Read Online Silver by Steven Savile - Free Book Online Page B

them—he had killed before.
     She tried to aim the Browning at him, but Ronan slammed his free arm up against hers, sending the gun spinning out of her hand. It discharged again as it hit the floor, the bullet burying itself in the wall beside his head. Ronan threw all of his weight forward, trying to unbalance the woman. She went scrambling backwards, cradling her broken wrist.
    He went for the gun.
    She ran for the door.
    Ronan scrambled across the floor, grabbed the Browning, and rolled half onto his back. He didn’t aim, just pulled the trigger. The shot went high and wide, digging out one of the ceiling’s Artex swirls. He hadn’t expected it to hit.
    The woman caught one of the standing hairdryers and, wielding it like a lance, charged at the plate glass window. It shattered around the ceramic bulb of the dryer’s head. The woman didn’t hesitate; she threw herself head-first out through the window even as the glass shattered into jagged teeth and came snapping down. She hit the street on her right knee and shoulder, rolling through the broken glass and coming up on her feet, torn and bloodied. She cast a single backward glance his way, then took off across the road, sprinting toward the press of people coming out of the subway station.
    Walking through the broken glass, Ronan asked Lethe, “You got a visual on her?”
    “Of course I have,” Lethe said, as though talking to a technologically retarded child. “Hang on, are you telling me a girl just beat you up?”
    “Less of the chat. Just tell me where she is.”
    Ronan ducked through what was left of the window. People were staring at him as he emerged onto the street. He could feel the blanket of shock that was settling over them. This was sleepy suburbia. Gunmen didn’t run out into the street. They melted away from him as he set off after the woman. He could feel their fear.
     “Police,” he shouted, even though it was a lie. That one word reestablished their natural world order.
    Ronan ran hard, keeping his body low, arms and legs pumping furiously as he drove himself on. He could see the woman. She had maybe forty yards on him. She had pulled the balaclava off and was running with it clutched in her right hand. She was running flat out, dodging every few steps between commuters on their way to work.
    He did the math: The Browning had an effective range of fifty yards; there were a hundred other people in the street, bystanders; she was a moving target, but it was a straight shot. He could almost certainly take her down with a single, well-placed shot—all he had to do was steady himself before he took it. But that meant shooting an unarmed woman in the back. With so many people in the street there was nothing to say someone wouldn’t take a step or two the wrong way, distracted by something in a shop window or one of the newspaper headlines on the newsstand, and cross the bullet’s path. It was all too easy for someone to wind up getting hit by accident in a crowded street. The woman knew that; that was why she was running toward the thickest concentration of people. Like the old saying went, there was safety in numbers—it was just a different kind of safety.
    Ronan had five seconds to take the shot if he was going to take it. After that she was going to disappear into the subway system, Lethe would lose his visual contact and Ronan would be left chasing shadows.
    The crowd opened up to swallow the woman and she was gone. He cursed.
    “Tell me you can see her!” he shouted into the earpiece.
    o do was3" face="Helvetica" color="black"> “Sorry boss.”
    “Bollocks!” Frost cursed again. He pushed his way between the people, but it was impossible not to be slowed down by them. On one side of the station’s entrance flowers spilled into the street, on the other, newspapers. He ran inside and hurdled the ticket barrier. There was only one way she could have gone—down to the platform. Breathing hard Ronan took three and four steps at a