Miss No One by Mark Ayre (interesting books to read TXT) 📕

"Know why they want me dead," he said. "I know."

For a man in his condition, talking was not smart. If Abbie wanted to remain out of jail, Kilman's survival was vital. But she had to know what he wanted to say.

"Why?" she asked.

"No," he said. His eyes closed. He muttered, "Ndidi."

"What about Ndidi?" she asked. "Kilman?"

Another squeal of tyres. By now, the sirens were loud enough to give Abbie a headache. They seemed to tear through the still air, ripping it to shreds with that endless noise. They seemed to be all around her. For all Abbie knew, they might be. Perhaps she was surrounded.

She started to rise. Kilman opened his eyes, grabbed Abbie's wrist.

"I told Ndidi no."

He met her eye. Managed to hold her gaze for a few seconds, nodded, then dropped his head to the concrete.

The detective's eyes closed. Abbie couldn't hear breathing. Checking his pulse, she found it active but erratic. Working too hard to pump what remained of his blood to his vital organs. Soon there wouldn't be enough juice remaining to keep those systems going. The machine that was this human body would give out.

Kilman didn't have much longer.

But there was nothing Abbie could do.

Brakes screeched, tyres squealed, and Abbie knew the armed response units were pulling up outside the school grounds, by the roundabout and the gate where earlier Abbie had teased Gary about a death drone.

Rising from Kilman, she rushed to the lanky teenager, dropped beside him.

"How you doing?" she asked.

His eyes were open, his breathing ragged but under control. Touching his neck, Abbie found his pulse a little weaker than she might have liked but steady. He was losing blood, but the lodged bullets and folded jackets were doing a decent job stemming the flow.

"Hurts," he whispered.

"That's good," said Abbie. She lay gentle fingers on his wrist and, with her other hand, eased the gun free from his grasp. Not that he had much of a grip on the weapon. Too weak. He didn't react when she took the handgun from him, nor when she slid it and the other into her waistband.

"Police will be here any second," she said. "You'll be taken to hospital. I can't make you do anything, but when the cops take your statement, I hope you'll be honest."

At the front of the school, armed response officers were slamming doors, withdrawing guns, arming themselves for a shoot out with a dangerous and homicidal criminal: Abbie. She almost felt flattered they deemed her worthy of such a response.

"I'll tell the truth," said Gary. Like his pulse, the teen's voice was weak but steady. That was a good sign.

"Good luck," she said.

She didn't wait for his answer. She knew the cops were forcing the gate and entering the school grounds as she spoke. Like Abbie, they might be a little cautious passing the many windows of the deserted school buildings. Unlike Abbie, they were wearing body armour and helmets. They had strength in numbers.

They would not proceed with anywhere near as much caution as had she.

Leaving behind her jacket, knowing they would know she had been here with or without that evidence, Abbie jogged to the L-block and rushed along the field side until she was at the building’s mid-point.

She could hear feet. She thought she could hear voices but was maybe imagining it.

Facing the trees, Abbie spied a gap between the tight line of trunks. She suspected, through there, she would find a path.

Earlier, she had rightly considered how someone running across this field would be a sitting duck to any shooters. She had guessed it would take thirty seconds to reach the tree line from the L-Block.

Did she have thirty seconds before the armed response teams appeared?

Time to find out.

Pushing away from the wall, she sprinted towards the trees as though her life depended on it.

Abbie's life probably didn't.

But Isabella's life might.

Twenty-One

Abbie ran. More than a few times in the past, she'd had to sprint for her life or for the life of someone else. When not on a mission, she spent plenty of time practising both short-distance sprints and long-distance endurance running. She was in incredible shape.

Much of Abbie's training outside of missions—shooting, hand-to-hand combat, strength, endurance, fitness—was provided by world-renowned experts and funded by her employers. Only the best for their valuable employee.

All that was about to change.

In twelve seconds, she had halved the distance between the L-Block and the trees. The wind was racing past. She could hear her heart and her breathing in her ears. The world seemed to fade into her determination to cross the field in record time.

If she didn't escape, it might not matter that Ben was due to withdraw the many training perks of Abbie's job. Should the police catch her, she would be restricted to tatty prison gym equipment, possibly a running track. No longer would she need the paycheque on which she had for so long relied.

Also, when the dreams came, and she saw the faces of those who needed her help, and when she could do nothing to save those lives, and when, following her failure, the nightmares came, Abbie would go mad.

She could not face prison.

After 23 seconds, she hit the tree line, burst between two trunks and took a hard right. As she twisted, her feet, which had become used to the solid grass beneath them, slid in pebbles and dirt, and she felt her left foot then her right disappear from beneath her.

Hard, she smacked the ground.

Her reactions were fast. Even as Abbie fell, she raised her hands, palms down, using them to prevent the pebbles decorating her face with craters, scrapes and blood.

Out in the open, sprinting across the grass, Abbie had been caught in a sound chamber. Landing on the pebbled path, lying still, the world seemed at first to be utterly silent. Glancing up, she could see the leaves flutter in the breeze, and there was a bird, taking flight. But no sound reached her ears. As though aliens