by Paul Gitsham
Susan couldn’t let him have the phone.
Please Warren, please save me. Tears started to sting her eyes.
“I don’t have my phone with me, I left it at home.”
The gun moved from her temple, slowly scraping across her forehead, coming to rest in the space between her eyebrows. She wanted to close her eyes, but couldn’t, her gaze fixed on the trigger guard, her eyes aching as they struggled to focus at such close distance.
The man said nothing for a few seconds, staring at her.
“I don’t believe you.”
Warren will save me. The thought arrived unbidden, but she was suddenly filled with an absolute certainty. Warren would save her. Her wonderful, brave husband who had chased after knife-wielding maniacs, pursued deranged serial killers through woods late at night and risked his life without thinking countless times would burst through that door and rescue her.
“Well, that’s unfortunate. You see, if you can’t put me in contact with your husband, then I really can’t think of any good reason to keep you around. Now are you sure you can’t help me?”
“No.” Barely a whisper.
Warren will save me, Warren will save me, Warren will save me… The thought had become a mantra, filling her consciousness. Her certainty was absolute, her faith unwavering. Warren will save me, the thought continued to echo in her mind even as the man pulled the trigger.
* * *
Warren spun the wheel to the right, entering the cul-de-sac. It had taken another couple of wrong turns, before he’d finally caught a glimpse of his goal through a gap in the houses in the neighbouring road. The street was large, closed at one end in the shape of a long key. Tall, narrow, three-storey houses, the lowest floor partly below street level, lined either side. None of them had front gardens, so it was no wonder the locals were annoyed that what appeared to have once been a piece of open land at the end of the road now sported an almost-finished block of flats. The head of the key opened out into a wide turning circle, with a small grass centrepiece surrounded by borders of brightly coloured flowers.
Parking was clearly in short supply, as witnessed by the lines of cars parked nose to tail the entire length of both sides of the road, blue-and-white signs threatening dire consequences for those without a parking permit. The metal gates that blocked off the far end of the road to allow access to construction vehicles visiting the apartment complex hardly helped matters.
There was one remaining space on the outer edge of the turning circle and Warren abandoned the car in it, barely taking the time to pull the handbrake and snatch the phone from the dashboard cradle.
He should wait for backup. He knew that. Every training course he had ever attended, every manual he had ever read said that the right thing to do when approaching a hostage scene—especially when the hostage-taker was armed—was to call in an armed-response unit and trained negotiators. Don’t go blundering in, making matters worse. Wait.
That wasn’t an option.
Bixby had found the phone. His cry of inarticulate fury had been only half as scary as his quiet tones when he spoke into the handset. It was as if he could switch off his emotions in the same way one would turn off an electrical appliance. Such control was the sign of a dangerously compartmentalised mind—the sort of mind that could commit the most horrendous acts then neatly lock them away and get on with living as if nothing had happened. The owner of such a mind was not the sort of man you wanted anywhere near your wife.
Warren had no idea what sort of vehicle Bixby had been driving, so had no way of knowing if he was even in the right place. Unable to contact Sutton without risking the connection with Susan’s phone, Warren was reduced to gut instinct. And his gut was telling him that he had to get there within the next minute or he would lose Bixby and with him Susan. There was little chance that he would leave her behind; she was too valuable a bargaining chip. On the other hand, if he decided that she was slowing him down or impeding his escape, then he wasn’t going to leave her alive to tell her rescuers which way he went and describe the car that he was driving.
“Jones, you know what I want. I don’t know what you’ve done with it but I’ll be coming to collect it. Don’t call me, I’ll call you.” The tone was almost jovial.
Warren’s phone was still on mute and he wasted valuable seconds trying to re-establish the sound to ask what he wanted. But he didn’t get the chance. The last sound he heard was a crunching noise and the line went dead. The phone went straight to voicemail when he redialled.
* * *
Entry to the site was by a metal gate attached to the temporary security fences that surrounded it, metal grills set in concrete breeze blocks and sporting the usual health and safety notices about hard hats. The flats appeared to be largely complete, but the site felt empty, abandoned. It didn’t look as though anyone had been working there for some time. Even the sign with its artist’s rendering looked tatty, graffiti that would normally have been cleaned off accumulating in overlapping layers. The advertised opening date had passed some weeks ago—leaving such a blatant admission of failure there for all to see spoke volumes.
It was the open padlock and swinging gate that finally confirmed that Warren was in the right place. Taking a deep breath he stepped through. Immediately inside an open drain was surrounded by high-visibility orange plastic mesh fencing attached to rusting metal poles. Three feet long with a tapering point, they were better than nothing.
The windows above were all empty, no curtains or lights, the silence eerie. The question was: where was Susan? The block had two floors and according to the advertising hoarding there were sixteen units for sale or rent.
Upstairs. Susan had let him know that through the phone. Opening the heavy front door—also unlocked—Warren recalled the ding he’d heard and the way that the connection had temporarily become crackly. They’d taken the elevator.
Warren ignored it and headed for the stairs at the far end of the hallway, peeking through the narrow windows in the double doors before opening them and slipping through. He was breaking every other rule in the book, but he wasn’t silly enough to get in an elevator and announce his arrival to a waiting gunman with a ding and slowly opening doors.
Despite his fear it was all he could do not to sprint up the stairs; every beat of his pounding heart was like the ticking of a giant clock. He clutched the metal fence pole tightly and proceeded a step at a time, straining his ears for the slightest sound.
There was another set of double doors at the top of the stairs and again he peered carefully through the windows before emerging onto the deserted corridor. Four unmarked doors lined each side of the passageway and Warren felt a brief moment of panic. Which unit were they in? There was no way he could go through them all one at a time. Even assuming that Susan was still alive, the moment he started kicking doors down Bixby would panic and the odds were good that he’d put a bullet in Susan’s head and make his escape.
Warren pushed aside the negative thoughts that threatened to paralyse him. Of course Susan was still alive. Looking around he noted that plaster dust coated the uncarpeted floors; closer inspection revealed fresh footprints leading from the elevator to the nearest door.
Should he call it in? Bixby had ended the call and Warren could use his phone again without worrying about losing the connection. But what would be the point? Time was evaporating like a puddle in the sunshine; every second he wasted was another second closer to Bixby escaping and doing who knew what with Susan.
Warren clutched the metal fence pole tightly and lined himself up with the door. Saying a silent prayer, he lowered his shoulder then charged.
* * *
Warren felt his knees sag. Susan had been here moments before, he was certain. Small fragments of plastic that could have been from her smashed phone lay on the floor. He crossed the empty room, passed the lone wooden chair set in the centre and looked out the window.
Outside, the turning circle was filled with cars, double parked, tur
ning the circular centrepiece with its neatly trimmed grass, well-maintained flower beds and wooden park bench into a de facto roundabout, the road narrowed so that two-way traffic was now an impossibility.
Warren had snagged the final parking space, his Mondeo abandoned haphazardly on the outside of the circle. Helplessness rose within him. In his mind he kept replaying the phone call with Susan, the terror in her voice that she was trying so hard to keep in check. And in the background the rough-edged voice of Bixby, a man who’d already killed and had no qualms about doing so again. He’d threatened to put a bullet in Susan’s head and Warren believed him, the edge of hysteria in his voice making Warren question how in touch with reality he still was.
And now that man had Susan, an innocent in all of this. Caught up in an ancient tale of greed, hatred and revenge that she had nothing to do with, beyond having the misfortune to marry the man at the centre of it. Warren leant his head against the window. He should call it in he knew, do it by the book. The time for solving the problem by himself was gone. She was the wife of a police officer—she was one of them. No stone would be unturned. Every police officer in the county, the country even, would be on the lookout for Bixby and Susan. He took his phone out and navigated to the contacts.
And then he saw her.
And Bixby, dragging her across the road like a parent with a naughty child. Sunlight glinted off something metallic in his left hand. Warren’s breath caught in his throat and then he was running.
Through the open doorway, back into the hallway, the stairwell and through the fire exit. The irony wasn’t lost on him as he passed the lift. The lift now waiting patiently in the ground floor lobby. The lift that he had ignored—as protocol demanded—in favour of the more open and controllable stairs. The lift that, even as he’d inched up the stairs, had been carrying his wife and her demented kidnapper down towards the road. Towards escape.
Hurling himself down the stairs three, even four at a time, he slid on the polished linoleum then crashed through the double doors into the entry hall.
* * *
Across the road, on the opposite side of the turning circle, Susan wasn’t making life easy for Bixby, fighting and resisting him as he hauled her across the road to his waiting car.
“It’ll do you no good,” he snapped as he fumbled for the key fob with his free hand, trying not to drop the gun. “You’re getting in this car and I’m getting what I want.”
His voice was confident, self-assured. But Susan had spotted his flaw, his weakness. He needed her alive. As a bargaining chip. And whilst he still needed her, she had a chance.
“I’ll say one thing, you’re bloody brave. I admire that. I’ve seen hard men turn into absolute wrecks with a gun pointed at their head. They usually shit themselves—literally—when I pull the trigger and it just clicks.”
Finally, the door unlocked, the hazard lights flashing. A tiny distraction, but enough for Susan to yank her arm free, at the same time kicking her abductor in the shins. It was a small victory, she made barely three paces before she felt her head snapped back, an excruciating pain setting her scalp on fire as Bixby grabbed a handful of her loose, flowing hair, stopping her flight almost as soon as it had started.
“Stop fucking around.” His voice was angry now and Susan knew instinctively that she’d pushed as far as she could. Even though the handgun was unloaded, he could still club her senseless with it.
It had been a distraction, perhaps bought her a few more seconds. She hoped it had been enough. She slumped as if defeated and climbed into the rear of the car.
“Put your seat belt on. Safety first.”
Like a switch the angry Bixby was gone, his voice almost jovial. That switch was what scared her most. Susan had spent much of her adult life teaching teenagers—wonderful, mercurial human beings whose emotions could flip one hundred and eighty degrees with almost no warning, but Bixby was ten times more volatile than even the most hormone-charged fourteen-year-old. He really could do anything.
Still, whilst he was focused on her he wasn’t focused on his surroundings. She had no idea if Bixby knew what sort of car her husband drove, but it was clear that he hadn’t noticed it parked across the turning circle.
And whilst his attention was on her, he wasn’t looking back at where they had just come from. He hadn’t seen Warren as he emerged from the apartment building. It’s up to you now, sweetheart, she prayed silently. Come and get me.
* * *
Susan was putting up a bloody good fight, Warren saw, his feelings a complex mixture of pride and concern. Just don’t push him too far, darling, he thought silently.
The white BMW that Bixby was pushing his wife into was diametrically opposite his own car. For a moment, Warren was paralysed with indecision. Could he get across the turning circle before Bixby drove off? The BMW was squeezed tightly between a Transit van and a Nissan, and Bixby would have to manoeuvre it forward and back to release it. But what if Warren didn’t make it and Bixby pulled away before he could get there? By the time he made it back to his own car, Bixby would be out of the housing estate, travelling who knew where. Besides which he had a gun and even if he hadn’t, Warren was under no illusions about his ability to tackle the man hand to hand. If he lasted five seconds, he’d be lucky. The only remaining option was to follow him in the car and call in assistance.
Whether it was the flashing of his lights or the thunk as the doors unlocked that finally alerted Bixby, Warren was unsure. The former soldier suddenly turned towards him, his face a mask of hate through the driver-side window.
Any chance of discreetly following Bixby whilst he awaited an armed response unit was now gone. And he knew that he couldn’t risk a car chase, not through the crowded rush hour with his wife in the car.
He already had the Mondeo in gear before he realised what he was doing, the primitive, instinctive part of his brain racing ahead of the conscious part. Pushing hard on the accelerator, he spun the wheel to full lock and felt the bone-jarring thump as he mounted the kerb. The engine whined as the wheels spun for a second in the soft mud of the flower bed and then momentum carried the car onto the firmer grass and it continued to accelerate.
Across the turning circle, Bixby abandoned his attempts to free his car from its temporary prison and his head disappeared briefly as he reached across the passenger seat. Warren continued to press the accelerator, even as he belatedly scrambled for his seat belt.
In the rear of the BMW, Susan scooted across the back seat, towards the passenger side, bracing herself for the inevitable.
Bixby’s head re-emerged and to his horror, Warren saw the gun rising in the driver’s window. Bixby’s right hand was holding the pistol as his left slotted a magazine into the base of the grip. Warren abandoned his seat belt, throwing himself across the passenger seat.
Safety glass rained down on him as the windscreen shattered, the driver’s seat kicking as bullets thumped into the headrest where Warren had been less than a second before.
And then blackness.
* * *
Warren tasted blood, his ears ringing. He groaned as he tried to scramble back to reality. The gear stick dug painfully into his ribs and he coughed as he inhaled the acrid smoke from the airbag detonators. Warm liquid trickled down his chin from a bloodied if not broken nose.
A sudden jolt of adrenaline brought him back to full alertness. Susan!
He raised his head slightly, cringing with the expectation of a bullet. Nothing.
The heavy Ford had slammed into the driver’s side of the BMW, pushing the lighter car across the road, sandwiching it between the Mondeo and a Citroen people carrier. Judging from the way the car was jammed between the two vehicles, it would take the fire brigade to get them out and Warren felt a stab of fear. What if his attempt to rescue Susan had killed her?
Bixby clearly hadn’t been wearing his seat belt either and he was lying half in, half out of the driver’s side window. Whether it had been rolled down or Bixby had sho
t it out, wasn’t clear. Warren’s breath caught as he saw Susan’s still form slumped in the back seat.
The percussive blows from the twin airbags had done something to his balance and Warren fell rather than climbed out of the door. Scrambling back to his feet he limped around the crumpled bonnet of his car. Suddenly Bixby’s eyes snapped open. Realising his hands were empty, he started looking around wildly before diving across the passenger seat.
He was going for his gun. Without thinking Warren threw himself forward, ignoring the jabbing edges of the car’s bonnet, and forced his head and shoulders through the open window.
The gun was in the passenger footwell and Bixby was struggling to reach it with his left arm. Warren knew with absolute certainty that if he got hold of that gun he was going to kill Warren and Susan right there and then.
The time for elaborate plots and careful misdirections was over. Bixby was like a trapped animal, desperate to survive. Trained by the world’s finest special forces he would kill first then clean up the mess afterwards.
Ignoring the pain, Warren pushed himself even further into the car, clamping both of his hands around Bixby’s left wrist, desperate to stop him from getting a firm grip on the gun.
Jammed in the tight confines of the driver’s seat, Bixby had almost no leverage. Nonetheless, he managed to use his right hand to jab Warren repeatedly in his already abused ribs. Warren gasped with the pain, but kept up his pressure on Bixby’s wrist.
The ringing in Warren’s ears was fading but all he could hear now were the grunts of the two men as they struggled for control over the gun. It was a stalemate and Warren had absolutely no idea who would hold out the longest. And what was he going to do if he did win the tug of war?
It was probably the distant sound of a siren that spurred Bixby into breaking the impasse. Leaning his head back, he then snapped it forward. With little room to manoeuvre, it wasn’t much of a headbutt; however, it landed square on Warren’s damaged nose.
The sudden pain and fresh spurt of blood and tears was enough for Warren to loosen his grip. With an animal-like howl of triumph, Bixby snatched the gun up and started to bring it around. Half blinded, Warren ignored his nose and grabbed the killer’s hand again in desperation. But Bixby now had the advantage and slowly he brought the gun around, inching the barrel upwards. It was only a matter of time, Warren realised, and the panic and adrenaline and pain started to give way to a feeling of helplessness.