“Are you alive?”
“I think I am.” Her mouth had emitted little more than a murmur.
She could barely see the tree before her, against which the front of the car had crashed. She knew she was balanced precariously anyway and she didn’t dare move her gaze to the side. She hoped that, by focusing on the tree, it wouldn’t collapse under the weight of the vehicle.
“Okay, don’t move,” Mike said.
Who could move? “No problem.” Out of the corner of her eye, however, she saw that he was certainly moving.
The car tilted a bit to the right. Amelia shouted again.
“Don’t worry.” Judging from the tone of his voice, he was really calm.
She forced herself to shift her eyes from the tree and look at Mike. He was taking something out of the door pocket. Amelia tried to comprehend what she was seeing, but she just had no idea what it was. He raised his knees, blocking them against the steering wheel, then he made the thing pass across his safety belt and it got cut. The position he had taken prevented him from falling.
“Now keep calm.” His attitude was Zen, to say the least, just as if he found himself in such a situation every day. He reached out to push a button.
The noise of a mechanism opening behind her made Amelia turn. She couldn’t do it completely, because she was firmly attached to the seat, but she managed enough to see the boot hatch rising.
When she addressed him again to ask for an explanation, she noticed he had placed his hands in the middle of the dashboard and was moving sideways with measured gestures. However, each move caused a slight vibration of the car, which gave the impression it was on the verge of tipping. Mike succeeded in turning his body. Now his back was leaning against the dashboard and the windscreen, crossed by a web of cracks, and he was sliding over what remained of the passenger’s airbag, to put himself in front of Amelia. His legs were astride hers. He reached out to the opening lever of the door and pulled it, but the door didn’t open fully.
“Help me open it, I can’t from here.”
Realising her arms were still in one piece, Amelia grabbed the handle and started pushing. The door was made heavy by the fact that the car was hanging on the opposite side, but she suspected that it also depended on the shock, which was taking away the strength from her muscles. With the help of his hand holding the belt cutter, while he was still pushing against the dashboard to avoid falling on the steering wheel, the door’s weight overcame the point where the slope inverted, and finally it opened wide.
“Okay, now I’ll cut your belt.”
“Wait, wait!” Amelia exclaimed, caught by a sudden terror. Or rather by the intensifying of the terror she already felt. “If you cut it, I’ll fall!” She looked him in the face. Again he had that amused air, as if he was making a fool of her, but without speaking. “What’s up?”
Mike shook his head with a smile on his lips. “I was just thinking that I’ve known you for a little more than six hours and in this time someone’s tried to kill me twice, always when I was in your company. It seems like you are quite a lightning rod of troubles.”
“There’s nothing to laugh about.” She wanted to appear hurt, but the truth was that she was about to laugh. Perhaps because of the narrow escape. His tranquillity was giving her a perception of the situation, which clashed with what she could see around her. She felt safe. They had been literally pushed over a precipice, but okay, on second thoughts, it was fun. “Nothing like this has ever happened to me before.” For a fleeting second she recalled the accident with Joseph, when she had actually risked her life, but she pushed back the memory. “You are the one jinxing me!”
Mike laughed out loud, then he stopped and looked her in the eye. “Okay, as you wish, but now I really must get you out from there.” He placed a hand on her shoulder.
That contact affected her in a strange way. But was it the moment to have those kind of thoughts? Hey, she had to focus. “What should I do?”
“Move your legs to the door. I’ll hold you.”
She nodded and followed his instructions. Then she felt the two sides of her belt slipping along her chest and she fell to her side, on Mike, who grabbed her around her waist with his free arm, while he let the belt cutter fall onto the windshield. His nose was just an inch away from her right cheek. She could feel his breath. It wasn’t a particularly comfortable situation, but she would’ve lied if she’d said it was unpleasant. She felt him moving with his body behind her and leaning his chin against her shoulder. Then his arm loosened his grip. Now Amelia was literally lying on him, on her back. She felt his hands pushing her forward. She clung to the door and in a moment she found herself standing out of the car. The incline of the terrain was lower than that of the car, whose rear was kept lifted high in the air by a big broken branch.
“Would you mind giving me a hand, hm?”
“Oh.” She’d been distracted for a moment. Mike was still precariously inside the car. “Here I am.” Holding onto the door, she extended her right arm and grabbed his hand. She pulled him to her and in the end she succeeded in getting him out of the car. Then she remained there, still watching him, panting. She turned to the direction they had fallen from and then to him again. “What now?”
“We go,” he said, heading to the rear of the car.
“How …” she babbled, looking up again. “How do we go up?”
Mike climbed on the branch and started rummaging inside the boot. Ah, that was why he’d opened it. “We can’t go up.” He’d pronounced those words with a calm tone, without even looking at her. “They are surely coming down to make sure we are dead.”
Amelia felt an adrenaline discharge overwhelm her. The confidence of a few minutes earlier had vanished. It wasn’t over at all. “Wha …” Again that annoying babbling. “What?” What a silly question.
“We must do something about your feet.”
She lowered her eyes. She was now so accustomed to being barefoot that she had completely forgotten about it.
“What’s your size?”
“What?” Actually she hadn’t listened to what he’d asked.
“Amelia, wake up!” His scolding was tinged with a note of mocking. “Your feet, what’s your foot size?”
How she hated the question. “Hm … seven …”
“Seven?!”
“Sometimes six and half …” she murmured, embarrassed.
“Fairy’s feet, eh?” Mike was laughing again.
“Yes, I know, I should have been a swimmer, at least they would be of use for something.” If nothing else, she could always find her size during sale times, because almost nobody else bought it. She had got some good deals thanks to that feature of hers. On the other hand, her size didn’t exist at all for certain styles.
“Well, in this case it’s a good thing.” The man took out a pair of training shoes from the boot. “If you fasten them tight, you’d be able to walk on them decently enough.” He handed them to her.
Amelia moved closer to him and took them from his hands. She studied them for a moment. She turned them. They were eight and a half, a man’s size. Resigned, she sat on the ground to put them on. She tried to clean her feet as much as she could. She wished she had something to do it properly and immediately a towel materialised before her. Actually Mike had thrown it to her, but the effect was more or less the same.
A minute later, she was on her feet again. Wearing a pair of shoes, even if they were a bit large, made her feel a bit more, say, civilised. A good sensation, in other words. Mike had put a black rucksack on his shoulders and was throwing something to her. She took it on the fly. It was a jacket, a black one.
“With that white blouse you stand out amongst the plants.”
For a moment she thought it had to do with the sweat that had made it almost transparent. There was nobody who could notice her bra in the middle of a wood. Then she called herself silly and narcissistic, and she donned the jacket. Covering herself a bit better before a bloke she had j
ust met was a good idea anyway.
While she pulled up the zipper, a rustling drew her attention upwards again.
Mike placed an index finger on his lips. “Ssshhh …” He reached her. “Let’s get away from here.”
A sudden thunder made her start. “Fuck.” Only now she realised that the semi-darkness wasn’t only due to the trees. Then a drop landed on her face, followed by another one, and another one more. “Splendid, only the rain was missing.”
“Come on,” he encouraged her, dragging her by the arm, as he already started walking towards the valley. “The sound of the rain will cover our footsteps.”
“Are you used to being chased in the middle of the woods?” It was evident that she was with a person trained to particular situations. Compared to this, what she had learned at the academy was risible, to say the least.
“Ssshhh …” was his answer.
Amelia rolled her eyes and followed him without adding a word. The rain was becoming heavier and the terrain, covered by rotten leaves, grew more and more slippery, even with the shoes on. And he was walking too fast.
A shot echoed in the air, followed in rapid succession by the splintering of tree bark far away on their right. Mike started running and forced Amelia to do the same, pushing her legs to move much faster than they were accustomed to do. After the initial dash, she lost her pace and placed her foot on a stone. His fingers ran along her arm, then his grip failed.
And the world started rolling.
She stopped further down, where the terrain rose up, creating a short slope in the opposite direction. It wasn’t a soft landing. She heard footsteps approaching, saw Mike’s eyes. His hand was patting her face.
“Are you in one piece?” he asked in a low voice.
“I hope so.” Amelia rose in a sitting position.
He had crouched down beside her. “They don’t really know where we are.” He looked around. He reminded her of a cat snapping at the slightest noise. “They are using a rifle and can’t have good visibility. We are camouflaged among the trees.”
A rifle? Yes, right, a moment had passed between the shot and when the bullet had reached the tree, so they were far away. Only a rifle could have such a long range. Not that the information cheered her up. They could hit them, without even getting any closer. Like a hunter with their game.
“They must have seen the car door open with the gun sight,” Mike continued. “It was just a blind shot or perhaps they had detected a movement due to an animal.”
“No, really, how do you know all this stuff?” She realised that it wasn’t exactly the moment to have a conversation, but she couldn’t help it. “Are you maybe a former soldier?”
Mike cracked a smile. “Warm. Now let’s go.” He grabbed her hands and made her stand.
“Where to?” Escaping was good, in fact anything could be better than getting a bullet in her back, but did they have a plan? She watched Mike. His face was relaxed. It was evident he had been in worse situations than this. How come he had ended up working as investigator for law firms? “Sooner or later they will get to us.”
“Not necessarily.” He took her by the hand and resumed moving, this time respecting her rhythm. “I know this area well, certainly better than them.”
“Do you?”
He ignored her interruption. “We’ll get into the thickest brush. The sky is dark and the rain will help us leave them behind.” He paused to point at a boulder on which she was about to place her foot.
Amelia skipped it. And, truth be told, she appreciated his attention. That man was becoming more interesting with each passing minute.
“There’s a hunting lodge not far from here. We’ll take refuge there and then we’ll see about what to do.”
“How far?”
“No more than twelve miles.”
“What?!”
“Ssshhh!”
“What?” she repeated under her breath. “It’ll be night before we get there.”
“Better,” he replied, without showing any concern over her protests. Now he’d lost some of his rating in her interest chart, even if he was still well over the average. “At that point it’ll be more difficult for them to locate it. If we went there now, we’d become a target.”
Amelia emitted a cry of amazement, while the most intriguing of suppositions lit up in her mind. “A spy.” She pointed at him with her free hand, as if she had busted him. “You’re a former MI6 agent!” It wasn’t a question.
A half smile dawned on Mike’s face, but he didn’t reply. He merely picked up his pace, which she interpreted as a yes.
“Cool! I’m with 007. This means I won’t die today!”
“Walk,” he said, sneering.
4
It did not stop raining. From time to time its intensity decreased and gave the impression that it was about to stop, but then it resumed, now even heavier. The sky beyond the top of the trees was brightened by sudden flashes, closely followed by thunder so loud that Amelia felt the static electricity on her skin. Going around in the middle of the wood during a lightning storm was anything but advisable. Even if the terrain had become less steep, water rivulets flowed all around them and remaining standing upright amongst slippery stones was a real challenge. To avoid falling, now she was firmly clinging to Mike’s arm, who matched her pace with apparent patience. Her clothes and hair were soaked and she was starting to feel a bit cold, in spite of the constant motion. And not just feeling that.
“How far?”
“Maybe five miles.”
Amelia snorted. “I can’t possibly make it.”
“Sure you can.” As she turned to him Amelia saw that he was smiling. It looked like he was having fun, as if it was the most normal of outings to the country.
“At least they’ve stopped shooting at us.”
His smile disappeared. “They won’t give up so easily, but for now I believe we’re safe.”
“I’m starving … and thirsty.”
Mike stopped. She looked at him, perplexed. He freed himself from her grip and removed his rucksack from his shoulders. “Let’s take a break.” He sat on a layer of dead leaves under a big tree.
Amelia was undecided. She was doing her best to ignore the rain, but stopping meant extending that ordeal. Then she saw he was pulling something out from his rucksack. A little water bottle. As she recognised it, she dashed herself to the ground beside him and snatched it out of his hands.
Mike started laughing, while she unscrewed its cap and gulped its contents. “You could have told me before.”
She stopped to take a breath. “You could have told me before that you had water.” Then her gaze focused on his hand, which was offering her something.
“It’s an energy bar; it should keep your blood sugar level topped up, until we reach our destination.”
Amelia snapped and clawed it, as if it was able to escape, but then she found herself in difficulty, given that she was holding the bottle with her other hand.
Mike made a funny face. He took the bottle and the cap trapped by her fingers holding the energy bar, and closed it.
Finally she could tear the wrapper off and bite into her prey. It wasn’t bad. It tasted like chocolate. She finished it off in a wink. It was so small that it didn’t give her any sensation of satiety.
“You’ll be better in a while,” he said, almost reading her thoughts.
She decide to trust him, not that she had any other choice. “Aren’t you eating?” He hadn’t even drunk anything.
“I’m good for now.” Mike put the bottle back in his rucksack and closed it, then he rose. “We’d better go. Once we get there, I’ll be able to offer you something more filling to eat.”
That stirred Amelia’s interest and she leapt to her feet. They still had a long way to walk. They’d better get moving. She reached him and they started walking side by side. The rain had abated again and, with a strange sense of modesty, she didn’t feel like clinging to him again that way.
For all these hours she had been reflecting on the incredible situation she was in. She had imagined the most fanciful scenarios to try to comprehend why someone had such a rage against her. Just because she had seen the killer in the face? But then, what had happened in the cottage? There were many details eluding her, and in fact the entire case of the killings wasn’t clear to her at all, but it was her fault, too. She hadn’t studied it enough.
And then there was Mike. If he really was a former spy, what had he to do with all that? Had he really ended up in the middle of that mess just by coincidence? His presence at the job interview had already been an abnormal circumstance. The police had ensured that she was the only one supposed to show up, a matter arranged with the cooperation of the Human Resources manager. So it hadn’t been the latter who invited him. He had got the interview by other means. She scrutinised him in secret. What if he wasn’t a former spy at all, but a spy on active duty? What if the law firms involved in the murders had something to do with some terror organisation? Perhaps, also, his purpose was to infiltrate. But usually, to her knowledge, MI6 spies were active abroad, not in the homeland. Perhaps he belonged to MI5, which dealt with homeland security.
“But once we are there, what do we do?” It was a reasonable question.
“We wait for someone to come and get us.”
“Who will come and get us?”
“Some friends.”
“More spies?” She tried a direct approach.
Again that smile from him. “Sorry, I can’t tell you, otherwise I’d have to kill you.” It was the second time in the span of a few hours that she’d been threatened like that. In this case, however, the menacing sentence didn’t match with the expression on the face of the one who had pronounced it.
“Ah, okay, never mind.” She would’ve liked to ask him how his friends knew they had to come and get them, but he wouldn’t explain anything to her anyway. She suspected he was having fun in letting her fantasise. “You said there’s something to eat over there?”
Kindred Intentions Page 5