Death in High Places - By Jo Bannister Page 0,75

a knife was when he drew it down her cheek, letting the blood out.

She still didn’t scream. She hadn’t been lying about that: screaming was not a McKendrick family trait. But she sucked in a gasp of sheer astonishment as she felt the skin part and the silky, cool caress of her own blood on her face. “Wha’…?!!!”

“Sorry,” said the man, apparently quite sincerely. “Needs must.”

“You’re working for me!”

“No, I’m not. I’m working for the man who pays my wages.”

“Who wouldn’t have known Horn was within a hundred miles of here if I hadn’t told him!”

“I know. And I’m sure he’s grateful. But the bottom line is, he’s paying to get a job done and this is what I need to do to finish it.” He drew another line in blood down her face.

* * *

“You said she was in on this!” Horn’s voice vibrated with horror and accusation. His eyes were bottomless with guilt.

McKendrick didn’t even look at him. “She is.” His tone was short, clipped; as if he had more important things to do than explain it all to a carpenter. He still didn’t dive for the door. “But she isn’t in control of it. She thought she’d be calling the shots, but events have got away from her. She didn’t allow for just how much Hanratty wants you dead.”

Horn didn’t give a toss for McKendrick’s analysis, right or wrong. Horn didn’t care that the girl on the monitor hated him enough to throw him to the wolves. The man behind her was holding her by her hair and drawing a third bloody tramline down her paper-white cheek.

Nicky Horn couldn’t bear to be responsible for any more pain. He reached for the keypad. “Which button?”

McKendrick slapped his hand aside. “That door is the last line of defense. For all of us. We’ve seen his face and we know who hired him—how can he let any of us live now?”

“You can’t let him keep doing that!”

“That’s for show. It’s for our benefit. He’s hurting her, but he isn’t doing her any real damage. Once he has you, it’ll be a bullet in the brain for the rest of us too.”

It wasn’t that Horn thought McKendrick was wrong. In fact he thought he was right: it was what he’d believed all along. But it was no longer relevant. Though there was nothing he could do to prevent these people dying, their deaths wouldn’t be on his conscience. But he could do something about the blood streaming in parallel lines down Beth McKendrick’s face, and that meant he couldn’t watch and not try. He began punching the keypad at random. “Which one? Which one?”

* * *

The security system had cost a fortune: the steel shutters in front of the kitchen door didn’t rattle as they rose, they gave a soft hum like a sleepy bee. For ten seconds nothing else happened. The other shutters remained in lockdown. Then the door opened and Robert McKendrick stepped stiffly out onto the back steps. “Please … stop…”

The man was still holding Beth by her hair, her head bent back over his shoulder, the knife—such a modest little blade—in his other hand, doing nothing for the moment but only the intention away from resuming its work. He watched McKendrick hesitate down the steps, unsure how closely he should approach. The door remained open behind him but no one else appeared.

“Spread your arms.”

McKendrick did as he was told. He was in his shirtsleeves and didn’t appear to be carrying a weapon. Even if he was, Hanratty’s man was among the best in the business—he didn’t expect to be outgunned by a merchant banker.

“All right.” Slowly, smoothly, the man put his knife hand behind him, and it reappeared cradling a gun. He let go of Beth’s hair. She staggered a little, then straightened up and just stood there, eyes stretched, too shocked to move away. Her arms spread in an unconscious echo of her father’s. She didn’t dare touch her face.

The man’s left hand disappeared for a moment, returned with a clean white handkerchief, which he pressed into her palm. “Sorry about that, miss. I’m sure Mr. Hanratty will make it up to you.”

McKendrick’s heart hit his diaphragm like a boxer’s glove. Until that very moment there had been the possibility that he’d read it wrong. That Hanratty’s instructions had precluded doing the safest thing, which was killing them all. But the man had named his employer in front of them. That wasn’t something he’d ever do