‘I hear my daughter’s voice every night, Detective: “Please help me, Daddy . . . Please help Mommy.” ’ Holden’s voice croaked. ‘I see their faces every time I close my eyes. Do you understand what sort of destructive feeling comes from being so helpless, Detective?’

Silence.

‘DO YOU?’

Hunter nodded. ‘Guilt.’

One more piece of the puzzle – the reason for the question game. Holden didn’t only want to make his targets watch their loved ones suffer in pain before dying, like he’d had to watch his wife and daughter. He also wanted to give them the false sense of power, the belief that they could save their lives, just so they could experience helplessness in the same way he had. That was where the real pain, the real soul destruction, came from – guilt. It came from the knowledge that they could’ve made all the difference, if only they’d known the answer to a simple question – an answer that they should’ve known. Holden wanted guilt to be a constant part of his targets’ lives, just like it was in his.

Hunter wasn’t sure how much longer he would be able to keep his arms up. The pain in his shoulders was starting to blind him. He needed a plan. He needed to think of something and he needed to do it fast.

‘Would you like to know how they died, Detective?’ Holden asked. ‘My family?’

Keep him talking, Hunter thought. Keep him talking.

‘How?’

‘Julie,’ Holden said, ‘my older daughter, was sitting behind my wife. With the impact, she was catapulted forward like a bullet and, despite being strapped in, her head smashed against the passenger’s seat in front of her.’ There was a short pause. ‘Do you know what a splinter fracture is, Detective?’

Hunter closed his eyes as the last piece of the puzzle slotted into place. Holden’s killing methods.

‘Yes . . . I do.’

‘Her little tiny skull was riddled with them. Her brain got punctured thirteen times.’ Holden coughed as if he had something lodged in his throat.

Hunter’s attention sharpened.

‘Megan,’ Holden continued, ‘my youngest, who was sitting directly behind me, had her face and skull crushed by my seat – like a vise. The crash impact was so violent, my seat broke off its rails and flew back into her. She never had a chance.’

Hunter’s shoulder muscles were now in complete agony, too fatigued to keep his arms up for much longer, but logic told him that if his arms were tired, so were Holden’s.

They’d been talking for around eight minutes now. A three fifty-seven Magnum semi-automatic pistol weighed around two and a half pounds, which, after eight minutes, would add considerably to the effort his arm muscles had to go through to keep Hunter under aim.

‘My wife, Dora, she suffered the worst.’ Holden paused again, as if he had to breathe in the strength to explain it. ‘The impact caused the windshield to explode into the car and on to the two of us, but because my seat broke off its rails and flew back, she took the bulk of the impact. Her face was completely lacerated by glass. It took her around five minutes to bleed to death. All I could do was look at her . . . and scream . . . and cry . . . but I couldn’t get to her. I just couldn’t get to her. I couldn’t get to my babies.’

Holden’s last few words were delivered with a lot of pain and in an almost strangled voice. Hunter couldn’t see it, but he had no doubt that tears had come to his eyes.

Teary eyes, tired arms. It was now or never.

Ninety-One

Without being able to turn around to face Holden, Hunter knew that his only chance was to play the odds . . . and he had to play them blind.

For the past five minutes he’d been listening attentively to Holden’s voice, searching for any sort of oscillation in it, waiting and hoping that the odds would tip his way, even if only for a split second.

Teary eyes, tired arms.

Once again, keeping his head completely still, Hunter’s eyes moved left. Seven feet to the nearest shelving unit – way too far for him to make it . . . or was it?

From that distance, with his full attention on his target and his gun aimed and ready, Holden just couldn’t miss. Hunter was well aware of that, but teary eyes and tired arms would never add up to full attention and aimed and ready. If Hunter was playing the odds, he had to do it now.

Holden hadn’t noticed it, but Hunter had already repositioned his feet. Both of them were now slightly facing left, with his right heel about an inch off the ground, ready for the explosive movement. In the blink of an eye, his right leg pushed forward with all its strength and Hunter’s body shot left; but instead of running, he threw himself on to the floor and rolled away as fast as he could.

BOOM.

BOOM.

Inside a confined space like Holden’s basement, a three fifty-seven Magnum sounded like an amplified cannon, the defining sound reverberating off the walls in all directions, but Hunter had read the odds like a pro. Revisiting the accident in the way Holden had just done had overwhelmed him with emotions. Tears had indeed come to his eyes, blurring his vision. To compensate for the weight of his gun and to release some of the muscle tension, his weapon arm and his trigger finger had also relaxed a couple of notches. The result had been an attention-lacking, poorly aimed first shot. By the time Holden’s mind got back to business and he squeezed the second round, Hunter had almost disappeared behind the shelving unit.

The second bullet missed Hunter by just a fraction, exploding against the concrete floor and sending dust and cement pieces flying up in the air.

As Hunter made it to the temporary safety of the shelving unit, he immediately got to his feet; but, as he looked up, desolation hit him. All he seemed to have done was delay the inevitable. Without being able to turn his head to have a proper look, Hunter’s assessment of his escape route had been limited by what he could see from rotating his eyeballs as far left as they would go. Now that he could see clearly, there was no escape route.

Hunter had thrown himself into a makeshift corridor. To one side he had a brick wall, to the other, solid shelving units with no break in between them. The only way Hunter could get out of that corridor was if he ran all the way to the end of it and ducked behind the last unit again, but that was way too far. There was no way he could make it there before Holden rounded the first unit and fired another shot at him, and this time, Hunter wasn’t so sure Holden would miss.

Think, damnit, think.

Hunter did the only thing he could do. He played the odds again.

Holden had done exactly what Hunter had expected him to do – he had run forward, towards the shelving unit that Hunter had ducked behind, gun poised, ready to blast another shot at him. Hunter, on the other hand, didn’t do the expected. He didn’t run down the makeshift corridor towards the last unit. He did the exact opposite. He ran back to where he had just come from.

Hunter’s timing couldn’t have been more perfect. As Holden began rounding the shelving unit, expecting Hunter to be running scared towards the other end of the room, Hunter collided with Holden’s six-foot-one frame with maximum force. The difference was, Holden wasn’t expecting it – Hunter was.

Hunter had thrown himself forward headfirst, which hit Holden square in the chest. Reflexively, Holden’s finger squeezed the trigger on his weapon, but the impact had been so brutal that he was hurled back several feet. His gun hand moved up and the shot went astray, hitting the ceiling. As he fell backwards, he lost his grip on his gun, which hit the floor and disappeared under a shelving unit. Gasping for air and with pain already burning through his ribs, Holden landed on his back awkwardly, crashing hard against the concrete floor. At that exact moment, Hunter and Holden’s eyes met and for a heartbeat everything switched to slow motion. Hunter saw the ugly scar on Holden’s chin contort out of shape and he paused. He hadn’t seen it before. How could he never have seen it before? The thick scar traversed Holden’s entire chin, from the left edge of his lip, across his jaw and cheek, disappearing just under his right ear.