by Rebecca King
“Just stay quiet.”
Callum knew his night had just got a hell of a lot harder. It was going to be difficult to stave off attack with a woman on his shoulder not least because she blocked his view of their surroundings. Moreover, his footsteps were heavier given he was carrying the weight of two people, but there was nothing he could do about either problem. Mallory had to be rescued.
And rescued she will be.
“Where are we going?”
“Shut up.”
Mallory duly lapsed into silence. With nothing to focus on, she studied the ground several feet beneath her. Her cheeks flushed when she discovered her eyes were on the same level as this stranger’s backside. Determined not to gaze at it, she tipped her head up at an uncomfortable angle and looked at the area they were leaving behind instead.
“Are you all right?” Callum grunted, a little concerned at just how limp she was.
Mallory looked at the distance he had managed to create between them and the barn so quickly. She knew that they wouldn’t have gone half as far if she had tried to walk.
“You told me not to talk, remember?” she replied.
Callum grinned. “At least you are prepared to do as you are told.”
“What am I to call you?” Mallory asked in a rather conversational tone that was completely inappropriate given her predicament.
“Callum.”
She opened her mouth to tell him her name only to realise that he knew it.
“Who told you my name?” she asked instead.
“The man in the garden.”
“You know him.” It wasn’t a question.
“I must do if he told me your name, don’t you think?”
Mallory mentally winced at the stupidity of her question. She had to concede he had a point.
“Who are you?”
“I have told you. The man’s friend.”
“Who is he?”
Callum grinned again. “Your friend.”
“No, he isn’t. He is a stranger.”
“He has facilitated your escape.”
“We aren’t free yet,” Mallory grumbled.
“I am sorry if I am not going fast enough for you,” Callum grunted with masculine disgust.
“You can put me down, you know. I can walk.”
Callum stopped.
Despite her light weight, his shoulder was aching. He winced when he lowered her to her feet only to realise that her thin shoes were no match for the wet grass in the field. Still, he needed to save some energy for any fight he might have to engage in before they reached safety.
“We have to get you some better footwear,” he muttered with a scowl at her feet.
“These are all I have.”
“Let’s just keep going for now. We cannot do anything about your boots out here.”
Even from where they were standing, now on the opposite side of the field, Callum could clearly see the patrol on their half-hourly rounds.
“What do we do now?” Mallory asked.
“Keep going. All it is going to take is for one of the guards to look up and all Hell will break loose. They have horses, we don’t. If the guards use them, or set the dogs on us, we are not going to get out of here.”
“Should we catch one of the horses?” Mallory hated the thought that something might happen to him because of her.
Callum raked her with a look. There wasn’t much he could see of her but from what he had gleaned so far, she wasn’t built for riding.
“Do you ride?” he asked sceptically.
Mallory shook her head.
“Then we walk, and quickly.”
Callum knew that his horse was going to be necessary but would just have to deal with how to get her onto it when they got there.
Before either of them could speak again, a guard dog suddenly began to bark.
“Time’s up.”
“What?”
Mallory felt sick and began to shake. The world swirled around her. She wanted to scream in fear. She wanted to run but had no idea which way she should go.
The shouts of men echoing the barking of the dogs was more than enough of a warning that they had been seen. It was horrifying.
“What do we do?” Mallory cried.
“Run.”
The speed in which Mallory was yanked into motion was startling. She had no choice but to do everything possible to race after Callum, whose longer legs and well booted feet were able to cover far more ground than hers could.
“I can’t. Callum. Stop. I can’t,” Mallory gasped several minutes later.
Her chest hurt. Her lungs burned. Her legs shook so much that she struggled to know how to put one foot before the other. Panic made her stumble. Fear made her eyes wide in the darkness, but nothing was more terrifying than the sight of several men racing after them on foot. To add to her terror, a dog was charging out ahead of the pack, covering the distance in half the time.
“Move.” Callum stepped in front of her, took aim, and stopped the animal in its tracks.
“Callum,” Mallory pleaded but she had no idea what she was asking for.
“Move,” was his only response.
Wildly, Mallory spun around only for the world to swim alarmingly. She knew she couldn’t go on any longer. Time was up. Her escape attempt had failed. Her body had run out of reserves. She couldn’t carry on, no matter how much she wanted to.
For a moment, all she could do was stare at this stranger, who had rather startlingly turned up out of nowhere and done his best to help her. Guilt immediately assailed her at the thought of what they might do to him if they caught him.
“You go on. If they catch you, they will kill you for trying to help me,” Mallory urged.
Callum knew then that he had been sent on a suicide mission. The chances of them escaping while being chased by such large numbers of men, horses, and gunfire were so remote that he wanted to laugh at the stupidity of his situation. Helplessness was not an emotion he was used to. He was a man who achieved things, made choices, lived life. He wasn’t used to having no options and, right now, Callum knew that he had no choice but to stand and fight – to the death if he had to.
“Callum, go. Make good your escape while you can. I can head them off,” Mallory urged again when he didn’t appear to have heard her.
She lifted her skirt in preparation to run across the field away from him, and lead the guards away, only for Callum to grab her arm and swing her around until she was standing on her tiptoes mere inches from his nose.
Callum glared at her with eyes that were hard and unrelenting.
“Damn you. We are not going to give up,” Callum hissed, giving her a swift shake. “Do you hear me? Neither of us are going to just surrender. We have not come too far to give up now.”
To prove that he would fight to the death, Callum lifted his gun, took aim, and shot the guard who was leading the chasers. In the background, he could see several guards mounting horses, but they were too far away for him to shoot. It wouldn’t be long until they got within range, though.
“Go. Move. Keep heading in that direction.”
Mallory opened her mouth to argue but Callum was distracted by the need to take more shots at the approaching men. Even she could see that it wasn’t doing much to deter them. The distance between them was narrowing with each passing moment.
Mallory knew she didn’t stand a chance of outrunning them, nor did Callum if he had to carry her. To her amazement, Callum took one more shot before he whirled around to face her.
“You are going to get free of them, Mallory,” he announced in a voice that was as fierce and harsh as his dark look.
With that, he ducked low and hefted her over his shoulder once more. This time, he stepped over the low stone wall running along the periphery of the field before resuming his run for both their lives.
CHAPTER FOUR
Callum managed to take only a few steps when the loud boom of a massive explosion shattered the night air. Both he
and Mallory instinctively threw themselves onto the ground. The world shook beneath them.
Once down, Callum lifted his head to look at Melrose House.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he growled, somewhat awestruck by what he saw.
“What was that?”
Mallory peered around him to see what he was looking at. For a moment, she also struggled to believe what she was seeing.
“Is that - Is that the house on fire? Who did that? Was that an explosion? What happened?”
Mallory stared at the huge bank of flames surging out of the windows at the back of the house, trying desperately to lick the night sky. The orange and red glow created a haze around the property that was startling in its effect but was no less destructive.
Her gaze fell to the men who had been chasing them. They had also stopped running and had turned to look at the spectacle of the burning house. Some even started to run toward the property inside of which were the terrified screams of the trapped occupants.
“What?” Mallory asked when she heard Callum huff. She watched him shake his head in wonderment.
“Your friend has helped you,” Callum mused with an appreciative nod.
“What?” Mallory blinked at him in confusion.
“Never mind.”
“No. What do you mean?” Mallory pressed.
Callum pointed to the thick wall of smoke and flames coming from the house. Whatever had exploded inside had blown several windows out of the first floor. Through them was the orange evidence of fire, the flames of which were already eating the shutters avariciously and were far too rampant for any group of men to extinguish.
“Flames like that won’t be put out with buckets of water. They will only cease when there is nothing left for them to consume,” Callum reported.
He folded his arms and studied the small shadows of the guards running around the yard.
“They are going to be busy for a while.”
“Anybody inside that house will have been killed, won’t they,” Mallory whispered in horror.
Callum quirked a brow at her.
“You cannot feel sorry for them, surely? They stole your life and abused you. They murdered your friend in cold blood and would have done the same to you if they had been given permission to do so by your kidnapper. Don’t tell me you feel compassion for them.”
Callum knew she did. It was there, written on her face. It was a reminder that she truly was a remarkable person in that after everything her captors had done to her, Mallory still had the capacity to feel sorry for them.
“Well, no, but-” Mallory was confused. “They shouldn’t be in a position where they can harm anybody else. It isn’t right what they do – did. I-I just didn’t expect them to all die in a – an – explosion.”
“The rest of their days would have been spent in prison anyway,” Callum warned. “What kind of life would they have had? They have gone to meet their Maker instead and will have to account to him for what they have done. At least you now know that none of them can ever hurt you, or anybody else. That can only benefit society, don’t you think?”
“Most definitely, but-”
“Let’s go,” he interrupted.
Callum’s dismissal of the people still struggling to get into the property to rescue the victims warned Mallory that he might not be her knight in shining armour after all. While he had been kind enough to put himself in incredible danger to help her, she hadn’t expected him to be so cold-hearted about someone’s demise, no matter who that ‘someone’ was.
“They are still people,” Mallory whispered, more to herself than to him.
“Do you want me to go back to rescue them?” Callum asked sarcastically. “Because I warn you now that you will be on your own should you try. They will still want you to return to duties when they have put the fire out. Do you want to go back there and have them steal what is left of your life? A little explosion isn’t going to put them off their cruelty. It is what they are, not what they do. They have no respect for others, no manners, no decency left in them. Look at how they treat people. Remember how they treated you. They are beyond human comprehension and deserve nothing more than contempt. It is heinous to steal anybody’s life and abuse them. As far as I am concerned, if anybody has died in that house fire, justice has been served. I just hope that the master of the house, your kidnapper and tormentor, was in there too.”
“What about your friend? He said he was going to help you. What if he is in there?” Mallory asked.
“He is probably on his way to freedom by now as well,” Callum snorted. “Sir – he – has the uncanny ability to get himself out of scrapes and wouldn’t be anywhere near that place if he knew it was going to explode like that. He isn’t a fool.”
“He did that?” Mallory pointed to the house.
Callum lifted his brows at her. “Has anything like that ever happened there before?”
“No. No, it hasn’t. Obviously. Because the house is still standing.”
“We have to make use of the time he has given us to make good our escape. I can deal with any of the guards should they continue to follow us.”
There was no doubt in Callum’s mind that Sir Hugo had blown up Melrose’s house to stop Melrose from having somewhere to hide his kidnap victims. Sir Hugo would have scoured the house to look for anybody else being hidden there before laying his explosives.
“Where do we go now? As soon as the fire is out, they will come after us, won’t they?” Mallory asked breathlessly as she stumbled across a roughly ploughed field after him.
“If Melrose, the man who owns that house, is still alive then yes, he will want to find you. He will know we have you and will want to silence you.”
Callum looked back at her. When he saw her wide eyes, he knew he was scaring her.
Despite the delay, Callum turned to face her.
“Look, I can protect you from guards and dogs, but I cannot protect you from the truth. You are a witness, the only witness we have who can attest to what happens to the kidnap victims. You can identify the employees who helped Melrose keep you captive. We might be out in the middle of nowhere right now, but that isn’t going to be for long. We must get to a safe house in town. When we reach it, you can tell Sir Hugo what you have experienced; how they kidnapped you; when; where; and where they hid you once you had been taken; and answer any other questions he has. Then, you can wait until Melrose and the rest of his gang have been arrested. When they are behind bars, you will be free to go – and only then.”
“The rest of the gang?” Mallory hated the thought that there might be more of them.
Her gaze flew to the house. Against the backdrop of the orange flames, the darkness was even more impenetrable. It was difficult to see if anybody was following.
“One man cannot run such a sophisticated kidnapping ring by himself. He needs help. Some of Melrose’s men have already been put behind bars, but Melrose has avoided capture because he has people who are helping him.”
“How did you know where to find me? I mean, who are you?”
“I cannot go into that right now,” Callum growled.
“How did you know where to find me?”
“I can go into that when we reach the safe house,” Callum replied.
“Who is this ‘we’ you keep talking about?”
Mallory scowled and wondered if he was being deliberately evasive. Something warned her that he wasn’t going to answer her questions even once they reached the safe house. She had to wonder why; what he was hiding. If he expected her to be honest with him, he had to be fair with her and answer some of her questions, didn’t he?
“Look, can we just get going? Please? We must use this time Sir Hugo has given us well. If we stand here explaining how we have managed to get this far we will lose our advantage over the guards.”
Mallory glanced at the house again. This time, she could see the definite outline of men drawing closer.
“They are still coming,” she whisper
ed in horror, even though Callum could see the small group of men for himself.
“This way, and hurry.”
This time, when they started to run, Callum and Mallory had a renewed sense of purpose, a direction, and it had nothing to do with the burning house behind them, or the guards.
“Are you going to shoot them?”
“What do you think? Look away.”
While Mallory turned around, Callum positioned himself in front of her and took aim. He instinctively flinched when the loud bang of a guard’s gun shattered the night air. In return, he squeezed the trigger of his own gun and watched the new leader of the group fall to his knees.
Backstepping, Callum grabbed Mallory by the arm and tugged her with him.
“We have to move a bit faster. We must at least preserve the distance between us. Their bullets won’t hit us if they stay that far away.”
Callum had no idea if he was really thinking aloud but when he turned to face her, he found Mallory glancing wildly around the area, clearly panic-stricken because she didn’t know the area.
“Which way?”
Callum grinned because his sense of direction was perfect.
“Come on.”
“You really are smiling,” Mallory cried. “You are, aren’t you? What is there to smile about? We are being shot at you know.”
The dull thud of another gun being fired punctuated her sentence.
“I know which route to take to get out of the area,” he assured her with a wink. “Just stay close and don’t try to look over your shoulder too much.”
“I am struggling to see where I am going,” she grumbled when she almost fell over a particularly large clump of mud.
“Good. That means they can’t see much of us,” Callum replied unconcernedly.
Putting her cheeks out, Mallory followed Callum across field after field. She walked for miles, unable to think of anything except the men who remained not all that far behind.