‘You’re done here. You have to come with me, now,’ said the Echelon agent, injecting as much authority into her voice as she dared. This girl could flip either way, dropping into catatonia, or turning the last of her ammunition on Caitlin and then herself.

She limped past the corpse of Jackson Blackstone. His dressing gown had come open, spilling the contents of his stomach over his pyjamas.

‘Can you give me the gun, Sofia?’ Caitlin asked softly. She listened for the howls of approaching sirens. It wouldn’t be long. Holding up both hands, still cuffed, out to the Mexican girl, she said, ‘I can get us out of here, Sofia. But we need to go, now.’

The teenager seemed to reach a decision. She snatched the AK-47 close to herself.

‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘This is mine. I keep the gun.’

‘Fair enough, then. But we have to get going. Follow me.’

‘Okay,’ the Pieraro girl said, seeming not to care what happened now as long as she had the gun. Before she moved towards Caitlin, however, the young woman took something from her pocket – three polaroids, it looked like – and dropped them on Blackstone’s corpse.

Caitlin didn’t bother to limp over and find out what sort of calling card she’d left. This chick was fucking crazy.

She did almost stop to pick up the handgun that Blackstone had used to wound her, until she remembered him firing without result at Pieraro. Emptying the magazine. She checked to see if the girl was wounded, but she appeared to have escaped without a scratch. Caitlin wasn’t surprised. It had been a long time since the Governor had seen combat, and he was firing wildly.

‘Why don’t we just go this way?’

Pieraro had stopped following her, and had turned back towards the French doors, and the darkness outside.

‘There is another man here,’ replied Caitlin. ‘We have to get him. He was a road agent,’ she added, improvising from her sketchy recall of the Pieraro file. The mere mention of the words ‘road agent’ galvanised a response from the teenager. Her face hardened and she strode up beside Caitlin, taking her by the arm and supporting her as the American hobbled along trying to keep up.

‘Be careful,’ Caitlin warned as Sofia led the way out of the library, into a hallway in the centre of the house. It was well lit, making good targets of both of them.

A blood trail led towards the front door, which stood open.

‘Oh no. You. Fucking. Don’t,’ growled Caitlin. She set her course for the exit and accelerated as best she could. Every step drove white-hot spikes of pain through her leg, arcing up her spine and into her head. To her surprise, Sofia ran ahead of her and loosed a short burst of fire out of the open doorway just before she ran though.

Nice moves, kid, thought the veteran field operator.