The Cross

Chapter Seventy-One

The fire was gaining all through the lower floor of the chalet, timbers blazing everywhere and thick black smoke choking the stairway and passages so that Chloe and Dec were running almost blind.

‘Which way’s outside?’ he yelled.

‘Try that door,’ she replied, her eyes streaming tears.

He crashed it open. ‘Fuck it! Some kind of storeroom.’

‘Try another.’

But it was too late. Ash’s footsteps were pounding towards them through the smoky corridors. Dec and Chloe ran into the storeroom, clambering through the clutter of junk they could see in the dim moonlight from the window. Dec hid between an old Yamaha snowmobile and a stack of Butane gas cylinders. Chloe ducked behind a pile of packing cases.

Now they were trapped. They could only pray that Ash would run by the door so they could escape from the storeroom and make their way outside before the whole place went up in flames. The acrid stench of burning was making it harder and harder to breathe.

In a tiny square of moonlight shining on the floor next to her, Chloe examined the pistol, trying to see what the hell had gone wrong with it. The answer came to her immediately. A piece of grit from the rocky ledge had got stuck in the crook of the gun’s hammer, preventing it from snapping forward to hit the firing pin. She picked at it with her fingertip, breaking the nail — but the grit didn’t move.

Ash’s footsteps came storming down the passage. They stopped at the door.

Chloe held her breath as she scrabbled around for something to pick the blockage from the gun.

The door crashed open and Ash stood silhouetted against the smoke and the flickering orange fire-glow that was spreading through the chalet with every passing second.

‘I know you’re in there,’ he said. ‘I can smell you.’

Chloe’s fingers clasped something in the shadows. It was an old nail, bent and rusty. As Ash burst into the room, she dug the point of the nail frantically into the crook of the pistol’s hammer and felt the trapped piece of grit spring free.

‘Give me back the cross,’ Ash said, ‘and I’ll kill you quickly. You have my word.’

Chloe checked the Desert Eagle’s magazine and her heart stalled for an instant as she saw it was empty. Then, in her panic, she remembered the breech: there might still be a round in the breech. That was how these weapons worked. She grasped the back of the slide, inched it back and the moonlight glimmered on shiny brass. Her heart began to race again. She still had one shot left.

She closed her eyes.

Make it count, Chloe.

‘Give — me — the — CROSS!’ Ash roared as he came charging through the smoke, kicking debris out of his way.

There was a rending screech from above as the ceiling gave way and a burning beam came crashing down into the storeroom. The wall collapsed. Flames leaped through the broken planking and spread hungrily in all directions. An old armchair burst alight, setting fire to the heap of cardboard boxes next to it. The flames flew up the walls, hugging the contours of the room, spreading everywhere, flaring up into a raging inferno.

Chloe knew that if she and Dec didn’t get out of here within the next few seconds, they’d be burned alive.

Or maybe it was already too late. Hot smoke seared her lungs. The taste of death: so this was what it felt like.

But then, through her streaming tears she saw the door at the far end of the room that had been hidden in the shadows before. She leaped to her feet. ‘Dec!’

Together they raced for the door. Chloe wrenched it open and gasped as she burst out into the cold night air. The whole front of the chalet was ablaze now.

Ash marched through the burning room, ignoring the flames that licked up his trouser legs.

‘Hey, Ash!’

He looked round. Chloe stood in the doorway, her face shining with sweat, her eyes glowing from the firelight. In her hands was the battered, singed case. She held it open for him to see the cross inside. ‘You want this? Come and get it.’

Ash bellowed and came charging through the flames.

Chloe snapped the case shut. She tossed it to Dec and pulled out the pistol and fired off her last shot.

The bullet missed Ash by a good five feet. But that was only because she hadn’t been aiming at him.

‘Burn, fucker,’ Chloe said. Then she ran.

Ash heard the impact of the bullet against the tall Butane gas cylinder. He had no time to do anything else but stare at the neat half-inch hole the jacketed hollow point had punched straight through the steel.

The gas hit the flames. And Ash was pulverised by a hot white blast that he never even saw.