by J K Ellem
Maybe her mind was playing tricks. It had been deathly silent until now. Maybe her subconscious was willing her to hear something, anything that would give her a clue as to where she was and when they were going to finally show themselves.
Silence, nothing.
She tensed again, straining against the cable ties. She felt the warm tickle of blood again and the sting of sharp pain as the thin plastic cut into her wrists. She squirmed back and forth, but the chair held firm.
Then she heard the sound again, definitely metallic, closer this time, someone approaching. There was no point in crying out, it was her captor returning. She breathed harder, her heart rate increasing, the coarse material billowed back and forth. She tried to control her breathing but stress and fear were powerful emotions that couldn’t be controlled, especially when you found yourself hog-tied to a chair with tape on your mouth and a hood over your head.
Footsteps, slow and deliberate, not fast, no urgency. The person making them was not in a hurry.
* * *
Shaw moved slowly, down the stairs, past one landing then down again to the bottom, his flashlight in one hand and held over the handgun in the other. He could feel Emily behind him, her nervous energy, pent-up and tense. At the bottom of the stairwell a long passageway stretched away in front of them. The air was thick and damp like a dungeon. There were open doorways that ran off each side, the floor was pooled with brown rusty puddles, the smell raw and obtrusive.
Shaw edged forward, the beam of the flashlight sweeping left and right, the aim of the gun following.
Twenty yards along they reached the first doorway and Shaw paused just outside the room. It was then he saw blood on the floor, the outline of a boot, painting the rough concrete in red. Three red footprints leading into the room and the darkness beyond.
Emily gripped Shaw’s shoulder when she saw them too.
Shaw stepped inside and panned the flashlight around.
A chair sat in the middle of the room. Someone was sitting, tied to it, their hands and legs bound, something over their head.
Shaw aimed his gun and shone the flashlight right at them in their face.
It was Clare. He had found Clare.
44
They were inside the room.
Clare could feel them even though she couldn’t see them. A slight change in the air density, a displacement of the atmosphere as someone entered the confined space.
The front of the hood brightened, harsh light hit her face, filtering through the fibres of the hood just millimetres from her eyes. It was brown, rough like a grain bag.
Footsteps came towards her and she tensed again. The footsteps stopped right in front of her, she could feel them looking down at her, touching distance, hurting distance, violence within reach.
“Clare.” A voice, kind and soothing, reassuring. Safe. A voice and tone she recognised. The hood was pulled from her head and blinding light flooded her world of darkness. She caught of glimpse of them, a blurred outline, just a dark mass before her eyes squeezed shut, an involuntary reaction, her pupils struggling to adjust.
“Clare, it’s OK.” Soft and soothing, hypnotic.
Slowly Clare slowly opened her eyelids, thin slits at first, gradually the person in front of her came into focus.
She felt shock, then fear, then pure rage. Her instincts that had led her here were correct.
“Hello Clare,” the person said. “It’s good to see you again.”
* * *
“Oh my god,” Emily whispered.
Shaw lifted the ragged cloth that covered the head. Dead eyes stared back at him. A young woman, her face bloodied, bruised, bloated. She was partially clad. The front of her clothing was soaked with blood now dried. Her wrists and ankles bound with thick twine. There were deep angry gashes in her skin where she had struggled violently against the bindings, trying desperately to pull free as she suffered.
Shaw stepped back.
It all made sense.
The dead woman wore a bright robe that was gathered up around her waist. Stab marks dotted her torso, dark and clotted gashes puncturing the fabric in a frenzied attack.
“Who is she?” Emily whispered.
Shaw took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “She’s from the church. One of the students. One of the “chosen” as they are called.”
Emily looked at the dead woman tied to the chair. Blood had pooled, then dried around her bare feet, sticky and crusted, tracks of red down her legs. She had been here for a while and dead for some time. “What is she doing here? Who did this?”
“She was practice,” Shaw said, looking around the room. It was small and empty except for a wooden table against the wall. On it were an assortment of tools, knives, and instruments. He turned back to Emily. “She was for your benefit.”
Emily looked aghast. “My benefit?”
Shaw nodded. “She was being practised on, someone honing their skills. He was getting ready for putting you in the chair next, in this room.” Shaw nodded at the dead woman. “He was practising on her, or maybe just used her to pass the time until he was ready for you.”
Emily didn’t have a chance to answer. The sound of a motor bike starting up came from above.
* * *
“Bastard!” Shaw spat as he tore back along the passageway, heading towards the base of the stairwell, the beam of his flashlight bouncing wildly off the walls, Emily running behind him trying to keep up.
He hurtled up the stairs, taking them three at a time then flipped off the flashlight when he reached the top not wanting to be an easy target.
The sound of the motor bike came again, from his left, in the darkness, maybe fifty feet away, an angry high-pitched revving. He turned towards the sound and saw movement where the motocross bike was hidden. Shaw’s mind raced, trying to make sense of what had happened. Someone had a spare set of ignition cables and had swapped them out when they discovered Shaw had cut them. Who the hell does that? Who thinks of that?
Shaw pocketed the flashlight, brought his gun up and ran at the sound. A shadow moved in the darkness ahead, the sound of the revving engine amplified by the cavernous space of the empty building.
There was a glint of light from the helmet visor as a figure on the bike turned their head in Shaw’s direction and pointed at him. Shaw fired first, a rapid burst, one-handed as he ran, three shots in quick succession before he turned backwards and threw himself at Emily who was running up behind him, tackling her to the floor as two shots passed overhead, ricocheting off a steel post, sparks flying.
The rider gunned the engine, opened the throttle, and skidded the rear wheel around in a wide circle across the greasy floor, pointing the bike towards an open ramp.
Shaw looked up just as the rider and the bike, in a screech of rubber, accelerated then disappeared through the opening and outside.
Shaw rolled off Emily, sprang up and sprinted towards the opening.
He stopped outside at the top of the concrete ramp. The motorbike was curving away to his right, no headlight on, but he could clearly see the shape against the washed-gray moonlight. They were heading for the main gates that were open and askew, moving fast, ignoring the debris and scrap metal on the ground. The gap between them and Shaw was widening twenty feet every second he hesitated.
It was difficult but not impossible, a moving target in the semi-darkness, accelerating away. Shaw steadied, aimed with both hands, a high and tight grip, instinct and gut feel mixed with science, physics and gravity coming into play—and a prayer thrown in for good measure.
He fired. Ten shots in rapid succession, shifting the aim slightly from right to left in a one inch arc that magnified into a ten feet spread at delivery. Not shooting at the motorbike rider, but to where Shaw calculated he should be in one second, then two seconds, then three seconds. Some aimed low, some went high, sent into the yonder at a best guess of what gravity would do with each round as it streaked through sub-zero air.
The first three missed, too high and
to the right as Shaw struggled to control his breathing. The last four bullets drifted too far ahead of the target, Shaw exaggerating the speed of the rider. But it was the middle three bullets, a perfectly measured grouping, like a well-spaced flock of geese in flight that did it.
The fourth bullet hit his forearm, shattering the bone, causing him to release his grip on the left handlebar. The fifth bullet hit the rider in the shoulder, tearing out a lump of flesh, bone, cartilage and goose-down jacket. The sixth bullet hit further back, striking the tail of the motorbike, smashing the rear suspension arm.
The front of the motorbike kicked then nose-dived to the left, hard and fast into the ground, the rider thrown wildly over the handle bars as the front wheel locked and the rear of the bike upended, cart wheeling three, four, five times until it came to rest in a twisted mangled heap.
The rider suffered much worse.
45
The man was dying, that was obvious. No ambulance would reach him in time and nothing short of a fully equipped operating theatre would save him. He had maybe a few minutes at the most to live. In these last precious moments Shaw wanted answers.
Shaw stood over him and pointed the Beretta at his head. The man’s helmet was still on, the visor cracked, blood streaming down his chin, his eyes and face hidden. He lay on his back, chest heaving, blood bubbling between his lips, shallow rasping breaths. A length of steel rebar, half a foot long, half an inch thick, was protruding from the middle of his chest. The man had landed awkwardly, impaled on the steel rod that was buried in the hard frozen earth amongst a scatter of scrap metal and debris.
The man was pinned to the ground, a nasty evil specimen on a pinboard, wriggling like an upturned beetle. With great effort the man reached across his chest, bloody fingers fumbling the zipper of his jacket. His other arm, a shattered mess, lay limp by his side.
Shaw knelt down and shoved the gun barrel violently into the man’s mouth, snapping off loose teeth damaged from the fall. Shaw battered away the man’s hand, unzipped the jacket and relieved him of a handgun that was tucked inside. Shaw patted him down, none too gentle, removed two knives and a stun-gun he was also carrying.
Next Shaw undid the man’s chin-strap and pulled off his helmet, tossing it away, revealing a tumble of blond hair damp with blood, cold blue eyes, high-check bones and the malevolent stare of a killer.
The man’s life was slipping away, and so was the time Shaw had to get answers.
Shaw stood up just as Emily arrived beside him, breathing heavily. She had run after Shaw, stumbling and slipping across the uneven ground, her flashlight bobbing wildly. She shone her torch in the man’s face.
“Who are you?” Shaw demanded.
The man’s eyes shifted from Shaw to Emily, his expression changing from painful grimace to one of total hatred.
Emily looked at the dying man on the ground, the person who had been stalking her, watching her, the man who had broken into her house, the man who wanted to torture her then eventually kill her. “Marcus?”
Shaw turned to Emily, keeping the gun trained on the man. “Who?”
“Bitch,” the dying man hissed, more blood spluttering from his lips. “You murdered my sister.”
Emily raised her own gun and pointed it at the man. “Casey tried to kill me. She tortured me, beat me, raped me. What I did was self-defence. The courts said so.”
“She was my sister. You killed her!” Marcus Eddleton screamed, a mix of pain and anger. “You fucking murderer!”
Emily turned to Shaw. “Marcus Eddleton, Casey’s brother. I didn’t know—I didn’t think he would come after me.” Her voiced tailed off.
Marcus Eddleton, the twin brother of Casey, ex-army, Australian SAS, lay dying on the ground. He had only met Emily once, when Casey first returned home to their parent’s house to announce their intentions. Marcus was back from Iraq for two weeks, back from his third tour of duty when Casey drove up to the property with Emily. His next deployment would take him to eastern Syria to hunt down Isis operatives. He had spent the last twelve months embedded with Shia militia in the vast plains of Nineveh in Northern Iraq and Anbar province, hunting them there as well. Mosul, Ramadi, Fallujah, Marcus Eddleton had seen them all, had cut his teeth hunting and killing terrorists in some of the most dangerous places on the earth. Now he had hunted his sister’s ex-lover and was going to die for his efforts in a frozen desolate field in the homeland of his allies.
Casey, his sister, had inherited the same brutal and sadistic DNA as Marcus. There were rumours within his SAS regiment that Marcus went too far in his efforts to get intelligence about ISIS movements and the location of their key leaders. There had been incidents where civilians, some as young as fourteen and fifteen, had been found dead or badly tortured in some of the remote outlying villages. Nothing could be proved and his comrades closed ranks when anyone asked. It was all brushed under the carpet as collateral damage, a consequence of the “War on Terror” because of the operational results Marcus and his team achieved.
After he watched Emily walk free from court, fully exonerated for the death of his sister, Marcus resigned from the regiment and began a different kind of clandestine operation of his own.
“You’ve been watching me? You want to kill me?” Emily said in disbelief. Emily could feel her anger rising. “How the hell did you find me?”
Marcus smiled, then coughed up a mouthful of blood and mucus, his breath more laboured. “You can’t hide from me. I swore that after the trial I would find you. No matter what.”
“What about the woman in the building? Who was she? Was she part of your plan?” Emily asked.
Marcus smiled, struggling to find the words. “She was a nobody,” he wheezed. “A plaything to pass the time until I got you.”
Shaw lowered his gun and took a step back. The man was going nowhere and Emily had him covered. This was her fight not his. He had balanced the scales, now it was up to Emily as to what she wanted to do, and the consequences. She needed to own it.
“You’ve killed innocent people. You’re evil just like Casey. I hope you rot in hell, because that’s where you will be seeing your sister next.” Emily pressed forward, tensing to take the shot.
“What about the others?” Shaw asked. “The other women. Was it just an urge or did you enjoy killing them too? How many have you killed? How many others are there buried out here?”
For a moment the smile sagged from Marcus’s face, replaced by a frown. “I killed no one else. I was only interested in her,” Marcus said, nodding at Emily. “Like I said, the girl in the basement was just practice.” He then told them how he had abducted her from the road up to the church where she was walking. He had drugged her with a hypodermic, then carried her back to the tannery. Had her for three days before her heart gave out from the shock.
“You killed my cat, a pet, totally harmless, you piece of shit!” Emily snarled.
“Never liked cats, plus I wanted you to suffer, see what it felt like to lose something you loved.”
Shaw had to interrupt. “What do you mean, you killed no one else?”
Marcus convulsed, blood gurgled from his mouth. “No one else,” he stammered. “Did enough killing in the army, bores me now.”
Shaw felt his world tilt off its axis. He pushed Emily aside and knelt down beside Marcus, grabbing the collar of his jacket, pulling him upright.
Marcus screamed in pain as his body slid along the steel pole slick with blood. “You’re lying,” Shaw said, his voice low and hard. “You’ve killed others. Other women. You’ve been here before, to this town. What have you done with Clare? Where is she?” Shaw shook him hard, “Tell me!”
The life in Marcus’s eyes began to fade and glaze over. He looked drowsily at Shaw, smiled one last time, and died.
Shaw held him for a moment, then let go and stood up, his mind racing.
“Good, he’s dead,” Emily said, lowering her gun. “So what do we do now?”
Shaw said nothing, just rec
overed the man’s backpack, torn from his body as he fell from the motorbike. If what Marcus Eddleton had said was true, then Shaw had made a grave mistake.
46
It was well after midnight when Shaw was back on the road heading towards his destination. Emily wanted to come, but it wasn’t her fight. She had fought her fight and had won, with some help from him. Hopefully her demons would abate, at least for a while.
Shaw had to go it alone. He moved better, plus he didn’t want the responsibility if anything happened to Emily. Where the road was taking him now had nothing to do with her. This was his fight and it was personal.
After much arguing, he had dropped Emily off at Alice Munroe’s home—Alice was more than happy to see her. Molly was asleep, tucked up in bed and dosed with pain-killers.
It had taken Emily four attempts to get a signal on her cell phone, but finally she had dialled and gotten through to Dan Reynolds who was at home in bed.
Emily told Reynolds what had happened.
She also repeated to Reynolds exactly what Shaw told her to say, relaying it word for word. At first Emily couldn’t believe it, but she passed on the information. Shaw wanted Reynolds and his team up on the mountain, no matter what were the conditions on the mountain road. They were to go to the exact location he told Emily.
Until then Shaw was on his own, he wasn’t going to wait for reinforcements.
Shaw looked out the windshield, his mind focused on what he had to do. The storm was clearing from the east, from Denver. The main body of the storm front had cleared the summit of the mountain leaving behind a deep layer of snow on the ground in its wake. The sky was clear and cold, and the streets were deserted at this early hour, dawn only a few hours away.
Shaw drove on, not knowing if Clare was alive or dead, but the sooner he got there the better. In his head he tried to organise into a logical sequence what Marcus Eddleton had said, or more importantly what he hadn’t said.