The killer awoke, to find a stranger by her bed.
No, not a stranger, the guy who had saved her. The civilian in the room on the top floor. She could see him clearly now, as she blinked the sleep out of her eyes.
‘Where am I?’ asked Caitlin, her voice cracking in her dry throat.
‘London,’ replied the man. ‘A special hospital. They had to operate on you.’
‘My friend the tumour,’ she said. ‘Don’t tell me he’s gone.’
The man shrugged. ‘I’m not a doctor so I don’t know. Or a relative, so they won’t tell me.’
‘Who are you?’
‘Name’s Melton,’ he said. ‘Bret Melton.’
Caitlin tried to lever herself up but found she had no strength in her arms at all.
‘Well, Bret Melton, thank you for saving my sorry ass. And to think I might have popped a cap in yours.’
He seemed to take that without offence.
‘You probably saved mine, Miss Mercure. I holed up in that joint after my vehicle got hit by an RPG. I was pretty much out of it, just trying to get as far away from the street as possible. If those guys had been even half competent they’d have checked and found me unconscious up top. Probably would have cut my head off.’
‘Probably,’ she agreed. ‘And my name’s not Cathy Mercure, by the way. That’s a cover. I’m sorry they felt the need to tell you that. My name is Caitlin.’
Melton took that without obvious concern, too.
‘In my experience,’ he said with a half-smile, ‘ladies who sneak into snake pits and twist the heads off vipers can pretty well call themselves whatever they feel like. You should know, by the way, that I’m a reporter. I’m not going to write about you. Not even going to ask what went down in that house. They made me sign a piece of paper that says I lose my nuts if I do. But I just wanted to get that out there for you.’
Caitlin felt a wave of lassitude steal through her body. She was aware of great damage that had been done. ‘Thank you, Bret,’ she said weakly. ‘But it’s all right. I’m retired now, a lady of leisure, as of two minutes ago.’
‘Okay then.’ He nodded and they lapsed into silence.
Her eyelids fluttered heavily, and she felt herself drifting back towards sleep. ‘Bret,’ she said, ‘did they get him? Did they get my guy?’
His voice seemed to come from far away. ‘I don’t know, Caitlin. They got a lot of guys.’
She forced her eyes open. For the first time she noticed the window off to the side of her bed. It opened onto a garden scene, although the trees were leafless and the grass had all died off.
‘What are you going to do, Bret?’ she asked. ‘Will you go home?’
He shrugged again. ‘What’s home?’
‘I don’t know.’
She started to fade out again. ‘I don’t know.’