for the car key. I knew Jane pressed a button to turn off the central locking but it was hard to tell which one it was in the darkness and I could hear rapid footsteps on the gravel.
    I ducked down behind the car as a shot whistled past before ricocheting off the back wall. I pressed one button on the key, then another, and the lights on the BMW flashed. A second shot flew through the garage, dangerously close to my head, so using the car as cover I fired off another shot towards my attacker, forcing him to jump to one side, temporarily out of sight.
    I threw myself inside the car. The driver’s seat was way too far forward and my knees were virtually hitting my chest, but that was the least of my worries. I turned on the engine, yanked the car into drive, thanking God that at least part of my memory was working, then accelerated out of the garage, grabbing the gun with my free hand and keeping my head down, tensing for the inevitable ambush.
    It came almost immediately. As I shoved my foot flat on the floor and the tyres ripped up gravel, I saw the guy loom to my left, gun outstretched, already firing. Glass broke, and I actually felt the heat from the bullet as it passed just in front of my face. More bullets hissed through the car’s interior, their sound partially muffled by the silencer on his gun, but I had no time to be scared. Instead, I opened up with my own gun, the noise of its retorts tearing through my ears. He was barely ten feet away from me and he was a big target, so even in a moving car it was hard for me to miss.
    And I didn’t. I wasn’t sure how many times I hit him, but I saw him fall, and then I was turning away and concentrating on where I was driving.
    That was when I saw Pen running out towards me from the side of the house. Her face was a mask of pure rage, and she was holding something in both hands. I just had time to process that it was a stone statue and then she was hurling it at the windscreen with a force I really wasn’t expecting. I swung the wheel away from her reflexively but the statue still hit the windscreen on the passenger side, smashing a fist-sized hole in the glass before bouncing off across the bonnet.
    The car skidded off the driveway and on to the lawn, and I swung it round as I came to the front of the house, giving Pen as wide a berth as possible, before accelerating towards the trees and the mainland. The car my assailants had come here in was directly in front of me, blocking the exit, so I drove through a flowerbed to avoid it, then slowed up, lowered my driver’s-side window, leaned out with the gun and put a bullet in their front tyre, grinning as it deflated with a fart-like hiss. I inched