Ghosts by Matt Rogers (ap literature book list txt) 📕

his eyes or aim off Icke, he used one hand to reach down and withdraw it.

He glanced at the screen for a half-second.

A text.

Violetta.

Help.

79

They hit the estate so hard Violetta didn’t have a moment to think.

A souped-up truck with a ram bumper tore the front gates off their hinges at fifty miles an hour. Security cameras caught it, and the early warning system screamed, but by the time she pulled the feed up on her laptop — seconds after it happened — the SUV was already stationary by the front door, and men were spilling out.

Violetta’s fingers flew over the keyboard.

She brought up her messages, fired a one-word iMessage to King — the best she could manage in the circumstances — and then spilled off the stool.

Alarms blared across the mansion.

Alexis looked everywhere, eyes flying left and right, on the verge of panic.

Melanie’s face was an encapsulation of terror.

Violetta shoved Melanie in Alexis’ direction. ‘Take her upstairs. I’ll hold them off.’

‘Wait—’

‘Go!’

Alexis complied. She grabbed Melanie by the arm and sprinted for the grand staircase in the entranceway. She took them two at a time, dragging the teenage girl behind her, and Violetta watched them spill onto the landing of the second floor just as the front door burst open, glass shattering. Beyond, a powerful engine rumbled.

Violetta let out a scream from the kitchen.

To draw them away from the staircase.

Then she ran.

80

Bodies spilled into the kitchen — she caught a glance over her shoulder. Big, powerful men. She bolted into a connecting passageway as a stray bullet shredded the door frame.

Her heart thudded in her throat, choking her.

She made it to the de facto armoury, got the door open and squeezed inside just as silhouettes burst into the same hallway. Her heart thudded harder, but she didn’t hear it or feel it anymore. It was all too close.

She had to hope they were meatheads.

They were.

They followed her into what they figured was an empty room she’d dead-ended in, and by that point she’d ripped a MK17 SCAR-H off the rack. It was a heavy weapon and she didn’t have an overly powerful frame, but with the help of panic it weighed nothing at all. She got it aimed at the doorway and pulled the trigger before anyone had even come into view, but as she suspected they wanted this over quick, so they literally stepped into the stream of bullets without a moment to reconsider. They had their guns up but 7.62mm calibre rounds shredded their faces and throats. Their bulletproof vests absorbed the rest, but the damage was done.

Three bodies cascaded on top of each other in the doorway.

Violetta breathed out for the first time since the alarms had sounded.

She rushed out into the corridor, and caught the last man retreating. He’d witnessed three comrades torn to shreds and elected to regroup in the kitchen. He didn’t make it. His back was turned, his movement frantic, the sub-machine gun in his right hand forgotten as he pumped his arms like pistons.

She laced a three-round burst into the back of his neck and skull.

He pitched forward and slammed into the wall at the end of the hallway.

He didn’t move.

Violetta tried to lower her heart rate, tried to stop her hands shaking from adrenaline, but she wasn’t privy to the exposure therapy King and Slater had undertaken. This wasn’t her life, her everyday existence. This was a terrifying anomaly.

Then she heard it.

Upstairs.

Two unsuppressed gunshots that ripped through the house. Tinnitus in her ears from her own skirmish muffled the noise, but that didn’t make it any less recognisable.

Her stomach dropped.

She ran for the stairs.

81

Alexis’s heart was in her throat.

Calm.

Her blood ran cold.

Breathe.

The breath seized her chest.

Don’t make it worse.

Melanie was all over the place, on the verge of a total breakdown, but things were moving too fast for the girl to actually panic. Alexis used her fitness base to drag Melanie’s hundred-pound frame up the two flights, even as the front doors smashed open behind them, even as gunfire blared through the house. Compared to the introspective quiet they’d been sitting in moments earlier, it was anarchy.

Her own bedroom — and Slater’s — was the closest available room.

There was a SIG Sauer in the nightstand drawer.

She shoved Melanie into the room and ducked low as a bullet tore through the ceiling above their heads, fired up from the lobby. Then she followed.

Instinct said, Hide.

The walk-in wardrobe, the en suite bathroom, even the space under the bed. All three options would bring at least a splash of clarity. They were patches of safety. They’d give her time to stop and think about…

No time to think.

Reason said, Prepare.

Hiding was the easy way out. She heard footsteps on the staircase, interspersed with automatic gunfire from downstairs. She didn’t have time to fear for Violetta. She didn’t have time for anything.

She pushed Melanie to the floor, and the girl went willingly. When she was prone Alexis dragged her toward the four-poster bed, and Melanie got the message. She crawled the last few feet on her own and burrowed under the bed frame, out of sight.

Alexis wanted to follow her.

She didn’t.

She went to the nightstand and tugged hard on the drawer.

It didn’t budge.

Locked, she remembered.

The footsteps hit the top of the staircase.

82

The footfalls were heavy.

He was a big man. She heard his heavy breathing. He was pumped with testosterone, and he wanted to slaughter everyone in the house.

The sheer magnitude of that knowledge was terrifying.

The bedroom door hung open, which didn’t mean anything. Even if she’d shut and locked it, he’d get it open with a single well-placed boot, or a quick pull of the trigger. He was closing in, only feet away, still out of sight, round the corner, invisible. Which made it more horrible. It left all sorts of room for the imagination.

No time for imagination.

Alexis didn’t run for the en suite, or the closet. She backtracked to the doorway and positioned herself alongside it, hip pressed to the plaster. The