The Ben Hope Collection: 6 BOOK SET (164 page)

He ripped his hand away and slapped her, then again. And again. She could feel his blood on her face. Heard the rasp of his voice close to her ear as he spoke to her in that strange language. Then he laughed.

She knew what the woman had told him to do. His job was to drown her in the lake.

She felt her heels drag on the stones as they neared the shoreline. His feet splashed into the water, and the icy shock took her breath away and made her heart stutter as he
dumped her body into the waves. She screamed again, but it turned into a gurgle as he pressed a big flat palm against her face and drove her head down under the surface.

The water roared in her ears and filled her nose. Bubbles streamed out of her mouth. She flailed desperately with her hands, managed to fight free of his grip. Broke the surface and filled her lungs with air before he pushed her back down under the icy black water. She battled to hold her breath as her fingernails raked at his hands and wrists. But he was just too strong.

She knew she couldn’t hold on much longer. In a few short seconds the water was going to come pouring into her lungs and he was going to hold her there until she drowned.

She was going to die. This was it.

Then suddenly she was gasping and wheezing and tasting air as her head burst free of the surface again. The man had let go of her. Through the coughing fit that racked her body she saw him go down on his knees, the water surging up to his neck and over his shoulders.

She blinked the water out of her eyes. A dark figure was standing behind the man, with an arm locked around his throat. A brutal twist, and Sabrina heard the crack over the roar of the wind as the stocky guy’s neck snapped like a branch.

Then a hand was grasping her tightly by the arm and pulling her out of the lake.

Ben hauled the coughing, spluttering woman up onto the shore. In his right hand was the automatic pistol he’d taken from her attacker’s belt.

To come to an idyllic lakeside retreat to talk to a retired physics professor and find a gang of armed killers trying to murder a woman – Ben wasn’t even trying to figure it out. The questions could come later, after he’d got himself and her out of this.

It had been on the approach to the house, the Audi’s windscreen wipers batting away the thundering rain on full speed, that he’d spotted the beige Citroen Picasso parked at the gate. Innocuous enough, but a woman’s scream of terror was a sound that could carry a long way, even through a stormy night. He’d killed his lights and engine and coasted the last few yards to the house, left the Audi hidden among the trees and come in over the wall. He could still hear the screaming as he’d sneaked through the grounds. Crouched behind a flowery shrub, he’d wiped the rain out of his eyes and watched the blond female and the tall man walk away around the side of the house and head back towards their car.

He’d been more interested in the woman. Everything about her cool, imperious bearing said that she was the leader. As she walked, she’d kept glancing at something in her hand.
Hard to tell from that distance, but Ben had thought it looked like she was holding a pile of CDs.

Then, as Ben had sat watching, his attention was quickly diverted to the second guy, the squat one with the muscles. It was becoming increasingly obvious that he didn’t have good intentions towards the woman they’d dragged from the house.

In situations like that, it was hard to remain a passive observer.

Wishing there’d been time to conceal the attacker’s body, Ben helped the frightened woman up the bank to the cover of the long grass, laid her down and crouched beside her in the shadows. Any minute now, the other two were going to be wondering what was keeping their friend so long, and they’d be back.

She shrank away from him, fear in her eyes. Water was dripping from her hair, and her clothing was soaked. Ben could feel his own wet shirt clinging to him, and the wind chilling his skin. He knew he had to get the woman inside the house quickly. Even in summer, hypothermia was a dangerous reality.

‘I won’t hurt you,’ he said softly. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Sabrina.’ She wheezed, coughed up lake water. ‘Who are you?’

‘Sabrina, you’re going to have to keep your head down. Don’t do anything unless I say. Understand?’

The sound of car doors. Shouts carrying on the wind, right on cue.

‘Slatan?’ The woman’s voice, harsh and edged with anger. The name and the accent sounded Bulgarian or Estonian to Ben.

He peered up over the long grass. The rain was moving on quickly. The wind tore a hole in the dark clouds and in
the pale moonlight he saw the two figures approaching from the path along the side of the house, scanning right and left as they walked a few yards apart. Both had a grim, hard look and moved cautiously. Professional killers, Ben thought. And as they crossed the terrace to the edge of the grass, he saw the stubby black weapons they were holding in their arms that looked worryingly like Israeli Mini Uzi submachine guns. Sound suppressors, extended thirty-round magazines. The bright crimson dots of laser sight beams swept the lakeside. Whatever it was these people had come out here for, somebody wasn’t taking any chances.

He quickly checked the pistol he’d taken from the dead man. Even in the dark, he could tell by touch what it was – a big-framed, old-fashioned Colt .45 automatic, maybe a Gold Cup or a Government model. It was a fancy piece, with an extended beavertail grip safety and a muzzle compensator to control recoil by diverting part of the gas blast from the barrel. But all the buttons and bells in the world couldn’t disguise the fact that he had only eight rounds at best and barely visible iron sights that were next to useless for shooting in the dark, against state-of-the-art laser optics and the high-capacity firepower of two machine guns. It didn’t seem quite fair.

He shrugged to himself. One thing the SAS had taught him was that you did what you could with what you had. And he was lucky he had anything at all. He press-checked the breech. Glanced across at Sabrina and put a finger to his lips. Saw the whites of her eyes in the moonlight.

The woman and the tall man were about fifteen yards away when the woman suddenly stopped and pointed at the lake.

The floating dark shape in the water was exactly what Ben had been hoping they wouldn’t spot. His stomach tightened like a fist as he watched and waited for their reaction.

The woman did pretty much what he expected. She was definitely the leader, and a decisive one. It took her less than two seconds to scan the long grass, jerk the cocking bolt on her Uzi with a ferocious snarl and let loose a ripping spray of gunfire that churned up the ground dangerously close to the grassy clump where Ben and Sabrina were hidden.

The ball was rolling. No choice. Ben could hardly make out his sights against the target but he fired back anyway. The flat punch of the .45 stabbed his ears and he felt the recoil kick back against his palm. Shooting almost blind, but he’d hit something, because the woman cried out and staggered back a step and fell, clutching her arm. The tall man instantly opened up with his Uzi, lighting up the night with his muzzle flash.

The sustained burst of fire drove Ben back down the slope, dragging Sabrina with him as clumps of earth and bits of grass showered down over them. Sabrina rolled in the dirt, wrapping her arms around her head for protection.

Ben scrambled back up the bank just in time to see the tall man helping the woman to her feet and the two of them retreating back towards the side of the house. He chased after them. Saw blood on the ground where the woman had fallen, and a trail of bright red spots along the path.

At that moment the moon was obscured by another black cloud and the grounds were plunged back into darkness. The man and woman were little more than shadows up ahead. Ben broke into a sprint. As he ran he pointed the Colt and let off three more blind shots that he instinctively knew all went wide of the mark. The flitting shadows darted around the side of the house and into the front yard. He heard running steps on the wet gravel. The sound of doors slamming and the Citroen’s engine revving high, the rasp of spinning wheels.

Ben rounded the corner of the house and emerged into the yard just as the car was taking off at high speed. He fired at the taillights as they sped away from the gate and up the road, but they were already out of effective pistol range. He lowered the Colt and watched the headlamps carve through the bends, and then the Citroën was gone and the road was as black as the hills that merged into the night.

He turned away and started running back to Sabrina.

The sky was clearing and the wind was dropping as Ben took Sabrina back to the house. He wasn’t quite sure whether her passivity was a sign of trust for him or a symptom of shock, but her body was limp as he carried her in his arms, and her dripping hair nuzzled against his shoulder. She didn’t seem able to speak, and the only sound she made was a weak sobbing as he carried her up the stairs to look for a bathroom. His first priority was to get her warm and dry. They could talk later.

He found the bathroom he was looking for on the first floor, and kicked open the door. Lights came on automatically as he carried her in, and he remembered what Lenny Salt had told him about Adam O’Connor’s smart house technology business. He laid Sabrina gently down in a big cane chair in the corner, tore three fluffy cotton towels off a heated rail and wrapped them around her as he ran the bath to a temperature just warm enough to get her blood circulating again.

He kneeled down beside where she sat, checked her pulse and spoke softly to her. She murmured back. Her face was still pale, but colour was returning quickly. Once he was satisfied that she wasn’t about to keel over, he left her alone to get out of her wet things and into the warm water, and
went downstairs to check all the doors and windows. Everything had electronic locks that clunked like a car’s central locking at the touch of a button. He checked each room in turn, the house sensing his movement and lighting the path ahead everywhere he went.

He could see no signs of a struggle anywhere, until he walked into the master bedroom back upstairs and found the rumpled bed, smashed bookcase and the electric guitar lying on the rug. Moving up to the second floor, the first door he tried led into what was obviously the bedroom of a young teenager. A single bed with an X-Men duvet set, a collection of electronic gadgets scattered across the floor, posters on the wall. He closed the door.

Across the broad, lushly carpeted landing from the boy’s room was a darkened room with a half-open door. Ben went inside cautiously. Again the lights went on automatically for him as he entered, and he saw that he was in a large study.

Someone else had visited the room, and not long ago. Ben crouched down and felt the shoeprints on the carpet. They were still damp from the rain. Two sets of them, one larger and one smaller. The tall man and the woman had been here.

He stood up and looked around. The ultra-modern furnishings were sparse and tasteful. The walls were lined with framed black and white photos of space-age-looking houses in a variety of settings. Below a window overlooking the lake was a black leather swivel chair and a broad desk in ebony wood.

The damp shoeprints led past the desk to a wall safe in the corner. Ben went over to it and saw how the shoeprints were more concentrated here, overlapping as though the intruders had spent a few moments standing in this spot examining the contents of the safe. They hadn’t bothered
shutting the steel door after them, and it hung open. There was no keypad or dial visible anywhere, and he guessed that it was probably voice-activated using a password. No sign of forced entry. The intruders must have known the password.

Inside the safe were various folders and files marked with printed labels for things like tax and insurance, a couple of lockable steel cash boxes, a presentation case for an expensive Swiss watch, and two horizontal racks of CDs. Ben ran his eye along the double row of discs. None of them was music or DVDs. They were all computer files, and the professor appeared to keep his work life well organised because each little section was marked with labels obviously relating to his own smart house design concepts. CPU VOICE-ACTIVATION SYSTEM. IRIS SCAN RECOGNITION SYSTEM. EMERGENCY OVERRIDE SYSTEM. Ben ran his eye quickly along the line, then stopped.

There was an empty space in the rack where four CDs used to be. The label underneath the empty space was completely unlike the others. It said KAMMLER STUFF.

He gazed around the study for more clues. Nothing leaped out at him. He walked over to the desk. There were just a few items on its gleaming black surface. A chrome steel lamp, a closed MacBook and another framed photo, this time of a young boy of about thirteen smiling happily for the camera. Next to the computer was a phone handset off its charger with just one bar left on its battery life indicator, as though it had been left lying there for a few days by someone in a rush to get away. Near the phone was a ballpoint pen and a copy of the
Irish Times
, dated five days ago.

Noticing a scrawled note in ballpoint on the upper margin on the front page, Ben leaned down to read it. The scribble had been done in a hurry, but he could make out that it was
a set of flight times from Dublin to Graz via Vienna, arriving 6.06 p.m. Austrian time.

He sensed a presence in the doorway and spun round quickly.

It was Sabrina. She was wrapped in a bathrobe with a towel round her hair and another one round her shoulders. Her eyes looked a lot brighter, and there was a flush of pink in her cheeks that hadn’t been there before.

‘I thought you’d gone.’ She studied him curiously for a moment. ‘You saved me,’ she said softly. ‘Thank you.’

‘How do you feel?’

She gave a shaky chuckle. ‘I’ll live. Thanks to you. I don’t even know your name.’

‘It’s Ben,’ he said.

‘Glad you showed up when you did, Ben.’

‘You’re probably wondering what I’m doing here.’ She tried to smile. ‘Right now, everything is so screwed up, nothing seems that strange to me.’