"Has he shown you ID?"

"No. But he has a gun."

"Oh then he must work for the army!" The woman stared across the yard at Cole, glanced down at the pocket where he'd slipped the .45, then back up at his face. What do you want? her expression said, and Cole glanced across at the black BMW and shrugged. That's all.

"Is that a real gun?" the boy said.

"It's real alright!" the farmer said, turning from his wife to the boy. Easier reaction there. Not so much hostility. "I've just seen a gunfight!"

This guy's a gem, Cole thought. The farmer had already forgotten that the other party in the "gunfight" had not possessed a gun.

"Look, Janet," Cole said, stepping forward with his hands held out from his sides, "I really do need your car, and I really am going to have it. I didn't exaggerate in what I said, though I could have put it better. You'll get the car back, and you'll have a letter of thanks and some small reward for your troubles." The woman's expression hardly changed. Hard bitch, he thought. "You'll get a new tractor, too!"

"He shot the tractor?" the boy asked.

Cole sighed and shook his head. This was getting more ridiculous by the minute! And then the woman spoke, and ridiculous turned to crazy.

"I don't believe any of what you say. There's a loaded shotgun on the wall three feet from me. You show me ID right now or I go for it."

"Janet—"

"You don't want to do that, Janet," Cole said, drawing the .45 again. "What do you think this is, a movie?"

"No, I don't watch them. This is me protecting my property and my family."

"You go for it and I'll shoot the boy first."

Damn, he didn't have time for shit like this. Random thoughts began to fly at him, his own ideas coming together at high speed, reacting to the trauma of the last few hours. He was not used to being confused, and he was not used to someone getting the better of him. Roberts had been at the nasty end of Cole's pistol and yet he'd escaped, and now here Cole was wasting time arguing with a bumbling idiot farmer, his TV-addled son and the fucking Terminatrix!

He did not have time …

Natasha is drawing me on because while I'm still hot after them, Roberts will keep on going… I take this BMW and that fat bitch will be on the phone to the police in seconds … I could kill them. Slurry pit. Be ages before they were found. … And just what is it Natasha has? How is she "improved" ?

The woman was glancing back and forth from him to the boy. Cole looked at him, back to her, then to the farmer. "Oh, for fuck's sake!" he said. He put the gun back in his pocket. "You—John—go and get me the car keys and I'll be on my way."

"Don't you move, John!" the woman said. She had edged back into the doorway and reached inside the room, and Cole expected her to bring out the shotgun at any moment. Then he'd have two choices—run or shoot her. That was somewhere he didn't want to get to—ten seconds ago I was thinking about killing them and throwing them in the slurry pit, wasn't I? Wasn't I?—but unless something changed very soon, that's just where he would be. Run or shoot.

"Shit." Cole looked around the farmyard, saw a herd of cows looking out from a barn with sad faces. Back to the woman. She was farther into the house now, and maybe her hand had already found the gun. The boy stared at his mother, wide-eyed. John, the fat farmer, turned in circles, seemingly at a total loss.

And every second Natasha grew farther away.

Cole pulled the gun and shot one of the cows.

The herd panicked, perhaps more at the blast of the gun than because one of their number was thrashing on the floor of the shed, its skull ruptured and pumping blood into the shit-covered yard.

From the house Cole heard the clatter of the dropped shotgun. Janet disappeared inside.

"John, get me the car keys," Cole said, already running across the yard. He guessed he had a few seconds before the woman gathered her senses. The reality of the gunshot would have muddled her mind. The sight of the cow dropping and sprawling in its own bloody shit had been enough to send her running, and Cole knew from experience that people unused to violence took time to react to it. Even if she had gone for the phone, her hands would be shaking too much to use it.

He leaped straight up the steps into the kitchen, almost tripping over the dropped shotgun, carrying on through to the hallway where he found Janet fumbling with the phone. He snatched it from her hand, dropped it and shot the connection box from the wall. The gunshot deafened him, and he hardly heard her scream. She stared at him wide-eyed and petrified, and yet there was still a glint of defiance in her eyes, a look that said, I'm scared shitless, yes, but give me a minute and you'll regret ever having found this place.

Cole believed her, and he could not help but be impressed. This is the sort of person I'm fighting to help, he thought, and the realisation was yet more validation for what he was doing, and what he had already done. He heard the crack of Nathan's neck and the woman scientist pleading for her life a second before he shot her, and he saw justification for those actions in this woman's hearty defiance.

He showed her the gun, waved it once in front of her face and then left the house, picking up the shotgun on the way.

The farmer and his son were standing together by the BMW, staring intently at the doorway. As Cole emerged the farmer muttered something unintelligible, tears coming to his eyes.

"I shot the phone box from the wall," Cole said. "To be honest, I think it would take more than a silver bullet to kill your missus. Now, I'm going. I guess you have mobile phones, or another phone elsewhere in the house, but I'd really appreciate it if you held off using it to call the police. I won't waste time pleading with you, but I'll say this: I could have shot you all. I could … have shot … you all. That way I'd ensure that I get away, and it would give me a lot more time to catch the man I'm after. And the more chance I have of catching him the better it is. For everyone. Am I getting through? Comprendez?"

The farmer nodded, eyes still wide.

"I should be talking to your wife," Cole muttered. He nudged the farmer aside and pressed the remote locking button. The BMW opened up to him, he climbed in and started the engine. Smooth. Fast. But he'd have to dump it within the hour.

Shame.

"When will we get—"

"The cheque's in the mail," Cole said. Then he slammed the door and screeched away, spraying cow shit from beneath the wheels.

Chapter Seven

Those echoes of Natasha had been too remote, she had offered no clues, and Cole had no idea which direction to take. Logic dictated northwest, back toward Wales and Roberts' home. But something else nagged at Cole, and the more he thought about it the more elusive it became. He headed north, listening out for Natasha, willing her to come back to him with her taunting faux child's voice, hating the idea of her in his mind but knowing that it was the only way to track her. The fact that he now believed she wanted him to follow changed nothing. She would slip up, or Roberts would make a mistake, and Cole would need only the slightest opportunity to put a bullet in the bitch's head.

He threw the farmers' shotgun into a field beside the road—it was too difficult to hide—and the .45 was back in the holster on his belt. The magazine had been reloaded. The near miss at the cottage had angered him, but he was doing his best to put that anger to good use.

He was trying not to think of the woman he had killed that morning. She had been in the way, that was all.

None of this was his fault.

"She didn't feel improved," he said. "She felt dead!" Natasha and her chains had knocked him out on the moor, and even though he had not seen her in the darkness he had felt her, a damp, slick thing, filled with no signs of life at all. Cold. Wet. She had been below ground for ten years. Cole could still remember putting her there, the cries for mercy that turned into screams of rage as the soil was piled in on top of her. I'll see you again, she had said.