Two of Saw’s men turned to look as Mann smashed through the window and fired five, six-inch hardened steel throwing spikes out of his right hand. Their feather tips pierced the air in a volley of red as they found their marks and the men were blinded by the needle tips as they pierced the eyeball. They didn’t see the seven four-inch flying stars that followed the spikes. One cut Weasel’s jugular, the others mortally wounded the blinded men. A star embedded in one man’s throat. He drowned as his lungs filled with his own blood. Another had a star cut deep into his temple and one stuck in his chest. One man was left wounded but alive. Handsome was unhurt, he had used the dying Weasel as a human shield.

Mann rolled across the dirt floor and came to a stop opposite the table. He saw Jake petrified, thin, his eyes huge with fear, sat in a chair opposite the dead body of Anna. There was a gun at his head. Mann rose slowly, his hands raised, his back to the wall. He looked at Jake, and he felt an instant bond. It was like looking in the mirror. Mann’s emotions took him back to when he was eighteen. Took him back to his father’s execution. Mann’s temper roared inside him as his heart broke to see his brother so abused. He looked at the man holding the gun and he knew it must be Saw Wah Say. He was a wild man, his eyes alight with blood lust and madness. He feared nothing…

Jake stared at Mann; he knew that he must know him, but he didn’t know how until Saw said his name.

‘Johnny Mann. I have waited many years to come to this moment. To have all Deming’s sons here in one room. It is a pity your brother Daniel died before I could kill him.’

Jake stared at Mann, trying to take it all in. Katrien crawled out from under the table where she had been hiding. She stood and glared at Mann.

‘I told you to wait. Now give me the fucking money.’

‘You don’t get it till the boy is safe.’ Katrien was fuming as she turned to Saw. ‘Let him go. Let’s get the money and leave,’ she hissed.

Saw didn’t answer her. He didn’t take his eyes from Mann. They grinned at one another. Mann felt his anger settle into a white heat. Nothing would stop him now. Saw would never leave the room alive.

‘I am not finished here,’ said Saw.

‘Yes you are. I didn’t do all this work to have you fucking blow it, now let him go.’

Saw kept his eyes on Mann as he reached across and hit Katrien full in the face. She yelped in pain and surprise as she was knocked sideways.

‘I am your sister. Show me some respect,’ she said, clutching her face and looking at the blood on her hand.

‘You are my bitch. Shut up or I will kill you.’

Saw turned his attention back to Mann.

‘You stole something from me, you and this boy…’ He tightened his grip on Jake and dug the gun hard into his temple. ‘I want it back. Deming promised me land, he promised me wealth.’

‘Deming is dead. His promises died with him,’ said Mann.

‘No, the sins of our fathers must be paid for.’

‘We have paid enough. Let the boy go or you will die here in this room.’

Saw laughed, ‘Big words.’

‘Let the boy go and we will settle this, you and me.’

Mann could see out of the corner of his eye that Handsome was on the move, coming up behind him, and the other man was working his way around the side. But then they stopped. Someone was standing in the doorway. Sue stared around the room as if she didn’t understand how she got there or why she was there. She shook her head and looked down at her hand. She was holding a dagger. It was shaped like a crucifix and still dripping with Gee’s blood.

‘It’s all right. It will all be okay.’ Katrien said softly when she saw her. ‘Don’t come in here, my love.’ At the sound of Katrien’s voice Sue seemed to come awake. She looked at Saw and at Katrien’s face.

She looked puzzled. ‘Did Saw hurt you?’

Katrien shook her head emphatically as she quickly wiped the blood away. ‘No, no, he didn’t mean to. I’m all right.’

Sue stared coldly at Saw. ‘What’s happening, Saw? We did all this so that we could be together. We are one family: you, me and Katrien.’

Saw looked at her with contempt. ‘You are not family. Katrien has tricked you all along. She has used you. You will never mean anything to me or to her. She got you to kill your parents. She used you to get close to Mann. She doesn’t love you or anyone else. She is incapable of love. Her heart is twisted even more than mine.’

Sue’s face took on a pained look of confusion as she shook her head and her eyes filled with tears.

‘Don’t listen to him, my love,’ Katrien said. ‘I love you. He is lying. He—’ Saw struck her again, harder than the first time, and she lost her balance and gave a cry of pain as she landed hard on the dirt floor.

Sue let out a roar of anger as she flew forward and lunged her dagger at Saw. But she never made it. Handsome’s blade came singing through the air. Sue stood for a minute swaying, staring at the knife as it protruded from her sternum, and then she looked up at Katrien and at Saw and shook her head, a look of complete bewilderment in her eyes as she fell to the floor dying. Katrien crawled forward to hold her for a few seconds as she died and then she crawled back and clung to Saw’s leg.

‘Please, Saw. I am your sister. It will be just us. We can be happy. We can have everything. Please…please…’

Irritated, he tried to shake her off but he couldn’t.

Shrimp eased himself through the back door and stood behind Handsome. Shrimp knew he would get only one chance to kill Handsome and the other man. He edged closer.

Katrien was crying.

‘No, Saw, don’t forsake me again. You let them take me when I was a child. I cried for weeks. I missed you.’ Saw tried to ignore her but it was a noise he remembered from his distant childhood. The cry of a baby who belonged to him, who needed him. He could not ignore it, its pitch, its tone was designed to penetrate his concentration. And it did. The sound of Katrien’s plaintive cries distracted Saw for two seconds, only two seconds. But two seconds was all it took for Mann to reach inside his shirt, extract the Death Star from its leather pouch, lower his stance, raise and level his arm and send it flying, curving through the air like a boomerang and then coming down to cut Saw’s spine in two. Delilah flashed from her hiding place inside Mann’s palm and she darted straight and powerful and thumped into Saw’s heart. At that second, Shrimp rolled forward into the room to face Handsome and shot him through the heart and the other man through the head.

Saw’s body juddered as he took his last breath. He lost control of the gun and his hand turned away from Jake’s head. He looked down at Katrien clinging to his leg and staring up at him and his fingers contracted in a death grip. He fired one shot straight between Katrien’s eyes.

120

‘Sue?’

Mann turned and saw Riley standing in the doorway looking very sick and on his crutches. ‘I’m sorry, Riley, she’s dead.’ Riley looked about to collapse. He leant on the door frame for support.

‘I tried to find her in time. She was very sick. She was a schizophrenic. She needed her medication but she hadn’t been taking it. Katrien told her not to. She was easy to manipulate then.’ Mann could see that he was bleeding from his amputated stump.

‘There was nothing you could have done, Riley. Katrien had been planning this a long time. Let’s get you back to the hospital.’

‘Gee’s outside. Sue stabbed him. We need to get him to hospital fast.’

‘I’ll do it.’ Shrimp went outside to look after Gee.

Mann walked over to Jake and knelt down beside him. Jake stared into his eyes and shook his head, he couldn’t speak. He looked across at Anna and his eyes filled. He looked back at Mann. Mann nodded and smiled sadly.