She was breathing: eyes open and gaze distant, arms across her midriff to staunch the blood. The front passenger door was open, and he picked her up and placed her on the seat. Forsyth was already in the back, hands to his eyes and shaking his head, talking in a long stream of panic-whisper.

The car’s engine was still running, and Vincent slammed Erin’s door and sprinted to the driver’s side. He jumped behind the wheel and hit the gas, door panel screeching as it side-swiped Delroy’s van in the mouth of the driveway.

He was doing forty miles per hour when he made the turn onto the road, and over to his right, below the tree line on the slope beyond the barn, he saw the figure of a man—shortish and square, not hurrying, relaxed in his gait. He carried a duffel bag in one hand and an assault rifle in the other. Vincent had another two hundred yards to run before the road entered the trees, and he watched across his shoulder as Andre Gutierrez lowered the duffel and brought the rifle to his shoulder.

Vincent shouted, ‘Down! Get down!’

Forsyth hunched forward, hands behind his head in the airplane crash position, but Erin was way gone—eyes shut and head to one side—and she didn’t move. Bullets rattled on the metalwork, a brutal stitch lengthwise, and the windshield and the glass in the passenger door collapsed in a single panoramic curtain.

Then they were into the trees, and the SUV slewed with the switchback in the road. For a brief stretch the vegetation thinned, and Vincent looked across his shoulder, and through the shattered rear window saw Gutierrez walking back in the direction of the house, bag in one hand and the gun in the other.

Vincent’s lap was full of broken glass. He shook shards off his arm and put a hand in front of Erin’s face, clicked his fingers and then shook her gently.

‘Erin, we’re almost there. Five minutes. Just give me five minutes.’

Blood on her shoulder, blood on her stomach, blood on her leg.

Vincent put his foot down.

He’d never driven so fast. One hundred miles an hour in a glassless Range Rover, bloodied fingers on the console screen, trying to find a hospital. Forsyth was in too much shock to give directions, but the GPS led Vincent to an emergency facility in the centre of town.

The street was residential, quiet and well tended, and when he swung into the parking area and stopped with a yelp of brakes in the ambulance drop-off bay, the expression on the face of the nurse at the door told him that theirs was a situation of some rarity.