Sacrifice by James Harper

Author:James Harper [Harper, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Goodreads: 47506901
Publisher: James Harper Books
Published: 2019-07-31T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 31

‘I’M NOT HER,’ Lydia said, cutting off the flood of Evan’s desperate warnings as he answered his phone, didn’t even say hello . A stunned silence filled the void between them for a couple of beats. ‘It’s Lydia.’

‘I’d worked that out,’ he snapped.

Then he asked the question he didn’t want the answer to, his mind full of thoughts he didn’t want to think. Of Kate Guillory lying crumpled on the ground, what was left of her head lying in a pool of blood. Lydia rifling through her bag and pockets, finding her phone. Calling him to gloat.

‘How did you get Kate’s phone?’

She ignored the question as if he hadn’t spoken.

‘You shouldn’t have made it so easy for me to get the Vanquish back.’

And he ignored her taunts, the mention of the sniper’s rifle. He couldn’t shake the image of Guillory lying dead on the ground, the denim-blue eyes flecked with blood, staring sightlessly at the sky. All her worries and fears proved right and taken mercifully away with the same sharp crack of a high-powered rifle. All of it his fault. Because she still hadn’t said whether Guillory was alive or dead. His voice when he found it was a dry rattle.

‘Where’s Kate?’

It seemed to him that the silence that followed lasted a lifetime or more. He felt himself growing old and weak as he waited, the phone growing heavy in his hand, while she kept him twisting in the wind. In truth it was no more than a split second, the time it takes an unbalanced mind to decide that the time for games is over, the time to get down to business has arrived.

Her voice had lost all of its mocking quality when she spoke.

‘We’re in the Bluebird Diner.’

With that one small word, the we and not I , his legs became rubber hose, unable to sustain his weight. His whole body sagged. As if it had been his own head that had taken a direct hit from the Vanquish leaving him suspended for a brief moment before he collapsed to the ground.

He knew it was only a temporary reprieve, too early to allow the relief to dull his senses. He shook the lethargy from his limbs, pushed all thoughts of what might have been from his mind.

‘It doesn’t sound like it.’

‘I stepped outside to make the call.’

In the background he heard a sound like somebody rapping their knuckles on a window, pictured her grinning smugly at Guillory inside, the sour grimace she’d get back.

‘What do you want?’

‘You. Here. Right now.’

‘What else?’

A confused silence came down the line.

‘Why did you go outside to make the call? There must be something you don’t want her to hear.’

She laughed, a recognition of his perception mixed with pleasure at the devious workings of her own mind.

‘I’m not going to tell her how I got hold of the Vanquish, that’s all. It’s up to you whether you want to. Seeing as it’s aimed at her head right now.’ Then she snickered again.

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