‘I can hold her,’ said the woman. ‘Give her to me.’

Jess turned round and looked at the woman who, though clearly tired, appeared in far better shape. She was tempted to do it too, she was that tired, but in the end, she couldn’t risk it. This woman had brought all this down on them out of nowhere, and she wasn’t going to entrust her with the care of the one person in the world she truly loved. She gave Casey a reassuring smile. ‘I’m going to let you float for a bit, okay, Case? But I won’t let go of you, I promise.’

Casey nodded but, as Jess untangled her from the crook of her arm, a shot exploded out of nowhere, blowing a hole in the canoe up near the front where Uncle Tim was clinging on. A split second later, he cried out in pain and clutched at the side of his face. Blood poured through his fingers, and Casey screamed, forcing her way back into Jess’s grip.

‘It’s okay!’ shouted Tim, looking at the hand. His cheek was bleeding quite heavily but – unlike Jean had been – he didn’t look seriously hurt, and there was actually an expression of relief on his face. ‘I think it only grazed me.’

A second bullet exploded out of the boat only a foot in front of Casey, leaving a golf-ball-sized hole in its wake.

‘Jesus Christ!’ yelled Jess. ‘We can’t stay here. It’s a death trap.’

‘We need to pull the boat towards the shore!’ shouted the woman, a calm authority in her voice that made Jess listen. ‘It’s giving us better cover than swimming for it. Everyone keep as low as you can in the water and kick as hard as you can.’

‘I can’t hold you much longer, babe,’ hissed Jess through gritted teeth, feeling Casey getting ever heavier in her free arm.

Up ahead the river eddied and rippled, its noise growing louder, as the canoes approached the next set of rapids. Jess could see an exposed rock sticking up ahead of them and she knew that the moment it got shallower they’d be easy targets again.

Another shot ricocheted off the top of the canoe and Jess felt the vibrations in the wood close to her hand. Suddenly she could feel the bottom of the river beneath her feet as they sank into silt. They were only about five yards away from shore now and it was getting shallower all the time. The water ran up to a small muddy spit backing onto woodland. There’d be no scrambling up a bank. It was a straight run, tantalizingly close now, and already Jess was having to crouch down as she waded through the mud. The water went down to barely three feet deep. Any second now they would no longer be able to conceal themselves behind the canoe, and already Uncle Tim’s head was poking over.

The next shot was way above their heads. They were finally putting some distance between themselves and their attackers.

‘All right,’ shouted the woman, ‘this is our best chance. On the count of three, run for the bank. And don’t stop for anything. One, two—’

‘They’ll kill us!’ screamed Tim.

‘Three.’

The woman let go of the canoe and dashed through the water, and Jess immediately gave Casey a shove. ‘Go baby, go. I’m right behind you. Run!’

But it was still waist-deep for Casey and she could only wade, so, with a last burst of strength, Jess picked her up under the arms and staggered through the water with her, thinking that any second now her life could be ended by a single bullet.

More shots rang out. One after the other, but Jess kept going as if in a daze, the shore seeming to take forever before it was beneath her feet.

And then Tim was by her side, helping to lift up Casey, and together the three of them ran out of the water and into the undergrowth after the woman, out of sight of the men who wished to kill them.

Twelve

KEOGH STOOD AT the lookout point watching the river curve away beneath him into the distance through the binoculars, the .303 rifle he’d been using propped up against a litter bin. The two canoes, each marked with the name of the canoe hire company, had come to a rest in the shallows two hundred metres away, their progress impeded by a sand spit sticking out from the trees on the other side. The woman’s body lay sprawled out in the nearest canoe for the whole world to see.

He swung the binoculars to his left, looking upriver, just in case another boat was coming down it. But, thankfully, there was nothing. At this time of the year, already deep into autumn, there would be few people using the river, and Keogh was surprised that the canoe hire company was still even renting out boats. He lowered the binoculars and sighed loudly. ‘Jesus, what a disaster! Why didn’t you take her out earlier?’

He was addressing the man standing next to him. The Algerian, Mehdi. The one who’d shot the local policeman a few minutes earlier and who, in Keogh’s opinion, should have managed to intercept Amanda Rowan, before she ran into whoever these day-trippers were and messed up everything. Keogh had worked with Mehdi on and off for several years. An ex-military policeman in the Algerian army, he’d always been as reliable as he was ruthless. Unfortunately, he’d picked a very bad time to make a mistake, and now they had the kind of damage limitation exercise on their hands that was going to be fraught with risks and complications. Not to mention a dead police officer.

Mehdi stared at him, his dark, heavily lined features twisted into a defiant frown. ‘You said the orders were to take her alive. I didn’t have a choice.’

‘You could have shot her in the leg. We need her alive, but she doesn’t have to be walking.’

‘I tried, but it’s hard getting a good shot in when you’re running down a hill in the middle of the woods.’

Which Keogh had to admit was true. Ultimately, as leader of the operation to capture Amanda Rowan, the failure was his responsibility. The question was: what did he do about it?

He turned to the man on the other side of him: the big cop, MacLean. MacLean was their local contact, although he was based over forty miles away which, to Keogh’s mind, meant he wasn’t local at all, and therefore of little use to him. But Keogh’s employer had insisted he come along, so Keogh had had no choice but to use him. ‘We need to secure those canoes and get them out of sight,’ he told MacLean. ‘Where’s the nearest river crossing?’

MacLean fixed him with a bovine stare. He had a very round, slightly pudgy baby face, and thin sullen eyes that made him look untrustworthy. God alone knew how he passed his police entrance exams, thought Keogh. They must be pretty desperate for recruits up here.

‘Tayleigh,’ he said. ‘It’s the first town, about five miles down the road from here.’

‘Is the road good?’

‘Good enough. It won’t take that long to get back to the canoes if we drive fast.’

‘How well do you know the area?’

‘Well enough. I used to have a girl out this way a few years back.’

A short-sighted one, thought Keogh, but he was secretly pleased. It seemed MacLean might be some help after all. ‘So, we should assume the target knows the area a bit too. She’s been up here a few weeks now. Where will she be heading?’

‘Tayleigh as well. There’s nowhere else round here really.’

Keogh looked down towards the trees where Amanda Rowan and the people she was now with were hidden.

‘Which way will they go?’

‘There’s a footpath that mainly follows the river all the way into the town. If they start walking now and go fast, I reckon it’ll take them two hours. We could easily cut them off. The path’s not well used.’

Keogh nodded, thinking about his resources. He had MacLean and Mehdi with him now, and Sayenko, the cadaverous, chain-smoking Ukrainian, who’d been keeping watch on the other side of the village, and was now en route back to them. That was four in total. It should have been a perfect number to snatch an unarmed woman, but it wasn’t many for a full-scale manhunt. ‘I think they’ll suspect we’ll try and cut them off on the path. Amanda Rowan’s no fool. She’s done pretty well so far. But we’ll send someone down there, just in case. What other routes could they take?’