Breath burned deep in her chest and her sister’s face flashed before her eyes. Fliss! She didn’t want to leave her. She never wanted to leave her on her own. She might have Mason, but he wasn’t enough. Not yet. It was too early.
Jenna parted her lips. What words could possibly make any difference to the man's decision? He was a dead man anyway. Gordon Lawrence’s life was over whether he killed her or not. What was one more body?
All she could hope for was to delay the inevitable.
‘Gordon,’ she appealed. ‘There's no need for this. There are police everywhere. Do you really want another death on your hands?’
She took another step away. Away from the gun, away from the direct shot.
Emptiness deadened his eyes as they narrowed in the late afternoon light pouring golden across the fields.
His mouth tightened with nostrils pinched and white around the edges. ‘It doesn't matter. Nothing. None of it matters any more. I’m not sure it ever did.’
About to answer, Jenna’s heart jammed in her throat as she caught a movement inside the barn in her peripheral vision and could only hope Gordon Lawrence hadn’t noticed her harsh flinch.
Seemingly oblivious, he shrugged. ‘Death is only life in another realm.’
Ice ran through her veins as the figure in the barn pushed up to crawl on hands and knees towards the door. The figure raised its head and Poppy Lawrence’s soul-destroyed eyes stared at her from a gaunt, pallid face.
Aware of the tremble in her fingers and the tremor in her voice, Jenna raised her chin. If nothing else, she could give the girl a chance.
‘Gordon, it doesn't have to be this way.’
‘Oh it does. You see, I came for my daughter.’
The dull thwack, thwack, thwack of the approaching helicopter filled the air.
Gordon Lawrence shrugged and, with a casual disregard that sent ice coursing through her veins, he engaged the lock mechanism with a double ratcheting click.
From around the corner of the black barn, Lee Gardner stormed, his view of Gordon obscured by the barn door. Vibrating with anger he’d allowed to build in his own mind, he came straight at her at the same time Poppy Lawrence staggered to her feet and stumbled out into the daylight.
Poppy lurched to a halt just behind Gordon, her long skinny legs trembled with the effort to stay upright.
Unaware of his daughter’s presence, Gordon Lawrence swung the barrel of the gun in a smooth arc to train it on PC Gardner.
Jenna’s breath burned in the depths of her chest.
PC Gardner turned his head in slow motion, only just aware of another presence.
Skin florid from anger, he screwed up his face, his mouth a vicious twist.
‘Put the fucking gun down now!’
Arrogance and ego burst from him in a torrent of fury and sealed his fate.
Gordon raised the gun.
Poppy rushed forward. ‘Daddy!’
50
Tuesday 21 April 1640 hours
BOOM!
Gunshot exploded, filling her head with nothing but roaring thunder.
Jenna slammed her eyes closed, instinct making her whip her head away, but not before the hot gush of what she could only imagine was blood and grey matter hit her and splattered its hot, wet slime over her skin.
The unmistakable metallic taste of blood filled her mouth as a jelly-like substance slithered down her face and clogged her nose. Her breath jammed in her throat. Her world spiralled down to slow motion as every muscle, sinew and tissue turned to water.
Boneless, Jenna flung her arms around Poppy and dropped. She knocked the child to the ground, covering the girl’s smaller body with her own. Her forehead slammed into the stony ground. With only a vague perception of the pain burning through her knees as numbness engulfed her, taking her down, down into a blooming white fog of amnesia.
Eyes screwed shut, the outside world crumbled away, spiralling as white noise consumed her, fizzing through her brain to blanket every coherent thought.
With vague awareness, Jenna gave an instinctive jerk as another loud bang followed the first in quick succession. The only noise to penetrate the gushing flood of water filling her head.
Nothing compelled her to move as she slithered, stretching herself full out to protect Poppy from the next gunshot.
With distant consciousness of voices barking out commands, Jenna held on to the one link with the outside world. She kept count. One, two.
It was important she hung on to the connection. They’d want to know afterwards. They would ask her questions. The echoing thunder made her doubt what she’d heard. Two gunshots, possibly three.
She screwed her eyes even tighter shut to stop the image of PC Gardner’s head exploding in a Catherine wheel of blood and bone and matter. Not yet ready to face that image.
51
Tuesday 21 April 1645 hours
Jenna tucked her face into the top of Poppy’s head and breathed in the dust as it rose in a furious cloud around them. Unprepared to open her eyes, she clenched her fingers into the child’s hair and pushed it back from her face not sure whether Poppy had been hit or not in the spray of shot from the gun. Frozen beneath her, Jenna could only be reassured by the vague tremor that vibrated through the child’s body and the heart-rending whimpers like a beaten dog.
Rough hands slapped at her to try and get her to move, but numbness invaded every muscle so even her head was too heavy to lift.
‘Fuck.’ Gruff tones pushed through the fog.
‘Where’s she hit?’ The concern in the voice nudged at her.
She was okay. She needed to let them know she was okay. She’d not been hit. She simply didn’t have the wherewithal to drag herself up from the wallowing clouds that grabbed at her, trying to haul her under.
‘Is she hit?’
She had no idea who was talking, their voices a muffled wash of words sliding into each other. Did they mean her, or Poppy?
‘I don’t know. She’s in shock.’
Who was in shock? She took in a sip of air.
‘Fucking A, she is.’
She let out a light snort and opened her eyes to meet Mason’s. The colour had leached from his face, leaving him a pallid shade of yellow. For an instant a glassy-eyed Ryan popped his head into her vision, before he was gone.
She had to pull herself together. Nothing had happened to her. She wasn’t the one who’d been shot. She was uninjured.
She filled her lungs, aware her erratic breathing needed to be slowed down. She held onto the breath until her chest burned and then let it out in a soft whoosh. Too fast. She tried again.
Breathe in. Two, three.
Out. Whoosh.
In. Bam! Bam! Two shots.
Her body spasmed.
‘Fuck, Jenna. Fuck.’ The urgency in Mason’s voice reached her and she clawed her way back to the surface as Poppy lay still beneath her. Safe. Protected. And damned if Jenna could move off her. She clung to her. A lifeline. Aware she needed to move.
They’d need her. She was a police officer and a witness. They’d want her statement. But her body refused to obey as she clung to Poppy, her sole purpose to protect.
Shock.
They said she was in shock.
She might recognise it, but it didn’t mean she could push her way through it.