Wrong Number

by Carys Jones

  Amanda gently lowered Ewan to her side; she didn’t have the strength to carry him as Jake had. The boy instantly locked his arms around her legs like a limpet.

  ‘Get him out of here.’

  Jake wasn’t looking at her. His eyes were trained on the shadows just beyond the clearing. In the faint light, Amanda saw him reach around to the small of his back, grabbing at the gun he had stowed there.

  ‘No,’ she reached for Jake’s arm as a sharp wind stole her protest away from the clearing, carrying it back up into the trees, back towards their pursuers.

  ‘I’ll take care of them and then I’ll be right behind you. Stay safe.’

  ‘I want my mummy,’ Ewan hugged Amanda’s leg so tightly that if he were any stronger he’d risk snapping a bone. He gazed up at her through large, misty eyes.

  Ruffling his dark hair, Amanda forced the brightest smile she could, hoping the child didn’t notice how her hands shook.

  ‘You’ll be back with your mummy soon,’ she offered, hoping it was the truth rather than just a platitude to keep him calm.

  ‘Go.’

  Jake still didn’t turn back towards her as he hissed the order. She heard the urgency in his voice and plucked Ewan’s arms from around her legs to take his hand and lead him to the edge of the clearing. Pressing her back against a large tree, she hugged Ewan to her chest and dared to peer over her shoulder and glance towards the clearing.

  Dual beams of light punctured the shadows on the far side. They cut through the darkness and found Jake standing in the centre. With his broad shoulders and unruly black hair he looked like he’d been cut from the stones which sat atop the hill. He was savage and strong, perfectly at home in the wilderness.

  Amanda held her breath as the tiger turned on those who dared to hunt it.

  Turning away from the clearing, she looked ahead into the murky depths of the woodland, at the tangle of branches ahead. The bark against her back was rough and offered no comfort. She wondered how long she could linger there, or if she’d already stayed too long.

  A shot rang out. Its loud snap echoed through the trees, causing slumbering animals to stir uneasily. Another shot. Amanda winced at the brutal clarity of the sound.

  ‘I’m scared,’ she could feel Ewan trembling against her like a leaf caught in a rough breeze.

  ‘It’s okay,’ she rubbed his back and held him tight. ‘Everything is going to be all right.’

  A third shot. Amanda felt it in her bones as the sound vibrated deep within her. She held a breath in her chest and silently prayed that Jake was safe. Crouching down, she kissed Ewan’s forehead and wrapped her arms around him. She didn’t dare move. She barely dared to breathe.

  She waited for the beams of light to press on, to come searching for her. She waited for Jake to shout out that everything was okay, that the danger had passed. But there was only the sound of her own beating heart and blood rushing in her ears.

  ‘Where’s… where’s Daddy?’ Ewan sniffled after a minute that felt like an eternity.

  ‘I…’ slowly, carefully, Amanda straightened and peered back around the tree. The clearing wasn’t empty. Three figures were strewn on the ground, bathed in moonlight. ‘Jesus,’ she gasped as she clasped a hand over her mouth and turned away.

  ‘What is it?’ the little boy’s voice was filled with fear.

  ‘Can you just…’ Amanda swallowed down her anguish and confidently placed both hands on his slender shoulders. ‘You wait here for a moment, okay? I’m just going to check on your daddy. I’ll come right back here to get you.’

  ‘No,’ Ewan made a high-pitched protest, tears washing down his cheeks.

  ‘I promise I’ll be just a minute. But I can’t take you with me, it’s not safe. But you’re safe here.’ Amanda moved away from the tree and pressed Ewan against its bark. ‘Stand here, close your eyes and count to a hundred. I’ll be back by then.’

  ‘A hundred?’

  ‘A hundred.’

  ‘But that’s so high,’ Ewan declared woefully.

  ‘Well, do your best, okay?’

  Nodding, the little boy squeezed his eyes shut and began to count. ‘One, two, three…’

  Amanda stole away from the tree and returned to the clearing. The charred afterburn of a fired bullet had singed the air. She looked to the two figures slumped on the edge of the clearing, they were on their backs and seemingly motionless.

  Someone spluttered.

  Instinctively Amanda dropped to Jake’s side. He too was on his back, his hands across his chest as blood seeped out through his fingers.

  ‘Christ, Jake,’ Amanda placed his head in her lap and pulled her phone from her pocket. ‘Just hold on, okay? I’ll get help.’

  ‘No.’ Jake croaked, lifting a bloodied hand to stop her.

  ‘Jake, you need help, you need—’

  ‘No one can know you were here.’ He coughed and his face contorted in a grimace.

  ‘Jake, you’ve been shot, you need an ambulance.’

  He kept coughing as blood seeped out from behind clenched teeth, staining his lips a dangerous shade of red.

  ‘I… I got them,’ he declared, his mouth briefly morphing into a triumphant smile. But as fresh shudders of agony swept through his body his smile promptly fell.

  ‘You’ve been shot,’ Amanda cradled his head in her hands and swept his dark hair out of his eyes. There was a sheen of sweat across his forehead that glistened in the pale moonlight. Choking on a sob Amanda remembered sweeping back Will’s hair when he got laid up with flu the previous winter. It was the only time he’d taken to his bed sick and even pale and bunged up he looked handsome, strong. Like he could beat anything.

  ‘Yeah, they got one good shot in. Bastards.’ He shook in her arms and she couldn’t tell if he was laughing or crying. Amanda held onto him as tightly as she could. It was her turn to be the strong one, to deliver him from the darkness.

  ‘I’m going to get you to a hospital.’

  ‘No,’ he protested again, a hand wrapping around her wrist. His touch was slick and clammy. ‘It’s too late for me. You need to…’ he spluttered as blood trickled down his chin, ‘take… Ewan. Stay… safe.’

  ‘Jake,’ Amanda could feel the heat of her tears upon her cheeks. ‘I’m not leaving you here.’

  ‘You… have… to.’

  ‘I didn’t chase you all the way up here just to leave you in some bloody woods.’ She tried to make a joke of it, tried to smile.

  ‘You fought…’ Jake coughed uneasily, ‘for me. And I…’ he lightly raised his free hand in the direction of the other two fallen figures, ‘I fought for you.’

  ‘Jake, please, just hold on, let me try to stop the bleeding, let me call for help.’

  ‘Will.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Will.’ He was looking into her eyes, right down to her terrified soul. ‘Let me be your Will. One last time.’

  ‘Hey, stop talking like this. Let me call the ambulance, everything will be fine.’

  ‘The first time I saw you… in that store,’ his gaze had become distant, ‘you were so… so beautiful. I wanted you. I wanted to… be Will Thorn… for you. I wanted to stay… Will Thorn for you. I let… you down.’

  ‘Look, it’s all in the past now.’

  ‘You still came… for me.’

  ‘You’re my husband,’ Amanda tried to ignore how his breathing was becoming shallower. She focused on the light in his dark eyes, but even that was growing dimmer. ‘I would follow you to the ends of the earth. You know that.’

  ‘I… love you,’ Will rasped as he squeezed his eyes shut, battling against his internal pain.

  ‘I love you too.’ Amanda’s tears had become a river that almost blinded her as she looked down at her fallen husband. ‘Don’t leave me,’ she whispered, lowering her head towards his. ‘I wish you’d never left me.’

  ‘Never again,’ the hand around her wrist tightened, just slightly. Already he lacked so much of his former stre
ngth. ‘I’ll always be with you.’

  ‘Don’t go, Will, please.’ Amanda bowed her head against his and heard his final breath pass through his lips. ‘No,’ she shook as she remained with him cradled in her arms. ‘No. Not like this.’

  ‘Argh!’ Ewan was screaming. His terror bounced off the trees and powered against Amanda, forcing her to release Will. She turned and saw the little boy staring straight at her, his eyes as wide as his mouth as he kept screaming.

  ‘Damn.’ She lay Will down in the soft grass and ran to Ewan. ‘Don’t look,’ the second the boy was within her reach she grabbed him and pulled him to her chest in an embrace, blocking his view of the massacre in the clearing, of his fallen father. ‘Just don’t look, Ewan. It’s all right. Everything will be all right.’

  ‘Amanda?’ Shane came out of the trees, his clothes damp with sweat. He stared at her, breathing hard. ‘I… I was coming back and I saw this car up at the cabin and then I heard screaming—’ he was hurrying towards her but he stopped abruptly when he saw the figures in the clearing. ‘Fuck.’ He froze as if the mud at his feet had turned to cement. ‘Fuck, what happened?’

  ‘He…’ Amanda wiped at her eyes, smearing her cheeks with the blood which stained her hands. ‘He saved us. Will saved us.’

  Shane quickly became a cop. He examined each body, checked for a pulse and declared each one dead with a regretful shake of the head. He lingered at Will’s side.

  ‘We need to get him out of here.’ She was referring to Ewan who was glued to her side, fearful to take so much as a step away from her.

  ‘He managed to take them both down with two shots. One to the throat and a clean one to the head. But he wasn’t quick enough. They fired one out and got him in the chest.’ There was admiration in Shane’s voice as he pushed his hands through his hair and gazed helplessly at Amanda. The cop was gone and he was suddenly as lost as Ewan was. ‘What do we do?’

  ‘We need to go.’

  ‘We can’t…’ Shane gestured to the bodies but didn’t look back at them. ‘We can’t leave them like this, Amanda. We need to call it in, we need to—’

  ‘He said to make it so we were never here.’

  ‘But,’ Shane paced over towards her, his hands in his hair. ‘The cabin?’ he gestured towards the trees. ‘It’s booked in my name.’

  ‘I can easily change that once we swing by there and grab my laptop.’

  ‘You’re not thinking clearly.’

  ‘Yes, I am,’ Amanda insisted, her tone level as she summoned an inner strength she didn’t even know she had. ‘Will wanted me to protect his son, to get the hell out of here and that’s what we’re going to do.’

  ‘Amanda—’

  ‘Will you help me honour his final wishes?’

  Shane looked between her and her dead husband. ‘Christ,’ his shoulders slumped, ‘I’d do anything for you. You know that.’

  ‘Then let’s go.’ Amanda led Ewan towards Shane’s car which was parked not far from the clearing, along the road which they were so close to when they’d run. If only Amanda’s phone hadn’t gone off, if only a third bullet hadn’t found its way into Will’s chest.

  ‘Is Daddy not coming with us?’ Ewan lingered at the roadside, looking back into the woods. He’d stopped crying and peered up at Amanda, his little forehead crumpled in confusion.

  ‘No, sweetheart,’ Amanda smoothed her hands down his cheeks and smiled tenderly at him. ‘He’s not coming. But we’re going to go back to your mummy.’

  ‘Mummy?’ Ewan instantly brightened and eagerly clambered into the waiting car.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Shane was at her side, anxiously watching her.

  ‘No,’ Amanda told him honestly. ‘Right now I’m just focusing on existing from one second to the next.’

  ‘What happens when we drop Ewan back off at his Mum’s?’

  ‘That’s when I fall apart.’

  30

  The water turned red as it ran down Amanda’s legs and swirled around the plughole.

  ‘You need to shower,’ Shane had told her as he pulled up outside the cabin.

  ‘There’s no time.’

  ‘You’ll attract too much attention like that.’

  Amanda looked down at herself. At her soiled clothes. Her jeans were caked in mud and her hands and arms were darkened with her husband’s blood. Numbly, she agreed to Shane’s order, knowing the importance of keeping herself occupied, of not letting her mind dwell on the trauma that she had just witnessed. She entered the pine-scented cabin and wandered towards the small bathroom as though drifting through a dream. Carefully she shed each item of clothes and then stepped beneath the spray of hot water which was raining down into the bathtub. Bowing her head against the stream, Amanda watched the water darken in shade as it rid her of her stains.

  How long had it been since Will had stood beneath that same shower? Hours? And now…

  Pulling her hands through her hair, Amanda scrubbed out the mud, the blood, the rain and pushed down her feelings of despair. She couldn’t think of Will lying out there in the woods, growing cold. She had to focus on navigating from one moment to the next. And right now that meant showering.

  ‘Okay, let’s go,’ Shane was already barrelling towards the front door when Amanda emerged from the shower, her laptop tucked under his arm. She gave her hair one final rub with a towel and then left the heat of the bathroom.

  The only clean clothes she could find belonged to Shane. She’d risked pulling her muddied jeans back on and coupled them with one of his sweatshirts she’d hastily grabbed on her way to the bedroom. But nothing was getting left behind. The rest of own dirty clothes were in her hands, hanging at her side.

  Ewan was already in the car as Amanda climbed in and sat beside him. His head was slumped towards his chest as he clutched Woody tightly against his heart. He was sleeping. The shock of what he’d experienced had clearly drained him. Amanda tugged the boy so that his head was resting more comfortably against the sleeve of her oversized sweatshirt. She gently stroked his hair as her heart became heavy. Her own pain was now going to become Ewan’s. He too was destined to grow up without a father, without even the possibility of him one day coming home. And Amanda knew all too well how deep such pain went, how it grew roots which knotted their way throughout your body and soul.

  As Shane pulled away from the cabin, she reached for her laptop and opened it up. They were weaving their way through winding roads, flanked by tall, stoic trees as she changed the reservation details for their cabin. Shane’s name was removed and in its place—

  Will Thorn.

  Amanda stared at the screen. The digital trail of breadcrumbs would end with Will if McAllister chose to follow it. Shane, Amanda and Ewan had never even been there, at least according to all accessible records.

  ‘You okay?’ Shane had been driving in silence for the past twenty minutes. He glanced briefly into the rear-view mirror, his eyes locking onto Amanda. She hoped that he could see the gratitude that she felt towards him.

  ‘How long until we get to Glasgow?’

  ‘Hours.’

  She looked at the little boy sleeping soundly beside her.

  ‘It’s okay to talk about it, you know,’ Shane urged.

  ‘I can’t,’ Amanda shook her head sadly and dropped her attention back towards her laptop. ‘I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to.’

  *

  A new day dawned and with it came sunshine. The sky blushed a shade of crimson as the car drove away from the rural highlands and joined a motorway. Amanda leaned forward against the passenger seat and peered through the windscreen, failing to see the beauty of a rose-tainted sky. The morning should have brought rain; endless sheets of it.

  ‘He okay?’ Shane’s voice was hoarse.

  Amanda looked at Ewan who was now bundled up in the far corner, still holding tightly to his favourite toy.

  ‘He’s still sleeping.’

  ‘We need to think about getting him something t
o eat.’

  Food. Amanda was almost repulsed by the word. In the darkened early hours, Shane had offered her the fish and chips he’d retrieved from the nearby town. The newspaper bundled around the meal was soaked with fat and the smell emanating out from it made Amanda gag.

  ‘Urgh, bin it,’ she’d insisted, barely holding back from retching. Shane had obeyed. At the next rest stop he climbed out and took the cold fish supper with him, dropping it into a trash can.

  ‘I can’t think about eating,’ Amanda sighed. Eating was such a normal thing to do. And how was she supposed to be normal when her entire world was imploding around her?

  ‘He’ll need something,’ Shane raised his eyebrows, referring to Ewan.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘So I’ll stop at the next set of services. Okay?’

  Amanda said nothing. She just slid back against her seat. Her body felt so heavy, as though her bones had been replaced with dense lead pipes.

  It was busy at the services. People tumbled out of their cars and scurried towards the shops and cafes united in one sleek building, like ants invading a picnic. Ewan had been reluctant to wake up. Amanda didn’t blame him. His dreams were surely a more pleasant place to reside than the real world.

  ‘Don’t you want some breakfast?’ she tried to sound perky. Positive. Instead her words sounded like a strained squeak. But it did the trick.

  ‘Breakfast?’ the boy bounced out of the car as though the horrors of the previous night were already forgotten. Or maybe he just hoped it was all some horrid nightmare he’d made up in his mind? His resilience unnerved Amanda, made her think of Will’s own childhood in Scotland, of how hardened he’d needed to be in order to survive. She didn’t want to see that hardness develop in Ewan but when the little boy grabbed Amanda’s hand without being prompted she knew his heart was still open. Together they went inside, flanked by Shane. The stubble upon Shane’s jawline had thickened so that it was beginning to look like he was growing a beard. If Amanda didn’t feel so dead inside she’d have mocked him for it. But jokes had no place in this world.