by Tara Moss
Mak’s lips trembled a little but she steadied. Warm tears began streaming from her eyes, flowing uninhibited. She did not sob, but she let the tears fall, not bothering to wipe them away.
‘They had her on a respirator by then. And once her own breathing failed completely…’ She frowned, with the effort of keeping her voice steady. ‘She’d fought so hard. She did all the right things, and she died.’
For a time Makedde sat still on the mattress, her face streaked and wet. Neither of them spoke. She noticed that her cigarette had gone out. It had bent in her fingers. She had forgotten it during her story.
Her captor took another from the pack and lit it for her. She leaned forward and he placed it in her lips, his fingers brushing her face briefly.
‘I’m sorry about your mum,’ he finally said. ‘I lost my mum, too.’
His voice was deep and gravelly, but cracked a little, perhaps with emotion? Or disuse? She could not be certain he was being genuine. She could not be certain of anything.
She shifted closer. ‘I’m sorry for your loss. Losing your mum is hard. No one can replace her. Was it recent?’ she dared to ask.
The look in his eye changed. He stood up, disengaged.
Dammit, not again. Don’t go away and leave me here…
‘You don’t have to go,’ she said softly. ‘We can talk about something else.’
But it was too late. He was already leaving, and with that look in his eye that spoke of some deep internal conflict.
What was his plan? Had the Cavanaghs sent him, or was he acting alone? What was in store for her? When would she be executed, or…?
She needed to reach him.
‘Please…’
She needed to reach him before he carried out whatever terrible task he had been postponing.
Mak stood. She put the cigarette on the ground.
‘Please don’t go.’ Her tears were running fast now, pouring down her cheeks. ‘I’ve been here for a long time. I can’t tell how long, because there are no windows. But I know it’s been a long time. You’ve fed me. You’ve given me water. You haven’t harmed me,’ she said. ‘You don’t want to hurt me. You’re kind. You’ve been nice to me.’
He stopped at the base of the stairs and looked at her. She saw in his eyes that she was getting some reaction.
‘I’m lonely down here.’ With shaking hands, she undid her wool coat and slid it off her shoulders. ‘I want you to know it’s all right if you want to kiss me.’
He frowned, and took a step backwards, all the time staring at her.
‘You have me here because…because you want me here. You want me. You’ve got me. Just don’t leave me alone any more, please. I’m lonely. I want you to stay.’
Mak licked her lips deliberately. His eyes watched the movement of her tongue.
She gestured at the chain. ‘I can’t go anywhere. Just stay with me. Please. You’re big and strong.’ She said this as one compliments a man, not as one describes a monstrous creature. ‘I’m not frightened of you. I know I’m yours. But I’m not scared of you.’
He took a step forward. ‘I don’t…scare you?’
She looked him square in the eyes. ‘No.’
And it was true. She was no longer scared. She had discovered the darkest parts of herself, and she wondered if she could ever truly be scared of anything again.
‘I don’t want to be alone any more. Stay with me. Hold me.’
He moved closer, and she did not flinch. Her right big toe began to tingle, precisely where the surgeon had carefully reattached it. It had been severed by a scalpel at the hands of a murderer. Andy Flynn had saved her that time. There would be no saviour now. There would be no happy ending. It was too late for happy endings.
‘I want to. Please…’ she whispered into his ear and pulled him close. Her lips were dry, cracked, and they met his and found new moisture there. She unzipped her jeans with one hand, running her other around his thick, knotted neck, over his skull, feeling the scars beneath the fuzz of his short hair. He was missing part of his ear. She licked at the lobe, and ran her tongue across his scarred cheek.
‘I want you.’
He hesitated for only a moment, and then his hands were busy. She covered his scars in kisses, and heard his belt buckle drag along the stone. He had unzipped his pants as well, and they slid to his knees.
Just a little more…a little bit more…
He leaned over her, naked from the waist. She wrapped her legs around him, and pulled him in, feeling a thrilling revulsion electrify her every nerve. She could feel him straining against her pelvis. She locked her knees behind his back, feeling with her thighs, her shins, her toes, feeling him and his clothing with sensual dexterity.
‘I want you,’ she whispered.
He pulled at her jeans, sliding them down from her waist.
More…just a little more…
He got to his knees and yanked her pants off. She licked his broad hand and he rubbed it between her legs. In seconds he penetrated her roughly, and she moaned unconsciously from a mix of revulsion and disturbing womanly pleasure and pain. She clung to him as he thrust into her again. She wrapped her arms around him, her fingers running over his back, his thighs, his legs, her own bare feet. Her toes moved too, and found the metal ring she sought, half exposed in his pants pocket. He thrust again, and let out a grunting exhalation. His pleasure was building fast. She didn’t have long. She raised the key ring with her foot until she could grab it with one hand and insert the key in the cuff. ‘Yes,’ she moaned. It turned. The lock turned. He was losing himself in her, his mouth on her neck, on her chest, his thrusting increasing. She was there below him, receiving him, but not there, not receiving him, receiving her own plans, her own survival. Now her ankle was free, and she was running her fingers down his pants leg, her hips in the air, him leaning into her.
Click.
There.
With a sudden jerk she pulled away from him, throwing herself backwards. He was a confused bull, lunging at her and the air between them, his penis wet and angry, pointing. He had been so shocked that she had been able to slip past the edge of the mattress, just out of his immediate reach. She rolled backwards through a fast and awkward somersault, and arrived, momentarily dizzy, with her heels against a wall of shelves and wine bottles. He recovered himself quickly, however, and with a strange look in his eye moved towards her with his arms outreached in a gesture of pain, desire and confusion.
He reached the end of his chain.
Mak had her back to one of the floor-to-ceiling racks of bottles. She rose to her feet, and pulled her jeans back up and adjusted her T-shirt to cover herself. She pushed the greasy hair back from her drying eyes. Face stony, and with her mind focused to a sharp crystal, she reached behind her for one of the bottles at her back. She swung it off the shelf and smashed the top of it on the ground at her feet, sending splinters of glass skittering across the stone. Her captor flinched and prepared himself for an attack, expecting her to slash at him with the sharp edges of the bottle, but that was not her plan. The bottle broken open, she dumped its contents at his feet, soaking his pants, his shoes. Moving quickly now, animated with her purpose, she took another bottle from the shelf, smashed the top off and threw the alcohol at him. Instinctively, he tried to dodge the airborne wave of stinging cognac, and it landed down one side, the rest splattering on the mattress behind him. She repeated this game, dousing the mattress, dousing him, smashing bottle after bottle while he went mad with his confinement, his chained ankle beginning to bleed.
‘Bitch!’ her former captor screamed, blind with rage. He had not even pulled up his pants, and the sight of him aroused, dishevelled, dangerous—yet helpless—struck Mak in that moment as darkly comic.
Her clothing was already hopelessly filthy, and now she pulled her T-shirt off completely, standing unashamedly in front of him in her bra, half-naked but no longer touchable. She doused the fabric in a third bottle of fine cognac, emptying it, and thin
king for the briefest moment how strange it would have seemed to the purchaser of these bottles that his fine, carefully cellared cognac should be used to soak a woman’s T-shirt. When she was done, one end of it was as wet as if she had dumped it in a bath. The fumes stung her eyes.
Fire, motherfucker. Fire.
The match was just where she had managed to toss it, when she’d knocked the box from his hand, beside one leg of shelving, beyond the reach of the chain that had held her, and now held him. Sick with triumph and sorrow, she trembled slightly as she took the tiny match in her hand. It was dry. Thank God it’s dry. It was dry and perfect. That tiny red tip—no larger than the pinky nail on a newborn baby—held the key to her captor’s destruction. She caught the look of understanding in his eyes when she held it up. He panicked and leaped towards her, the chain going taut and pulling his right leg out from under him, sending him sprawling at her feet. He pulled his leg to his chest—once, twice—and she saw a puff of dust come up from the corner. He was going to try to pull the chain from the wall.
Mak ran the match across the rough stone floor.
It lit.
Kill or be killed.
She touched the flaming tip to the edge of her cognacsoaked T-shirt, and watched the flame spread across it, almost invisibly at first.
His eyes were on the shirt now and the growing flame that was running up the fabric towards her hand. He knew instinctively that it would find him, and that he only had a second to prepare for it. He scrambled backwards on his knees like a huge dog. She threw the shirt with a swoop of her arm and it landed with a wet slap across his face. He flicked it away, but he was covered, a flame ran blue across the material, across him, and when it hit his hair, it too lit in an almost invisible flame, which soon rose with deadly magnificence. Mak doubted that she had ever seen anything so magnificent, so powerful, so heroic as that growing cognac flame as it danced, and its host danced with it, hopping, squirming, clawing at his face and his burning clothes and not yet letting out a sound.
Eat fire, fucker.
Makedde walked to the wall, took the old wooden shelving in both hands and in one—two—three pulls, wrenched it from its position. The shelf teetered forward and fell in slow motion, crashing across the floor in a chaos of shattering glass, liquor and splintering wood, the edge of the shelving hitting her burning captor hard in the ankle as he struggled to get clear of it. She saw him holding his face and rolling on broken glass next to the mattress, which now rose in flame. He was trying to put his clothes out. His hair was still burning. She felt strangely disconnected from the scene, disconnected from everything but her bright clarity, her survival.
Eat fire, fucker. Eat fire.
Numb, shaking madly and with sweat beading on her skin from the building heat of the cellar which had so long held her in deathly cold, Mak turned and made her way up the staircase, scarcely seeing the steps, her feet knowing just where to fall. The edges of the staircase were catching now, slowly, with a line of low flame that ran up the treads in a zigzag. She was untouched by it as she leaped from stair to stair. She was apart from it. And behind her, a deep animal moaning began. The man’s skin was melting under flame. His hair was burning away. The chain rattled as he struggled and rolled, trying to put himself out. She did not turn to look. It is you, or me. She reached the top of the stairs, and found that the door to the cellar was still ajar and opened at the slightest push. It swung open on its hinges. There was a shiny new padlock resting on one side, the key sitting in the lock.
How much of my life did he take? How much of my life did he spend?
There was a cracking sound. It was the wooden stairs, already breaking with heat and flame. Smoke was billowing out with a horrible smell—wood and dust and flesh burning. He was burning alive down there. Burning and chained. His flesh would be burning off his bones.
She did not look.
Makedde closed the cellar door behind her, locking the smoke in, and muffling the sounds of the crackling flame, the searing death below. She snapped the padlock shut, and with dusty bare feet walked across the uneven floorboards of an old farmhouse and out into a winter evening in the countryside of Burgundy, cold, moist grass pushing up between the toes that had held the key to her escape.
CHAPTER 59
Makedde Vanderwall stood barefoot and dishevelled on the gravel driveway of the remote farmhouse, emptied by a deep exhaustion. It was only the queer adrenaline of survival that continued to animate her with unnatural energy, propelling her until she was safe from immediate danger. But when would that be? Where? Through stinging eyes she saw shades of green stretching in all directions, the sky glowing an overcast white. Wood fences intersected the fields like stitches. Stitches and scars. Stitches and scars. Mak recognised nothing of her surrounds. On a hilltop in the far distance she could see glimpses of an ornate church of some kind, and what looked like a small village. Here and there were cottages dotting the expanse of fields. If Paris was nearby, it was hiding very, very well.
As you stand here, he is burning and suffocating in that cellar. He’d had so many scars. You touched them. You kissed them.
She would be haunted by those moments, and yet she was alive. Behind her, the farmhouse was smoking.
Leave this place.
Leave everything, Mak.
There were no fire trucks, no cop cars, no neighbours rushing to her aid. She could not tell how far away the next neighbour lived. She was alone. She wanted to keep moving until she was far from the place of her confinement. She thought of Bogey waiting for her in the hotel room in Paris. She wanted to be there. She wanted to collapse into his arms, and not move or speak for a tremendously long time. She needed transportation. Right in front of her in the driveway there was a car. It was rusted and old. The tyres were flat. It might not even have petrol in the tank. Hopeless. It looked as if it hadn’t been used for years. She could run to the nearest neighbour’s house. Perhaps call the police.
No.
She remembered how little the police had done for Tobias Murphy, for her slain friend Catherine Gerber. Never mind her father’s convictions, never mind how she’d been raised to believe in justice and truth. Never mind Andy Flynn. Never mind the Cavanaghs. No, she’d had enough of the police and their justice. She’d had enough of playing by the rules while others flaunted their immunity.
Leave this place.
Leave everything, Mak.
The farmhouse appeared to have a garage attached on one side. She ran to it, and tried the tilting door. It didn’t budge. She moved around the side and found a smaller door. It was unlocked. He must have driven here. He must have a car. She threw the door open, and with a sense of a prayer coming true, she found herself looking at a black Mercedes, just sitting there, waiting for her to jump inside. At the sight of it, she nearly cried with relief.
Oh, yes. Finally. Yes.
She opened the car door and searched around the driver’s seat before realising that the keys were actually in the ignition, clearly ready for her captor to make a quick getaway if he needed to.
But he was not going anywhere. She was.
In the back seat there was a briefcase. Perhaps it held the man’s identification. The case was locked.
There was a crash of glass as the windows of the farmhouse blew out. The fire was gaining strength. She had to leave, and fast. There was no time to retrieve her phone, her wallet.
Go, go…
With a renewed sense of urgency, Mak leaped into the driver’s seat and turned the ignition. She groped around the dash for a remote to open the garage door, and not finding it, pulled open the glove box. Instead of a remote controller, a Glock pistol fell out onto the passenger seat next to her. She blinked at it. There was a wallet in the glove box, and a passport—no, four. There were four passports in the glove box of the car. She had no time for this. She had to get away before the garage went up in flames.
Mak leaped out of the car and found a chain pulley alongside the garage door. Using a
ll her strength she pulled until the door lifted outwards. Light streamed into the dark space. Relief. She was nearly there. She could speed off and leave this horrid place behind…