The Woodsman

by Blake North

  I need to finish them off.

  I was walking around my office as I considered my options; packing my suitcase, getting ready to leave. But where would I go?

  How do you go about finishing off a drug cartel? If I had nothing to do with them, it would have been a simple matter of calling the police, tipping them off. But I did have something to do with them, or I would never have known where they were. I couldn’t risk them selling me to the police, which they would do as a matter of course for a commuted sentence.

  I would have done the same, if it was me, I knew.

  No, it was me or them. I just had to think of something.

  I picked up my bag and hurried from the office, heading to the ground floor where my car was parked.

  “Afternoon, Mr. Sand,” Mrs. Douglas called to me. She looked vaguely concerned as I bustled past her desk, and I realized my worry must be written on my face.

  “Afternoon, Mrs. Douglas,” I called over my shoulder with what I hoped was a lighthearted manner. I saw a reflection of myself in the mirror in the elevator on the way downstairs, and realized it was probably more of a grimace than a smile I gave her.

  I was so worried. My heart thudded and my hand shook as I slid the key into the ignition, turning it hastily. The engine purred to life and I headed back out of the parking, toward the gate.

  “This could ruin everything,” I said to myself in the rear-view mirror as I adjusted it and put my foot on the gas, heading for home. It wasn’t that, though. It was the danger the gang presented to my daughter and to Hayley.

  We found footprints at the perimeter. Mr. Hudson’s voice spoke in my mind, clear and hard. Whoever it was who threatened my life, they had been checking the security at my home. They probably knew my daughter was there.

  I felt the blood drain from my face. It wasn’t exactly like Estella was behind closed doors: she jogged in the park every day, heading out into the streets of Pasadena like any other person in town. Anyone who knew who she was—and that was anyone who read magazines or followed the tabloids—could abduct her from there.

  “Estella,” I said aloud as I broke the speed limit on the road back to Pasadena from my workplace, “please, please stay inside. Don’t take risks today. Please.”

  I decided to text her. Hands shivering with nerves, I pulled my phone from my side-pocket and sent her a text.

  Please play it safe, sweetie. Stay inside until I get home. On my way—be there in twenty minutes. Dad.

  I put my foot on the gas and raced back into the traffic, heading frantically home.

  As I drew into leafy Pasadena, I heard my phone make a message tone. Two tones. I sighed. I waited until I was outside the house before I took it from my pocket and checked the messages. The first one was from Estella.

  Okay, Dad—see you.

  I smiled. I opened the second one. I dropped the phone in my lap and cried out.

  It was from Mrs. Delange.

  Heard from Hudson. Mrs. Sand gone. Please call.

  “No!” I cried. “No. No, no, no, no, no.”

  But all the denial in the world would not erase that. Praying I was dreaming, wishing I would wake and knowing it was impossible, I ran through the door and into the house.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR – HAYLEY

  I came around slowly. My head hurt. My senses swam and came back piece by piece. First, my sense of smell returned, fitfully. I smelled dust and sand and old rubber tires. I coughed.

  My sense of sight came back next. I opened my eyes. I could see nothing. That terrified me. Then I realized why: it was dark. Completely, stiflingly dark. My sense of sound came back and brought me the roar of an engine, the rattle of a parcel-tray, the sound of wheels on a street. Touch told me I was in a cramped space, confined and hot. I couldn’t turn around.

  I was in a car. In the trunk. Memory returned last, and I knew why. I had been abducted.

  I remembered being in the street outside my house, hearing people talking. I had heard the doorbell, and come out to find who was there. Seeing no-one, I had followed the distant sound of voices to my front gate—a small, waist-high picket gate of creosoted wood—and looked out.

  Someone hit me on the back of the head and the world broke into a thousand shards of white and darkness.

  I listened, hearing voices.

  “We goin’ the right way?”

  “Sure we are. Don’t be stupid.”

  Someone laughed.

  I lay very still. Considered my options. Then, abruptly, I lashed out. I started kicking the door of the trunk, pushing the seat-back behind me, jack-knifing my body. I would make them open this trunk. They would let me out! I was not going to be kept in here against my will!

  I licked my lips, which were dry and cracked. I shouted.

  “No! Stop! Let me go!”

  My voice was weak and, ridiculously, I felt embarrassed to be making such a racket. Making yourself shout aloud is hard. We are taught to keep quiet, to not use our voices. Making myself use it was a challenge, especially since I was shaking with fear and anger.

  “Let me out!”

  “Hey, boss!” someone shouted. “She’s gone crazy in there. Stop this car!”

  Feeling encouraged, I doubled my efforts. I lashed out with my heels, kicked the trunk, shouted louder.

  “No! Let me out! This is quite enough.”

  I could have laughed, if I had not been so scared. The words that were issuing from me were more like those of a schoolteacher than of a kidnapped woman. But I couldn’t help it.

  Evidently, my schoolteacher voice had some effect. The car lurched sideways, pulled over. Stopped. Someone got out. I heard the door slam. I drew a breath.

  When they opened the trunk, I would have perhaps two seconds to spring out. I coiled my body, tense and waiting.

  I heard the key in the lock. The fumbling and the swing of the keyring as whoever was there turned it round and took it back again. Then, light flooded into my space.

  I screamed as I vaulted forward. I thudded into something solid and fell back. I let myself slide down the back of the car to my knees, and launched myself forward.

  “Stop her!” someone screamed.

  I ran. Two seconds later, someone heavy thudded into me and I fell. I screamed with anger and terror and wrestled with the person, clawing desperately at their eyes, their arms, their shoulder.

  He was big, and tall, and heavy. I couldn’t hope to fight him and I marveled at the strength a man has. There was no way I could get him off me. Especially not when I was so utterly terrified.

  “Stop it, you bitch!”

  A fist descended and hit me on the head. The pain was so sudden, so overpowering, that I couldn’t have moved if I had tried. Thus stunned, it was an easy task for my captor to get his weight off me and haul me to my feet. He dragged me round to the car. This time, he did not put me in the trunk, but half pushed, half-flung me onto the rear seat.

  “You’re ridin’ with me, where I can keep you still.”

  I was ready this time. As he got in beside me, I kicked at him, my arms reaching for his face, nails raking for his eyes.

  “Bitch!” he screamed it at me, cuffed me on the head and pushed me down onto the floor behind the front-seats. Then he put his booted feet on me, holding me down.

  “Keep still, or I’ll kick you in the head.”

  I stayed where I was. I prayed. I drew slow, sobbing breaths through my nose, trying to keep the noxious smell from my nostrils.

  I was out of the trunk at least. It was terrifying in there—dark and close and stifling. At least, in here, there was light and I knew where I was going. And it felt, somehow, like I had a chance to escape. I lay very still on the floor and didn’t move a muscle.

  After a long while, it seemed as if we went uphill, then steeply down. I felt the atmosphere in the car change, heard my captors quieten down, their breaths becoming more even and regular. I even felt the foot that pinned me in place relax somewhat.

  “Almo
st back,” the driver sang out.

  At last, I felt the car stop. The relief flooded me too, at first: at least I would get off this floor. Then fresh terror assailed me. What were they going to do to me? Where were we?

  I had already guessed who they were. This was the drug cartel; the one Beckett had known distantly, back in his student days. The ones who had been causing the trouble.

  As the front door opened and then the rear door and my captor slid out, keeping his boot on my back, I thought rather desperately of Beckett.

  I should hate him. But I want him, badly.

  I felt safe with Beckett. And, despite that this was all his fault I had the bizarre conviction he could sort it all out. If only he knew where I was.

  “Beckett,” I whispered under my breath. “Please come here.”

  Then there were hands on my shoulders and I was being hauled out of the car and to my feet, into the light. I looked around.

  I could see two men, though I could hear a third behind me. The ones in front of me could have been truckers or football quarterbacks: thick-set, tall and heavily built. The one who had been in the back with me was the taller of the two, dressed in jeans and a leather jacket, a knit cap on his head. The driver was shorter, and his jacket had a red badge on the front and he held a gun, pointed at me. I had never seen a gun up close; much less from this angle. Oddly, my mind did not focus on it, but on the driver and his jacket with its brightly-colored patch. The badge had a yellow chevron on it, I noted distantly.

  Strange, how the mind works.

  I stood there swaying, a slight breeze lifting my hair and making me shiver with a sudden cold. I was in what was easily the most terrifying scenario of my life. And yet my mind was strangely calm, completely resigned. I was noticing tiny details, like the stubble on the face of the driver, the green leaves on the scrubby tree behind our group, the low clouds in the sky. Everything had suddenly condensed down to the tiny details and I felt as if my skin was transparent, each signal flowing through it and into me.

  I feel as if I am about to die.

  Oddly enough, not even the thought of it bothered me; not particularly. I had moved beyond the space where that made sense into a dull corridor, where all that came through to me were the small, clear details of this world.

  I wish I could see Beckett again.

  That thought surprised me. I examined it with the dispassionate clarity my mind had suddenly entered. Then there was no time for thought. The tall man had laid a hand on my back and was marching me round toward a small building I had not noticed.

  I followed them into the prefabricated building that squatted below a slight ridge. I could hear in the distance the creak of cranes, hauling freight, and the sound of the sea. I could smell salt in the breeze. We were at a harbor, clearly. The scent of salt and seawater and diesel and dirt was thick. I breathed in and then the door closed again and I was in the close, dank smelling confines of the prefab, facing another man.

  This one was slightly taller than the driver and slightly broader, too, with a built of an ex-fighter. He looked at me from pale eyes. Then he spat.

  “This Mrs. Sand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I like her,” he said, then smiled, showing bottom teeth stained with nicotine. He spat. “Take her inside.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Please,” I said in a small voice. “Please don’t hurt me.”

  The man with the blue eyes and the tooth laughed. He was evidently the boss of this group, as they stood back with some care to allow him past.

  “Oh, the pretty doesn’t want to get hurt? Don’t worry, girl,” he added gruffly. “We ain’t gonna hurt you. You’ll be fine or you’ll be dead. Ain’t no point in mucking about and getting the whole wharf excited with your hollering in here.”

  Strangely, that actually made me relieved. “Thank you,” I said sincerely.

  He blinked, then laughed.

  “Ain’t nothin’ to thank me for, girl,” he said. His eyes twinkled and I knew he was looking me over. I also had his word that he wouldn’t hurt me and I prayed that extended to any form of harm or violation. It seemed to, as he shook his head, still smiling at me. “Ain’t no good news you’re gonna be killed, is it?”

  “It…no,” I said. I could have kicked myself. Why was I entering into conversation with him? Why wasn’t I screaming, attacking, trying to escape?

  I sighed. The encounter with the man when I tried to run away had shown me how completely foolish that would be. My head still ached, and I knew a couple of more hard blows could damage me irrevocably. As it was, my head throbbed and my vision swam and I needed to sleep badly.

  It’s not worth trying to fight these people. And they haven’t hurt you. Not badly. Stay here. Why not? It’s not like you can do anything else, now can you? And they’re not unkind.

  The thought amazed me. They had abducted me from my home, thrown me in the trunk of a car, beaten me up and threatened to end my life. And they were not unkind?

  I knew my thinking was addled, but I also knew I couldn’t help it. I was at their mercy. I had to learn to live with that. If this was how I did that, well; it couldn’t be helped.

  The tall man who had hit me led me from the room. We passed into a warehouse. It was colder in there and I shivered, rubbing my arms.

  “I’m cold,” I whispered.

  “Won’t be cold where you’re headed,” the man said, sniggering. “We’re putting you in near the boiler. Nice and warm there. We might need to keep you several days. Don’t want you getting sick, now.”

  I whimpered. The thought of being locked in a small space near the boilers was torture. “Please,” I asked.

  “Come on,” he said gruffly, as if hearing my pleas would be something he’d prefer not to do. “Inside now.”

  He opened a door and gave me a small shove in the small of my back. Even his small shove was enough to overbalance me, and I tipped forward onto my hands and knees. I cried out and scrambled to my feet, throwing myself on the closed door. I hit it, kicked it. Threw my weight at it, but nothing budged it.

  I sat down in the corner, suddenly exhausted. My head swam, and I used the little energy I had left to focus on the place where I found myself.

  There was no proper window. The light came from a barred aperture, probably a ventilation gap, high in the wall behind me. The room was perhaps three paces long and one and a half wide. The ceiling was high, though, which was a mercy. If it had been low I would have gone mad in there in two minutes.

  “Help!” I cried. “Please! Help me!”

  Using my voice had ceased to be embarrassing and become a matter of life or death. I hit on the door with my fists. Kicked it again. I considered climbing up to the grille and shouting through it to alert someone who might be passing the warehouse, but I reckoned that was stupid: if anyone was likely to be passing, the thugs wouldn’t have put me here, now, would they? Besides, the grille was high up in the wall with no clear route to it. And I was tired.

  I slid down to sitting and closed my eyes.

  I couldn’t escape. I had checked my pockets for my phone, but of course they had taken it away from me. It was probably long gone. There was no way out of this. All I could do was pray. And hope they fed me soon.

  I was starving.

  As I sat there, eyes closed, I tried to work out how long I might have been away. I still had my watch, which told me the time was three pm. I had gone to my gate early this morning, around nine thirty. I hadn’t had lunch, and it was a few hours before dinner.

  I’m so tired!

  It was a combination of stress, no lunch and the blow to my head, I reckoned, but at that moment, sleep meant everything to me. I was so tired. Even escape was secondary. I was happy to stay in here forever, as long as they left me to sleep in peace and quiet.

  It was warm too. I could hear the comforting, regular motion of water in pipes and it overlaid the distant, hushing sound of the sea. I leaned back against the cold bri
ck wall, my front warm from the boilers in the next room and the shaft of sunlight flowing through the ventilation gap. I closed my eyes and soon I was fast asleep.

  My dreams were dark and uncertain, but in them there was one point of certainty and reassurance: Beckett’s face swam before me like a light, drawing me to the shore. Remarkably, without ever expecting it, I sank into restful sleep.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE – BECKETT

  I called Mr. Hudson. Told him to come to the house at once. We sat upstairs in my office. It was two pm when he arrived.

  “Peter,” I said.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “I have a problem. I need your help. But first, I need your promise. I need you to swear that you will not tell anyone about what I am asking you to do.”

  A thickset, reassuring man with a gravely kind face, Peter shrugged, relaxed. “Client confidentiality, Boss. I already said I wouldn’t tell.”

  I let out a sigh of relief. I hadn’t thought of that! He already held secrets of mine—access points, gates—that no one else knew about and that he was basically contracted not to reveal. If he considered this mission a part of that and covered by the same ruling, I was safe.

  “Thanks, Peter.” I smiled. “Now, do you know of the Hillcrest Street Gang?”

  His eyebrows moved fractionally. His head inclined a fraction more. “I heard of them,” he said guardedly.

  “Okay,” I said, pleased. “Now, I have reason to believe—never mind how—that my wife is with them. They have a hideout in the harbor. They are extorting money from me.”

  “Oh,” he said quietly.

  I felt as if a weight had been pulled out of me into the daylight, where it could dissolve and release me from its burden forever. I had told someone. And that someone could help me put all this to rights for now.

  “Well, then,” I said. “We need to get there, get in and get Hayley. Then get out again. D’you think you can do that?”

  “Depends,” he said, stroking his chin thoughtfully. I tensed.

  “I’ll pay you ten times what I usually do, for this one job. You can retire to Barbados. I’ll be very generous…”