of the dark out here.”
He walked a few meters, within sight of his partner lying prone like a black log in the moonlight, and unzipped his fly.
At first he thought he’d walked into a low-hanging branch, grabbing at the sharp, sideways tug across his throat. But when his fingers pressed to the flesh, they came away wet. Very wet.
Stephen stopped in his tracks and clutched at the wound, just as a shadow passed before his vision, blocking his path back to Shona.
It all happened in absolute silence. A hand gripped his hair, slashed again at the base of his throat. He didn’t even have time to grab at the knife on his belt, or the pistol tucked into the holster on his ankle.
As he hit the ground, he heard his partner’s voice. The rustle of her clothes as she got to her feet.
“Steve?” she asked. Her voice was small.
Chapter 94
THIS WASN’T RIGHT. I sat on the edge of an embankment, watching the charred house at the bottom of the valley in the moonlight, seeing nothing. I watched the moon cross the sky and guessed a couple of hours had passed since I first walked off the road toward the valley. The tension in my chest was tightening, a hard ball of pain pushing up toward my throat. Regan had said to look for a lighthouse. The only house here was a blackened pile of sticks and sandstone.
I rubbed my eyes, trying to avoid the temptation to sleep. The helicopter on the horizon was still tracking back and forth. As it crossed the slope of the highest point of the valley wall, I felt a ripple of electricity in my body.
There was a rock formation on the eastern side of the valley, a sharp slope of sandstone just visible beyond the trees. The rock sloped down almost at a forty-five degree angle, then jutted in and went straight down. The shape was unmistakable; the sloping roof and side wall of a house made from stone. As the chopper doubled back, it disappeared for an instant behind the rock, and then its light flashed for no more than a second as it passed across a hole in the house-shaped silhouette.
A house. A light. A lighthouse.
I shot to my feet and started making my way through the dark.
Chapter 95
AN HOUR MIGHT have passed as I crept through the bush around the rim of the valley. As I approached the jagged sandstone ledge jutting out from the hillside where the house formation stood, I drew my weapon, pausing, not wanting to confront Regan while wheezing and struggling my way up the incline. My whole body had begun to tremble lightly with terror. I walked with aching care toward the rock and swept my gun across and above it, my heart twisting as the shapes of trees and rocks and branches became the ominous figure of a broad-shouldered man. The lighthouse formation was narrow, punctured by ancient winds right through the middle, the rock hole forming a window through which I’d seen the helicopter’s light. In time, my pulse slowed, and I stood in the wind, waiting for what would happen next.
Nothing happened. Another hour. I crouched in the bush, cold sweat pouring down my sides. As my mind wandered, the shape of the sandstone house wavering in my exhausted vision, I ached with regret about the young tactical guy I had subdued and probably humiliated.
Twenty-two years old. Jesus. They were really scraping the bottom of the barrel for—
My breath caught in my chest. I rose to my feet, the realization rocketing through me. I gripped my hair as I frantically counted off the days.
Tomorrow was my birthday.
I understood.
This is about me and you, Harry. About my gift to you.
Regan wanted to strip me down, show me myself, facilitate my sick rebirth into what he’d hoped I was always going to be, my potential fulfilled. In the weeks since my brother’s death, I’d forgotten all about my birthday. It wasn’t something I celebrated even when I remembered it. My childhood had been full of forgotten birthdays. He would have known that from my files. The story about my mother showing up high on my fourteenth birthday—he’d relived that terrible incident with me over the phone.
Regan wasn’t going to turn up tonight. He was going to turn up on my birthday. But did that mean midnight, when the date rolled over? Or the following evening, under the cover of darkness? I had no way of telling