The Reluctant Knight

by Amelia Price

  As soon as the message was over, Sherlock pulled up a map and worked out where she might have crossed the border. Mycroft pulled up the camera feeds the French had of the cars pulling off the Eurostar train and watched through the footage for the right sort of time. If any of the cars appeared in both this video and the ones at the border crossings Sherlock was finding, they'd hopefully know soon.

  Several minutes away from Folkestone, a message from Mycroft's secretary came through detailing a police report of a car stolen from London and found less than a mile from the Folkestone departure gate. It matched the description of one of the cars leaving the car park two minutes after the van drove in.

  Mycroft relayed the slight detour on to Daniels and only two minutes later the car was pulling up in front of a blue saloon car cordoned off with police tape. Two policemen were standing nearby, neither of them doing anything but waiting for instructions. One was talking on his radio, but stopped when Mycroft and Sherlock got out of the car and walked over to them.

  Mycroft pulled out his ID and enjoyed the startled look on their faces as they processed how much he commanded.

  “This isn't your average stolen car then?”

  “No. Get forensics done on the car interior, but I need the boot open, now.”

  The men nodded and hurried to the back of the car to do what he bid. Mycroft tried to look leisurely as he followed, but in truth they needed to hurry almost as badly. He had only four more minutes here if they were going to get on the next train.

  Again, the car had been left unlocked, and using some flimsy plastic gloves to cover his fingers, the policeman pulled the lever by the driver's foot well to pop the boot open. Mycroft used a tissue to take hold of a corner of the metal lid and push it upwards. Sherlock came up beside him and both men glanced over the insides.

  “There's blood here,” the policemen said, noticing the rust-coloured fabric very close to the lip of the boot on the right.

  “Amelia's,” Mycroft and Sherlock said at the same time.

  “She was tied, her feet at that end, where the scuff marks are. The heels have dug in as she's moved. She faced us and was on her side,” Sherlock continued, always having more patience to explain these things than he ever had. “This is where she tried to scrape through to the back or get to the possible tool box underneath her. It made her fingers bleed.”

  “No, they were bleeding before that,” Mycroft said, interrupting. He pointed to the torn bit of bloody fingernail close to where her neck would have been. Near it were thin wispy strands of a black synthetic chord. “They've black-bagged her and she was trying to untie it.”

  “She's not succeeded.” Sherlock gritted his teeth together, and Mycroft shared his younger brother's emotion. Despite their attempts at training her, Amelia just wasn't quite good enough.

  “No, she'd be communicating with us properly if she had. She'll be gagged underneath,” Mycroft said as he walked back to his own car. There was little more they could learn at a glance.

  “Should we be looking for this Amelia woman? Is she important?” one of the policeman asked as he hurried after them.

  “No. We'll find her. Just have the Commissioner forward me the details from forensics when they're done.”

  Mycroft got into the car with a minute to spare, and Sherlock was only a few seconds behind. Daniels had stayed behind the wheel and kept the car running, allowing them to pull off and get to the Eurostar with seconds to spare.

  As they bypassed the waiting cars and drove onto the train, Mycroft settled back. For a little over half an hour they could do nothing but wait. His hands were tied in many ways and his only consolation was knowing that when they pulled off the train on the other side he would be only two hours and thirty-seven minutes behind Amelia.

  Chapter 4

  Amelia felt herself drifting off while she tried to tap out her message again, still having no idea if anyone was even listening. They'd moved cars with her twice more, and each time she'd got to suck in fresh air for a few seconds before she was shoved into another tight space and enclosed.

  The second one had been the worst so far. The car hadn't been quite as wide, and she'd been able to smell some of the exhaust when they weren't driving at a high speed. To make it worse, it was the car they'd used to take her under the Channel and into France. For a good twenty minutes, they'd sat in a queue with the engine on.

  By the time they'd pulled onto what she later worked out was a train she was only seconds away from vomiting. She didn't want to know what would have happened to her if she had. With the cloth in her mouth there would have been nowhere for it to go.

  Thankfully, while on the train, the engine had been off and she'd been able to listen to the chatter of the men in the car while they waited to get to the other side. She'd listened a little and worked out there were now three men in the car, but they spoke in Russian to each other and she'd not learnt the language. Given the last few months, she was starting to wonder if she had been lax in not learning it sooner. If she got out of this mess alive she was definitely going to sign up for a crash course in it. She didn't doubt Myron would want her to learn Morse code either.

  About an hour after that they'd paused somewhere again, and she thought she heard voices as they possibly went through a second border control. Given where Calais was, she had assumed they were going into Belgium and fed the information on regardless.

  So far she was managing to keep a lid on her fear of the enclosed spaces, but she knew it was only thanks to the frequent changes. Now she was in Europe and probably driving a long way across it, she knew it could be many hours between car swaps. For now, the hope that someone could hear her tapped-out messages was keeping her calm enough, but she had no idea how long she could cope, and given the mounting pressure in her bladder and dryness in her throat she also knew her own situation could still get worse.

  Knowing her mind was exhausted, she tapped out a quick message about having a nap and tucked her hands back down under her chin. To stop her mind dwelling on the various aches in her wrists, fingers, neck and head, as well as the desire to empty her bladder, Amelia focused on her breathing.

  It took a few minutes but eventually she was absorbed in the slow rhythmic breathing that came before sleep. Thankfully, not long after that she managed to slip into oblivion.

  ***

  A jolt ran through Amelia sometime later, jerking her from sleep. Her first reaction was to try and move her arms and legs but she merely managed to irritate the raw skin around her wrists, jab herself with her elbow far too near her bladder for comfort, and bash her head on something in the boot behind her.

  She grunted into the cloth, everything about her situation flooding back to her in a whirlpool of burning pain and rushing blood. Adrenaline flooded her system again, bringing another wave of fear with it.

  Going to sleep had been a bad idea. Now she had no clue how long she'd been stuck in the car boot and how far she might be from Calais. Water pricked her eyes at the hopelessness of her situation.

  For a couple of minutes Amelia allowed herself the first real vent to her feelings since the situation had begun. Tears fell from her eyes and she sobbed into the wad of material in her mouth. She knew it would make it difficult to breathe but she needed to release all the pent-up emotion so she could think clearly, and doing this while she was alone in a moving car boot was better than later, when she might have the opportunity to escape.

  It didn't take her long to cry out the tears she had, and her stuffed up nose deprived her of enough oxygen to calm her quickly once she was done. Air deprivation was incredibly useful for keeping the mind from racing out of control.

  Ten minutes later, she felt light-headed but in control of herself again. Immediately, she felt hope return, and she remembered that she probably wasn't alone. Myron would be able to hear anything she chose to say. She tapped out a quick SOS and then added some information on her vitals. Mostly that she was dehydrated and couldn't feel her feet or legs
any more.

  Not long after this she noticed the car join another queue of traffic and slow. Thankfully, in this car, when they idled, the back didn't fill up with exhaust fumes. For several minutes nothing happened, but then they inched forward again, bit by bit.

  Amelia was just deciding it must be traffic when they stopped again and she heard more voices. This time one sounded like it might be speaking German, and she thanked her mother for persuading her to take it as a subject while at high school when she recognised a few words in a sentence about a holiday. The men answered in English, saying they were going home. Just like she had at the previous border controls, Amelia tried to talk and yell, but nothing came out louder than a muffled grunt. She soon gave the attempt up as useless and decided it would be better to listen. She couldn't make enough noise for anyone to hear her.

  Within a few more minutes, they were through the inspection and on their way again. It seemed Russia just kept getting closer. More out of a sense of duty than any real hope, Amelia tapped at her bug again to pass the information on. With Myron's mind, there was a chance that knowing what time she went through borders would help him rescue her.

  To help keep herself sane and take her mind of the growing discomfort she was in, Amelia concentrated on keeping track of time in some vague way. She tried to count out the seconds in every minute and then keep track of the minutes.

  After what she thought was roughly an hour she re-sent her message. She tried to keep it short, and given how little info she had it wasn't difficult, but she found when she stopped tapping again she felt another little part of her hope slip away. Much longer and she wouldn't have anything left.

  A couple of times she lost track of her counting so she had to guess what was an hour, but about eight of these sets of counting later she still hadn't been let out of the car boot and she was so desperate to pee that she knew she might have to wet herself.

  Before any other thought, she found herself wondering if Myron would be able to hear it through the bug if she did decide to pee. A second later she snorted with laughter, something he definitely would have heard.

  She was stuck in a car boot on her way to Russia, where strange men would probably try and torture her, or at least interrogate her over something she knew nothing about, and her biggest concern right at that moment was what Myron might think if she wet herself. If she wasn't already crazy, she was definitely well on the way.

  Not long after this thought, she felt the car decelerate and the engine quietened. A few seconds after that they turned several corners and then pulled to a halt. The men said something to each other, but again it was in Russian and meant nothing to her, other than that the engine was quiet enough to hear them.

  Someone opened a car door and then slammed it shut shortly after. Then there was a second door opened and shut. Whether the men intended to let her out or not, it was pretty evident they were taking a break to use some kind of services. For now, she was glad she hadn't wet herself.

  If there was a chance they'd let her out to use a service station toilet, or even a bush somewhere in the middle of nowhere, it would be a thousand times better than adding the smell of urine and damp underclothes to the unpleasantness of being stuck in such a small space.

  Just in case she was about to be let out, Amelia moved her hands away from the bug on her shoulder and flipped her coat over it, but several minutes later she was still in the cramped space with nothing but the sound of her own muffled breathing for company.

  When the doors opened and shut another couple of times Amelia gave up hope of getting a moment in the fresh air. It sounded like the men were simply taking a break themselves and had no intention of allowing her to go as well.

  She clenched her jaw to fight back the tears the disappointment brought, and tried not to think about the embarrassment of having to wet herself. If it was necessary, she would just have to do it and cope with it. Survival demanded that she should push through whatever challenges she was faced with.

  Just as she was about to let go and pee, she heard the dull thunk of the lid catch being released. She gasped and held on a little longer.

  Less than a second later someone yanked the lid up, allowing the freezing air to come flooding in. She gasped, and before they even grabbed her she was shivering.

  Two sets of hands manhandled her out of the boot and into some kind of upright position. She stumbled with her heels, and her legs flooded with the early warning signs of pins and needles. She clenched down on her teeth to keep from crying out and leant against whoever was nearest.

  Mercifully, whoever it was seemed willing to support her until she could get her legs underneath her properly. She then felt two different men grab her high up on each arm and walk her swiftly away.

  It was all she could do to keep walking and not twist an ankle on what felt like fairly uneven concrete. Several times her shoulders were almost yanked out of their sockets as she tripped but wasn't let go.

  Eventually the ground underneath her became the tiled indoors of a toilet or shower block. It was barely warmer than the winter outside but she was grateful for the slight difference on her bare legs.

  Not long after being marched inside she was stopped and held still while one of them reached up for the bag on her head. She heard him swearing in Russian as he tried to un-knot the mess she'd created. A few seconds later the other man said something and let go of her with one hand. They talked among themselves for a moment until she heard the flick of a blade being drawn.

  A few seconds later he'd cut the knot and the bag was yanked from her head. She blinked rapidly, blinded and pained by the glowing artificial light of the building interior, as the hair that had stuck to the inside of the bag fell back around her face. She knew she must look a mess but she focused on getting her eyesight back as quickly as possible and taking stock of how long it took. At some point in the future, knowing how quickly she could see might well be useful.

  It took a minute of holding her eyes shut and then squinting briefly for her to even make an outline of the men she was with, and that seemed enough for the men to decide she could do what she'd been brought there for. They pointed her in the direction of a toilet cubicle and gave her a shove.

  “Use it quickly. We won't wait long,” one of them said. Amelia nodded and stumbled towards it. Even with them standing outside, being able to hear her, she doubted it would take long. She couldn't ever remember being this desperate to go to the loo.

  It took her longer than she'd have liked to get into the cubicle, lock it, and get her dress hiked up out of the way, and the skin around her wrists burned in protest when she hooked a thumb into her knickers and yanked downwards, but the relief as she plonked herself down on the seat and finally let go was worth every moment of awkwardness.

  While she sat there she blinked some more, and by the time she was done with the longest pee on record her eyes had adjusted enough she could keep them open, even if they were a little blurry. No sooner had she stopped peeing than one of the men knocked on the door.

  “Hurry,” he said, letting her know she would get little time to make herself decent again. Not wanting to be caught in such a vulnerable situation, and relieved enough her mind could focus on other things again, Amelia hurried off the loo and pulled her clothes back to their normal positions.

  As soon as she clicked back the lock, the door was pushed open and she was grabbed and pulled out of the cubicle. Now she could see, she took a quick glance at both their faces. Immediately, her heart fell. One of them was very familiar. He'd guarded her and Myron on a boat as it sailed along the Thames. She'd hit him over the head with a hunk of metal once, and by the look in his eyes he hadn't forgotten her or that moment either.

  Trying to play her situation out with grace, she glanced at the sinks, hoping they'd let her wash her hands. They ignored her gesture.

  Instead of bagging her again, as she expected, the nearest guy reached up and pulled the gag out of her mouth. He then pulled a bo
ttle of water from the large pockets on his coat and took its top off.

  “Drink,” he commanded unnecessarily as he put the bottle up to her mouth. When it spilled over her chin and down her dress, she lifted her own hands to help steady it and gulp down the liquid.

  At first, it hurt as the almost frozen liquid rushed over all the dry, stiff parts of her mouth and hit the raw throat behind, but it soon numbed everything and merely refreshed her after what must have been over twelve hours since her last drink.

  Knowing it might be a long time until she could drink again, and safe in the knowledge she'd be allowed to have a toilet break at least semi-regularly, she gulped down as much as she could.

  While she drank, she flicked her eyes around the room. It was a combined toilet and shower block, evidently meant for men and not women, from the array of urinals along the wall. She'd been shoved in the only cubicle. On a wall she noticed a map of where they were. It was too far away, but she could read the sign at the top clearly. Once more, she was grateful she had taken German in school. She was at Eholfing truck services.

  The Russian pulled the bottle away from her when it was only half gone, splashing more down her front and bringing her back to her predicament.

  Before she could decide what to do next, the wad of cloth was shoved back into her open mouth and then they pulled a fresh bag over her head. When they were done, they'd fastened it less tightly around her neck than the previous time, but the effect was the same. She was blind once more.

  Her route out of the toilets was similar to her route in, undignified and punctuated with stumbles across the rippled ground. As she was guided, she thought she might be going in a different direction than on the way in, and this was confirmed when she was lifted and bundled into a different-smelling boot.