Eighteen
deeper
Mayor Bromwell tipped sideways and struck the floor, his shattered face making a wet thunk as it
hit. Blood, fluids, and shreds of bone had spattered the floor, and more pulsed from the wounds. He moved
slowly, like a creature uncurl-ing from a long sleep, and made a terrible keening sound deep in his throat.
Then he was still.
Jazz looked up at Stevie, and he looked at her. There was a moment of doubt in her mind, an urge to
flee for her own safety, because Stevie still had the gun half raised. There was a blankness to his
expression, as though he was looking through her to what might happen beyond, and Jazz thought, He's
going to shoot me because I saw. But then his face fell slack, his mouth hung open, and life came into his
eyes once again.
They looked at each other for what felt like forever. And then the shouting began, and the footsteps,
and Stevie's mouth closed right.
"Jazz, we have to —"
"What the hell —"
"Later. Let's go."
Jazz turned around. A door burst open on the other side of the landing, across the hallway from her.
Philip and the other man came out, staring at her, and even though she thought she was disguised, the
recognition in the BMW man's eyes was instant and obvious. "You!"
Jazz entered the dead mayor's room and slammed the door behind her, turning the key. She skirted
around behind the corpse, keeping to the curved wall so that she did not tread in any blood, and Stevie
threw the door wide for her.
"Terence," Jazz said.
"He'll be okay."
"He didn't know?"
"Later." Stevie grabbed her arm hard and steered her along a small narrow corridor toward the rear
of the house. He was still carrying the gun in his other hand. "Go!"
Jazz ran, heart thumping, sweat chilling her back, and the implication of what she had just seen was
still very far away. There was no detail, though she felt it hovering around her, waiting to strike home. Her
mind was a haze, the only clear thing in that haze the image of her dead mother. So much blood. Such
murder.
"Turn right," Stevie said. He pushed her that way just in case she hadn't heard.
The house was coming to life. People shouted, footsteps pounded, doors burst open. She had thought
the building all but deserted as she sneaked around, looking for something she knew nothing about, but it
seemed that first impression had been wrong.
Voices came close, then moved away again. A door was smashed open to bang against a wall.
Someone shouted in shock, and another voice wailed in grief —a sound that chilled Jazz. She stopped, the
corridor before her ending in a sash window that was half open, and Stevie shoved her hard in the back.
"Through there and up!" he whispered.
"But —"
"Just fucking go!"
Jazz lifted the sash higher and peered out. She looked out upon landscaped gardens, and below and to
her right was the roof of the large conservatory through which they had entered. That seemed like days ago
but probably wasn't more than fifteen minutes. Everything's changed, she thought, and someone appeared
in the conservatory. A tall thin man, standing beside the low table in there, partly visible to Jazz through the
glazed roof.
Stevie placed his hand on her ass and pushed, but she slapped back at him and held her hand upright:
wait!
The man looked around, scanning the garden, then he seemed to speak into his sleeve. He shook his
head and went back into the kitchen.
Stevie pushed again. Someone must be getting close. He still had that gun, and Jazz didn't want
anyone else dead. Not even Philip, that mad monster who'd battered and kicked Cadge to death. Not even
him.
Below the window a steel platform was bolted into the wall, and to the left a hoop ladder rose eight
feet to the roof. Jazz went for it, moving quickly when she felt Stevie press up close behind her, jumping up
the first few rungs and then climbing quickly. Surely we should be going down? she thought, but perhaps
that was the point. They'd be looking for people trying to escape, not those holing up on the roof.
But they'd be trapped up there.
Jazz reached the roof. There was a small platform and then the roof pitch, shallow enough to climb
but still dan-gerous if she happened to slip. Beyond the ridge, she did not know.
"Up," Stevie said. "We've got to get out of sight."
"They'll shut the building down," she said. "We'll be trapped up here."
"We've got a couple of minutes to get away, that's all."
"You planned this?"
"Over the ridge in the middle of the roof, there's a flat area
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