Scared Yet?

by Jaye Ford

  His backhander knocked her to the floor this time. Legs and feet in the air, taped to the chair, flipped over like a turtle. Defenceless – but with a chance.

  Not to save her life. It was too late for that. But to die some other way than with her hands in her lap.

  ‘Is that what you want, Ray?’

  Suddenly, he was hauling her upright, dragging her up by the mass of tape around her torso. He replaced the gun in its D-ring, slid the knife from its leather sheath. It was huge, some kind of hunting blade. Jagged on one side, a clean, slick edge on the other. He didn’t cut her. He cut her binds. The plastic ties on her ankles first. Then her legs. Then the tape around the chair was released with a straight slice beside each arm, leaving a rectangle of silver stuck to her shirt. He left her wrists bound, dragged her from the seat and hauled her along the corridor towards the security exit.

  Daniel was struggling to get to his feet, pain etched on his face. Blood ran down his arm and was spreading across the wall behind him like a kid with a brush had gone to town with red paint.

  She probably wouldn’t see him again. She wanted to say sorry. And thank you. That she hoped he didn’t die a horrible death after she was gone. Because Ray wasn’t going to let him live, either. He was going to lock him in the corridor then go back and finish him off. But she didn’t say any of it. There were no words for that kind of farewell. So she just found his eyes and held them while she could.

  There was agony in them. And fiery pinpricks of fury. She didn’t know if they were aimed at Ray or her. There was plenty of reason for him to watch her leave through a haze of rage. But anguish was in them, too. And something dark and pained and broken.

  Then she was gone.

  Thrust into the night, her elbows twisting in the vice-like grip on her bound wrists. The air was cold on her sweating face, the darkness a wall after the fluorescence of the hallway, the car park looming above them like a threat. She heard traffic. The rumble of more than one car, the toot of a horn. Park Street was behind them, out of sight from here – but its sounds filled her with hope.

  She hadn’t thought this far. Had only thought of being free of the chair to throw a punch. But there were people on the street, going home, going out. There were other offices in Park Street, other workers who used the car park. She and Daniel weren’t the only ones who worked late. She could call out, make a noise, signal. Maybe even make a break. Knock Ray down and run like hell.

  Then he grabbed a handful of her hair and jammed the muzzle of the nail gun into the back of her skull – and she wondered if she’d be lucky enough even to throw a fist.

  He pushed her ahead of him now, across the laneway, marching her towards the pedestrian ramp. His hand was wound so tightly into her hair, the skin on her face was stretched like a bad facelift. She couldn’t turn her head, couldn’t see into the bottom level of the car park as they passed.

  ‘Ray, wait. I need to stop. My leg is cramping from sitting so long.’

  He dragged her head further back, put his mouth to her cheek and growled out words. ‘Don’t talk to me. Don’t look at me. Just walk.’

  She resisted. She couldn’t help it but his strength surprised her. He was thickset, he wore his work shirts loose. She’d figured it was to hide middle-aged fleshiness, the sagginess of his less energetic forties. But she’d been wrong. His chest was pressed against her shoulderblades – and all she felt was muscle.

  They passed the first floor. Then the second. His panting, grunting breath hot on her face, her neck, in her hair, the sour stink of his mouth filling her nostrils as he forced her forward and upward, turning the hairpin bends on the zigzag path.

  Up above, she could see the spill of illumination from the floodlights on the fourth storey, bleeding over the edge into the darkness of the laneway. But he turned inwards before they got there, pushing her off the ramp into the gloom of the third level.

  There were only two cars up here tonight. Five all but empty rows of parking. No people. No sounds.

  Deja vu.

  But it wasn’t the fear of that night last week that came back to her. It was the incensed, red-hot anger she’d felt when the bastard in the balaclava had whispered in her ear. Now she was back. With another bastard breathing on her face, wanting to hurt her.

  And so was the instinctive urge to fight.

  She’d been pushed around by too many men. She was sick of living with the damage they caused.

  Ray had caused more than any of them. He’d injured people she loved. Threatened to destroy the two people she cherished the most. She wanted to hurt him for that.

  So, as he manoeuvred her around, faced her towards the western wall, the one that towered over the stretch of lane where Teagan had fallen, she pulled her bound wrists to her chest and fought. With her shoulders. Thrusting, thumping.

  There was no sound but her gasps and his laboured breathing. The struggle loosened his grip on her hair, the pressure on the gun. It became a scuffle. She threw feet into the mix, bent and twisted in his hold.

  Something connected. He ‘oomphed’, let go of her hair altogether. Not long enough for her to change direction and run. Only enough time to take a breath, lift a foot and think about it before his arm slammed across her chest, the cold tip of the gun touching her neck.

  His breath was hot on her ear. ‘Don’t fuck with me, you bitch.’

  It didn’t sound like Ray. It barely sounded human.

  ‘You defy me and this is what happens.’

  He pushed her forward. One step. Another. His thigh behind hers as though it was a dance. He spoke as they moved, his lips caressing her lobe like a lover.

  ‘You come to me for protection.’ Step.

  ‘You get what you deserve if you don’t.’ Another step.

  ‘You won’t need my protection when I’m finished.’ Left leg.

  ‘There won’t be anything left to protect.’ Right.

  They were just metres from the end of the car park. Closer with every stride. She saw what was coming. Perhaps how it had happened with Teagan, only this time he was a level higher and planning to do more than injure. He’d push her up against the concrete barrier, bend her face first over the rail that ran along the top. It was waist high. Not hard to force her forward, not with his strength behind her. He could hold her head down and she wouldn’t be able to do a thing. She could tell him all she liked how scared she was, scream it out over the lane until it echoed back at them. But if he didn’t believe her, if it was all he wanted before he killed her or if he just didn’t care anymore, he could grab a leg and tip her over. Easy, quick.

  ‘I won’t have to waste my time.’ Step. ‘Keeping you in line.’ Step. ‘You selfish, selfish bitch.’ Step.

  She wasn’t listening now. She heard him but she was listening to her father. You’re the future. Step. You and Cameron. Step. You have to fight for that. Step.

  His words from tonight – and other words she hadn’t thought of in years. Words that hadn’t been for her but she’d been there to hear them. Keep your head. Think and move. Move and think. A fight isn’t a knockout punch. The Tony Wallace manual of boxing. She knew it all. It was the soundtrack of her childhood. Mobility. Footwork. Combinations. Opportunity. Strategy. She could write the book.

  But could she follow the lesson plan? At thirty-five. With a broken knuckle not yet healed. With her hands bound together. With a nail gun crammed into her throat.

  46

  There would be no combinations, Liv thought. No right-left-right of any kind. Not with her wrists clamped together. But she could make a fist. A double fist. She had elbows and shoulders. She had a little upper body mobility and she could think. Adrenaline had fired her brain like an injection of caffeine straight into the grey matter.

  She tightened both hands, twisted as she drove back, felt the blunt end of the na
il gun slip from her throat as she slammed an elbow into Ray’s gut. She heard the thwack of compressed air, a distant tinkle as a nail hit concrete – and her inner voice shouted in rage. He fired. The bastard fired.

  She twisted aggressively back and forth, not trying to break his hold but moving within his embrace, keeping her elbows inside his, pushing at his gun arm, making it difficult for him to aim. He could shove the thing into her ribs, fire a nail right through her, but it was harder if she kept moving, jostling, jerking at his arm with her bound wrists.

  Then something cold and solid jammed up against the side of her leg. The concrete barrier. Ray had kept pushing forward as she’d been twisting. She was at the edge of the car park, metres of clean air right beside her.

  Tony Wallace was in her head again. You can’t win from the ropes. You are trapped on the ropes. Get the fuck off the ropes.

  She couldn’t do anything about the damn ropes while Ray had the nail gun. The only thing stopping him from firing a bolt of metal through her skin was her outstretched, grappling hands keeping the muzzle pointed away.

  Then he rammed her with his torso. The force of it crushed her into the concrete, jerked her bound fists into his forearm. It thrust his hand, still clutching the gun, out over the rail. Momentum kept it there for what seemed like forever. Maybe it was only a second. Half a second. But Liv could see its return arc in her mind, coming right at her.

  With a desperate cry, she lurched, slammed down with her closest elbow. Hard. As hard as she could. Felt his bone under the point, felt the unmoving resistance of the metal rail beneath it. She did it again. Quickly, with a short upswing, not giving him a chance to retract. Or swing the gun back into range.

  He grunted. There was a clang. The gun was gone. Disappearing into the night below.

  She felt a beat of victory. Then pain ripped across her scalp.

  Ray’s other hand was enmeshed in her hair, dragging at her head, hauling it around. He pushed his face into hers, eyes wild, grinding her into the barrier with his body, leaning slowly forward, forcing her backwards over the railing. It cut into the small of her spine. Pain screamed through the scraping vertebrae, her lungs struggled to draw air. Her head, shoulderblades, ribs were suspended over the drop. She sensed the emptiness beneath her, felt the night air wafting upwards. Somewhere below, inside the car park maybe, there was a crash and a bang. Someone was down there. She wanted to shout for help but couldn’t get sound from her throat.

  Ray’s fingers dug into her scalp as he twisted her head around. He was making her look. At the laneway. At her landing spot.

  ‘Scared yet, Livia?’

  She didn’t answer. Just felt the hot pulse of rage. Of a fight. Her hands were bound but they were pulled to her chin and as Ray leaned close, she turned her palms, splayed her fingers like claws, aimed them at his face.

  She dug in, mashing her nails into his skin like it was damp putty.

  He screamed, shut his eyes, tried to turn his face away but she’d broken the flesh and hooked talons into him. He lifted his weight from her and she saw the shock in his struggle. He wasn’t expecting this. To lose the power so late in the game. He hadn’t thought to hit back yet, just wanted his face out of the firing line. He grappled with her claws, managed to haul them from his face. She let him, saw the opportunity, closed her fists and drove back at him with a double-hander.

  A punch. It felt good. It caught him above the ear, knocked him off balance, forced him back a few paces. There were lines of raw, torn skin down his cheeks. He was sucking air through his mouth, chest heaving with the effort as he lowered himself, spread his arms and dropped a shoulder. Preparation for a charge. A rugby tackle, the kind where the target was grabbed around the legs, lifted up before being slammed to the ground. Except the ground Ray would be aiming for was up and over the rail then all the way down.

  Fear jagged like razor blades. She couldn’t sidestep him. He was too close and already moving. In what felt like slow motion, she pushed backwards as he drove forwards. She threw her bound wrists across her body, opened her fingers, twisted as she lunged. Hoped she had the right angle.

  The jolt as he hit knocked the wind from her lungs. His arms tightened around her thighs, his head slammed into her hip. She kept twisting, stretching, felt the metal rail hit the heel of her right palm.

  The rest happened too fast to understand the physics. Maybe the rail was lower than he thought. Or she was taller than he’d estimated. Maybe anger and adrenaline – his, not hers – made him miscalculate his own strength. Maybe he’d expected her to brace for a king hit, rather than reverse and add energy to his propulsion. Whatever it was, she hit the barrier going up, felt her left buttock skim the edge of the concrete, hit the rail with speed and roll over the top.

  Her only thought was to close her fingers around the cold metal in her palm. Her arms were wrenched in their sockets as her body was flung out over empty space. Ray’s weight dragged at her thighs, pulling at the fabric of her jeans.

  And it was gone. He was gone.

  There was no sound beyond the scream that poured from her mouth as she swung free. The sudden release had jettisoned her body into flight, only stopped from soaring into the night by her agonised, desperate grasp on the railing. Slipping, gripping, moving on the paint-chipped pole until her body slammed into the concrete barrier.

  Not the surface she’d expected. Not splattered and dead on the road below.

  Alive. Breathing. Arms stretched overhead, wrists pressed together, hands facing each other around the rail. Broken knuckle howling with pain. Scared beyond belief.

  She kicked out with one leg, then the other, paddled like a cyclist, searching desperately for a foothold. But the bottom edge of the barrier was at her waist. Below that, there was nothing. And the judder of her frantic, unimpeded movement shook all the way through her. All the way to her hands. Her sweaty, gritty palms that had no traction on the rail, that were slipping on the metal.

  She closed her eyes, squeezed them tight, willed herself to stop moving, stop panicking, stop swaying. She couldn’t pull herself up. She didn’t have the strength, not from this angle. Not with a broken knuckle and gritty hands. Not after everything. The only way up was to pull a knee to her waist, find the barrier with it, use it for resistance to haul the rest of her up. But a movement of that size would swing her outwards, change the tension on her hands, put pressure on her fingers, one of which was broken. How long would it hold? How long would any of them hold?

  She turned her head, just a bit, rolled her eyes, looked down.

  Ray was splayed on the road. Facedown, body twisted at an impossible angle around the decorative post below her. Was that going to be her?

  Not yet. Oh fuck, not yet. Don’t let go, Liv. Not yet.

  47

  Blood pounded in her ears. She heard traffic from Park Street. Quiet sobs. Her own.

  Well, you missed it, Ray. She was scared to death. And death would come soon.

  No one knew she was here. Someone could walk to their car and not see her hands around the rail. She would be found on the road next to Ray in the morning. Crumpled, broken, dead like him. What would they think when they found her? That she’d thrown herself off. That she’d jumped with Ray. No. Not that. Daniel would tell them. He’d live now. He’d survived Ray.

  So had Cameron and her father.

  It would still hurt them. Oh God, Cam. She wanted to hold him again, crush him in her arms. She wanted to tell her father she’d fought to the end. Like he had taught her.

  She took a breath. Bent a knee, hauled it up, felt the swing start, her hands slip. Come on, Liv. Die fighting. Not hanging. She did it again. Felt the rail move. Except it wasn’t the metal. It was her hand. Her broken right hand. Slipping. Hanging by the fingers. Just the tips.

  She let out a brief, sharp squeal as it lost its grip and her
weight swayed left. She tightened her other hand on the rail, felt the squelch of sweat, the grit in her palm. Not yet, Liv.

  A noise from above. Maybe just rubbish on the breeze. Please be more than that.

  Then her body jerked. Something slammed her arm. The one that still clung to the rail. The fingers slipped. She squeezed her eyes, waited for the falling sensation.

  ‘I’ve got you.’

  It was Daniel’s voice. Deep, calm. In her head like her dad’s.

  ‘Liv. Look at me.’

  She opened her eyes, tipped up her face. Daniel’s torso was bent over the rail, an arm extended down, his massive hand gripping her between the elbow and the bicep. She could feel it now, too. A painful, tearing vice. How the hell had he got there?

  ‘I won’t drop you,’ he said. There was blood on his face, blood on his T-shirt. ‘I’ve got a good hold. Okay?’

  She couldn’t nod. Couldn’t answer.

  ‘But I’m injured. I can’t lift you. I won’t let go but you have to pull yourself up.’

  How? She had to move to do that. She’d swing outwards. He wouldn’t hold her. She lowered her eyes, saw only empty space under her feet.

  ‘Don’t look down, Liv. Keep your eyes up. Keep looking at me.’

  She lifted her face again. He was straining, sweating, breathing hard. She couldn’t bring herself to start.

  ‘Come on!’ he said. It was encouragement, not impatience.

  What the hell did he know about hanging by a thread? ‘You won’t hold me.’

  ‘I won’t lose you, Liv. I’m braced against the barrier. When I can’t hold myself here any longer, I’ll go over with you. You either come up here or we both go down there. But I won’t let you go.’

  It sounded like a line. The rescuer to the victim. Something to make her trust him, to give her courage. But she knew it wasn’t. She knew about his dead list. Rachel was right. He had been trying to save her, trying to keep her alive, trying to keep her off his real dead list – and out of his dreams.