The End of the Line Read online

  Danny brought up the gun. Camberley lifted his hands, the sparks snuffing out as he sucked the power from the air.

  The gun barked once, a single shot to the man’s breast.

  The lord let loose, the blunt percussive blast of raw magic shattering glass, porcelain, wood, plaster in all directions.

  Amanda ducked again in time, splinters of wood and pottery pattering onto the thick study carpet.

  An alarm began to trill.

  She gulped at the now magicless air, wondering who was whispering ‘shit, shit, shit’ under her breath.

  The corridor was in ruins, the two men slumped amidst a chrysanthemum of shards. Still.

  The girl was still gurgling on the floor, blood clouding the spilled vase water, her blazer rent from a dozen new cuts.

  Out the bay windows, Amanda could see two men running across the grounds to the house.

  She licked her lips, starting to calculate.

  Danny wasn’t moving. She could reach him, begin to drag him but she’d only make it half way to the portal by the time the men arrived.

  Someone else called. A shout from somewhere inside the house.

  Without a word, Amanda turned and headed back to the portal. She took a moment, trying to compose herself. Looking herself up and down there wasn’t a single sign anything had happened.

  Cries of surprise and distress were just making themselves known when she slipped through.

  The stand-off on the other side perked up as she emerged.

  ‘Everything OK?’ asked Caleb.

  ‘Where’s Danny?’ asked Skeebs, his voice small from the phone’s speaker.

  ‘Change of plan,’ said Amanda. She rubbed her hand across the runes, the portal fading closed with the speed of a camera shutter. ‘We’re leaving. He’s going to meet us. You,’ she pointed to Camberley’s entourage, ‘are to stay here.’ She was already headed for the van.

  ‘Wait, hang on,’ said PA.

  ‘You want them dead?’ Amanda gestured to the image still on the phone as she strode past Caleb. The big guy, reading his partner, was already scooping up the cash. ‘Do as you’re fucking told. Camberley will call you in a minute. We’ve struck a deal.’

  ‘Where’s Danny?’ Skeebs insisted.

  ‘I said, we’re meeting him.’

  Thirty seconds later they were driving away with a cool million.

  The present

  Amanda traced patterns across the window glass in the steam of her breath, her mind picking over that job. What would she have done differently if she’d known it would lead to this?

  Danny had got twenty years. It had been in the papers.

  Of course, he blamed Amanda and like the bodyguard, Danny couldn’t let something like that slide. And Skeebs couldn’t not do what his brother told him, whether it made sense or not.

  If she had stayed to help it could easily have been her behind bars. But then maybe her family would still be alive.

  But Henderson, the old boss, had still died a few months later. Just collapsed in the street and that was that. The war over who should fill the void began before his body was even cold.

  Whatever she had decided, Reeves would still have been summoned and if not for her, Jamison would no doubt be dead. Caleb too. Danny and Skeebs.

  Skeebs gave a full snore.

  Turning away, Amanda went back to the black and the stars, begging sleep to take her.

  Instead she was left with memories of the family she’d lost, the aching hole inside her, the plan ahead of her with all its complications and the empty future beyond it if she succeeded.

  Chapter 3

  Amanda

  The present

  The train yard was a place where old machines came to die. Rusting hulks groaned beneath their own weight. Snow, fine as mist, covered everything, muting Eastern Bloc paint jobs and Cyrillic graffiti. A spider frame of corroded girders incarcerated the sky like an up-ended ribcage, forgotten chains swinging like ranks of hangmen’s nooses.

  The squeak of Michaela’s chair on concrete haunted her. Any spare moment, not fixed on the job, on getting through this so she could return and claim her little girl, Amanda was conjuring images of her daughter’s ordeal.

  She pictured the way plastic cord would bite her daughter’s wrists. She agonised over the way a gag creased the corners of her mouth so used to smiling. She’d kissed away that girl’s tears so often she could bring back the taste.

  She knew every inch of that girl, could feel across her back the very places her daughter’s arms would press when they hugged. She wanted to hear Michaela’s laugh again.

  These were the thoughts that kept her going, the dream that allowed her to snatch scraps of sleep. Every mile closer to the delivery point, some patch of scrub and stones in the middle of the middle of nowhere Siberia, was one step closer to holding that girl’s beautiful face. The only family she had left. The very best part of her.

  But first they had to get moving again. AK would be getting impatient and there was no knowing how a man like that would take out his frustration on a hostage.

  Spotting this place from the road had been the only stroke of luck they’d had so far. She’d sent the co-ordinates to Jamison and he had done the rest. There was a small airstrip four hours away for the Abra to land at and their transport arrived only a few hours after they did. The man was a miracle worker, or at the very least he’d thrown a lot of money around.

  Their train stood out, a dash of vibrant colour. It was short; one engine and three flatbed pallets. The last was the only one occupied; the steel container, large, shiny, red, and home for the next few days.

  The engine had a fresh coat of paint and was warded up the ass. Theory was, between the wards and the two-pallet distance, the drivers would be as safe from the package as possible. No more traffic accidents.

  The two hired drivers, surly, Russian, kept themselves to themselves, checking the engine or doing whatever train drivers did.

  Then there were the sounds coming from inside the container. Caleb’s grunts of exertion. A rattle of metal on metal that sent the gathering birds wheeling into the anaemic sky.

  Amanda, too exhausted to pace, sat as far away from it all as she dared, perched shivering on a corroded filing cabinet that she’d found lying on its side. Every sound of Caleb’s work made her flinch, curled her spine and bent her fingers to fists.

  Back turned, she tried to close her ears to it – hating every sound of the big man’s terrible work. She lit another cigarette with the dying heat of the old one, holding her frantic emotions over his actions at arm’s length. She dropped the burnt stub to join its mates between her feet. She was running low. She’d be out before the journey was halfway done.

  Simon had always hated her smoking but there didn’t seem much point in denying herself any more.

  It had been less than a week since Reeves had killed her husband, her son and her youngest daughter – every day since had felt like the first. The sheer stark reality that they were gone would leap out from behind an everyday thought and annihilate her all over again.

  Tears came seldom and unexpected.

  She still found herself seeing something on the journey and committing it to memory – Darren would love that piece of art, Emily the bookshop, Michaela that dress. And then she remembered that they were the reason she was there in the first place.

  She wasn’t grieving, not yet. There was a job to do, but she could feel it coiled, black inside her, waiting.

  So she sat and smoked while the world span off its axis leaving her with nothing to hold on to except…

  Reaching into her pocket, she lifted the familiar weight of the pack of playing cards she kept by her heart. She read the scrawl on the back, lump in her throat. If words faded with reading, the inscription would be nothing but a pale whisper.

  ‘To the luckiest woman I know’ – Simon X X X

  It had been one of the first presents her husband had ever given her. Every card had an i
ndividual design that he’d drawn and coloured himself, each one a memory of their first fifty-two weeks together.

  She pulled out the cards, the feel of them comforting; their first meal, first kiss, his smiling face, her smirk. For a few moments they drowned out the world, allowed her to sink into memory.

  There’d been nothing in her life that she hadn’t got as right as loving that man. This man who’d breezed into her life with the ability to untangle her thoughts on the bad days and lift her heart on the sad ones. Whose very presence made her feel complete and that, finally, everything she did was actually for something. And he’d given her these cards, these cards, on their first anniversary and she knew he must have been working on them for months. When they’d met he’d already been seeing a year together and she’d known that she’d never love a man, woman or job harder. Now all she had left of him were these cards, this small anchor from her soul to his…

  It was all her fault.

  A shout from the container speared Amanda straight through. Her fingers spasmed, cards catching the breeze.

  ‘No, no, no.’ The cigarette fell from her mouth, but she paid it no attention as she went after the cards scattering in all directions.

  Every nick, scratch and speck of dirt on them bit at her insides. They rolled through the stones, caught under rusted wheels, flipped and whirled in the air.

  Amanda chased them, like each one was pulling her on a leash.

  She uttered an inward prayer of thanks as she caught the last one – their first dance together snagged in a thorny bush. She fussed at a dented corner, carefully picked away every speck of grit before letting it back into the pack.

  ‘Fucking idiot,’ she breathed.

  The sounds from the container had stopped. Amanda pulled herself together with a hiss of breath, the cards back beside her heart.

  She turned as Caleb appeared in the sliding side-door of the container.

  The big man blinked in the sunlight, the ghost of a smile on his face until he caught sight of Amanda. It dropped away, replaced by his default frown.

  The train stood alone, no platform, meaning Caleb had to jump down into the gravel. To get back in, they had to climb using the handrail. Approaching, he wiped his hands clean with a handkerchief, remembering to pull his gloves on a few moments too late. Amanda caught a glimpse of the fresh scrapes on his well-worn knuckles.

  ‘Secure?’ Amanda couldn’t bring herself to look at her friend as he perched beside her on the cabinet rim. The flimsy shell buckled under the big man’s weight.

  ‘No more tricks for a while.’ Despite the cold, Caleb wiped sweat from his brow with the handkerchief. The sight of the blood-soaked rag made Amanda’s stomach flop and she looked away.

  It had been a day since the van. Half a day since they’d ditched the lorry.

  Though Caleb seemed unfazed, twenty-five years of working together had taught Amanda the subtle tells that revealed that her friend was stressed. She could feel the pressure of her lieutenant’s gaze. Caleb expected her to get them both through this.

  ‘How you holding up?’ Caleb rumbled.

  Amanda took her time answering. Lit herself another cigarette. ‘We get this done, I’ll feel better.’

  ‘Sure about that?’

  She thought of that screech of wood on concrete. Of seeing her daughter’s wide smile, of her dancing in the kitchen. ‘It’ll be a start.’

  They sat in silence, Amanda smoking, Caleb breathing. There was the sound of machinery somewhere, the smell of burning fuel and ozone, the scratchy, air-tearing sound of a welding torch.

  ‘Didn’t need to kill him,’ said Caleb.

  Amanda frowned.

  ‘The driver,’ the big man clarified.

  ‘He was in the way.’

  ‘Could have tied him up. Bribed him.’

  ‘We didn’t have time.’

  Caleb didn’t reply, watching the birds as they landed on a nearby derelict, their tiny claws tapping and scraping on the roof.

  ‘Saw the phone,’ said Caleb. ‘He had kids. That why?’

  ‘You could have said no.’

  Caleb grunted. ‘You ain’t in the habit of listening to me any more. Don’t think Simon’d have wanted it this way.’

  ‘He’d have wanted his little girl safe. That’s what matters. After this, no one’s touching her again. Anything else is just…’

  ‘That include us? We all disposable?’

  Amanda toyed with her lighter. ‘She’s my little girl. She’s all I’ve got left.’

  ‘But ain’t just you saving her. You need this Abra to do the ritual. You got me to…’ the man gestured back toward the train.

  Amanda winced

  ‘All the blood’s on my hands, I’m saying. We didn’t choose to take him but Skeebs survived that thing in there once. Knows more about facing it than the rest of us put together. Amanda I know would use that. In the end, this a job like all the others. Just the stakes are that much higher. But a job takes a crew. And we want home just as bad as you do. Used to be you’d be checking up on everyone. Planning. Making sure they know what’s expected of them. Now you’re acting like you couldn’t care if the rest of us live or die. Long as you get what you want. Jabbering in my ear twenty-five years. Now you’re quiet.’ The big man didn’t look at her, staring down at his hands, instead, the knuckles blushing purple.

  She looked away so he wouldn’t see her face. She hadn’t told either Caleb or Skeebs what getting this train from AK had cost them. She needed them focussed on the job.

  ‘I’ll do what’s necessary,’ she said.

  ‘You’re doing what’s easiest. Not the same. Skeebs is already a liability. Fuck all this up unless we give him reason not to. Treat people like things, you end up breaking them. Should have learned that from last time.’

  Amanda swallowed. Guilt gnawed at the back of her skull – thoughts of Caleb’s partner, Michael, of what Caleb had done to the man who’d killed him. All for Amanda’s pride.

  For the second time in as many minutes she avoided Caleb’s eye, the man staring at her to make sure he’d got his point across.

  Grunting, unsatisfied, Caleb checked his watch. ‘Skeebs’s late.’

  ‘Plane’s probably delayed.’

  ‘Don’t think he’s coming back.’

  ‘He will. He’s as trapped as the rest of us.’

  ‘Worse than us. He’s falling apart. He’s got prison eyes. Look those guys get, you know you won’t see them in the morning. Reeves really did a number on him.’

  Guilt curdled to anger in an instant. Seemed to be the only way for guilt to go for her these days. ‘You talk to him, you care so much. Just make sure he gets on the train.’ Amanda checked her watch. ‘He is late.’

  They’d sent Skeebs to pick up Bridget’s replacement at the airstrip. Amanda certainly hadn’t wanted to do it. Working with an Abra had made her skin crawl.

  Besides, the boy had been even more jittery after the crash, the tension coming off him in waves. He chewed his nails, plucked at his facial hair, ground his teeth. Sending him to fetch the new guy had been an opportunity to get him out of the way for a few hours.

  Amanda hadn’t forgotten that look in the boy’s eyes when they’d been fighting over the knife. Sending him to fetch the new Abra had meant a break from looking over her shoulder.

  It gave her and Caleb the chance to prepare some things too. There were elements of Amanda’s new plan, other than her deal with AK and her ‘confession’, the boy wasn’t going to like.

  ‘We ready to go?’

  ‘Soon as they arrive,’ Caleb replied with a sigh, pulling his scarf out and wrapping it around his neck.

  ‘It’s all secured?’

  ‘It’s not going to last.’

  ‘Doesn’t need to.’

  There it was, the rented jeep fast approaching. Amanda disguised her sigh of relief as a plume of smoke.

  ‘Give things one final check,’ said Caleb hauling himself up and heading
back to the carriage. ‘You should tell him before he sees. Lose his mind when he finds out.’

  ‘I want them on the train as soon as possible. I don’t want them having time to think about it.’

  ‘Talk to him.’ Caleb pulled himself up into the carriage and disappeared into the shadows.

  Amanda went to stand in front of the container door.

  She wondered about the new guy, wondered how she’d handle him.

  Ever since her father, she’d stoked a hatred for magic-dabblers, Abras. They set her teeth on edge, made her paranoid.

  Bridget had been just like the rest, convinced she was the smartest person in the room; pompous, arrogant and opinionated.

  This one wouldn’t be any better. The boss wouldn’t have conducted any vetting. AK was someone who acted first, thought second: one of the reasons they were in the middle of this shitshow in the first place.

  She missed Henderson, the old bastard. The war to take his place had been vicious. She and Caleb had stayed out of it. When they’d raised their heads back over the parapet the whole scene had changed and AK was in Henderson’s place. AK wasn’t a businessman. He was the type who won gang wars. Won them with switchblades and half bricks in empty car parks. The type who liked his men young, dumb and angry – all the things, alright most of the things, Amanda wasn’t.

  Had it been any wonder, then, that when she and AK had first met they had almost come to blows?

  Maybe things would have been better if she’d never met with him at all. But the war had ended and she’d needed the money.

  Chapter 4

  Amanda

  Twelve months earlier

  ‘Is this guy dangerous?’ Simon’s face was a picture of concern, the sketch pad and pencil in his hand forgotten.

  ‘He’s just taken over the biggest organisation in the city. Of course he is. They all are.’ Amanda cast about, looking for her boots. The clock ticked another minute away on the bedside table. ‘Fuck.’

  ‘But I thought you were staying out of it.’