Mender (The Ashport Mender Series Book 2)

by G. K. Lund

  Shit, it hurt.

  I cried out in pain, but I couldn’t let go. Heard muffled words from inside my jacket. Breathing didn’t come easy for him now. He tried rolling over to the side to lose me, but I managed to keep him put. Saw Hansen move toward us, eyes open now. He grabbed the man by his shirt collar and simply hit him in the face, fist clenched. The soft, sickening sound was dampened by my jacket and the ski mask. It took three strikes before the attacker slumped backward, pinning me to the ground.

  For a moment, I could only hear my own heightened breathing. My heart was pounding in my chest.

  “You can let him go,” Hansen croaked. He’d been hit repeatedly in the upper body before I’d managed to intervene.

  I did as he said, and he pulled the man off me. I had no doubt he was unconscious. I’d felt his muscles relax. And I’d seen Hansen hit someone in the face before. One of the kidnappers at the farm. There were some advantages to being a pissed off giant. I had actually been surprised the kidnapper had been walking afterward. Luckily, this guy wasn’t.

  I got up on my knees and grabbed my jacket again, holding it in place, just in case. I turned toward Eloise and saw, to my utter relief, that the girl was awake, dandelion leaves still in her hand. Her mother held her arms around her, while she stared at us with big eyes. So much for not scaring the kid.

  “You’re not realtors,” she decided as her mother hushed her.

  I managed a bleak smile before I told them to go into the house. They did as I said without question, and I scanned the garden, or more specifically, the fences. No faces and prying eyes. No neighbors watching. It was nice to have some luck, I thought darkly as I staggered to my feet, my legs hurting.

  “We need to get him inside before someone sees us,” I said. I removed my jacket from his head then. Hansen bent down and pulled the ski mask off him as well.

  For a moment, we stared at him.

  Lying at our feet, unconscious and with a cracked lip and bleeding nose, lay a tawny-haired man we’d both seen before.

  “That’s one of the kidnappers,” Hansen said.

  There was no doubt in my mind that was the man who’d threatened us with a gun when we’d searched for Andrea at the Kreutz farm. The same man we’d seen in the police station a few days before that.

  What was this? I stared in continued disbelief as Hansen grabbed hold under the man’s arms and began dragging him into the house. I noticed, as I followed, that the man’s eyelids started fluttering. I moved to Hansen’s side and pulled his gun from the holster under his jacket. Thankfully, he did not argue. He might have been a total newbie to this, but he clearly understood the threat this man posed.

  As the man's feet were dragged past the sliding doors, he started moving a little. I cocked the gun and let him feel the weapon pressed to the back of his head. He might have been dazed, but he got the message. Hansen let go of him and took over the weapon.

  I turned to see that Amy had sent Eloise into another room. Not only that, she came with a gray pillowcase and handed it to me without a word. I placed it over the tawny-haired man’s head and tied it around his neck so that he could breathe, but it would be a hassle to get off fast.

  He wouldn’t answer any of our questions. It wasn’t a language barrier. He’d spoken in English at the farm, and he told us in no uncertain terms to “fuck off” now. Nope. He didn’t want to cooperate.

  “Maggie?” Amy said, a hand on my shoulder. “Does he need to be here?”

  I turned to her and saw she was about to break down. She’d kept it together this long for her kid, but with the attacker in her house, it was getting a bit too much. I understood. No, we did not need to be there. We needed to be somewhere else I decided and grabbed my phone, texting Dr. Morris.

  “Maggie?” I heard from under the pillowcase. I stopped texting and looked at the kneeling man. “Maggie Evans?” he repeated.

  “What’s it to you?” I asked, though I knew very well he was part of the group who had kidnapped Andrea. Who had wanted to kidnap me. This guy worked for Yorov.

  He didn’t answer me, and I was beginning to lose my patience anyway.

  I was glad Hansen simply followed my lead in all of this. We got the man into the car, no small feat considering the tiny space in it. We were helped by the fact that the tawny-haired man didn’t resist us. He knew there was a gun near him, despite it not being flaunted in the Boudreau’s driveway. If any neighbors saw us, we never noticed. Maybe Amy got some visitors after the fact, but she would have to handle that. No one called the police at least, as we were not pulled over on our way to the hospice.

  “Why there?” Hansen asked. He sat in the passenger seat but was halfway turned around, watching our prisoner, gun ready just in case. The tawny-haired man sat slumped in the backseat, not causing any trouble.

  “What’s your name?” I asked him, raising my voice a little to make it clear I was talking to him.

  He seemed to consider it a short while. Then, finally, “Thomás.”

  “Well,” I said, to Hansen this time. “We might need some medical assistance with Thomás here.” I was not comfortable saying more than that. Hansen had become a little easier to work with when he’d stopped wanting to involve his colleagues and simply helped instead. But now? I knew what might have to be done. Knew the choice I might have to make at the expense of Andrea, maybe even the three trapped men. It would mean severely overstepping any rules he went by. I didn’t have the luxury of those rules. It would be best if he wasn’t part of this now, but Thomás was our only clue to Andrea’s whereabouts as well as to freeing his prisoners. No way was Hansen going to step aside. I got that. I gripped the steering wheel tight and drove on. I saw no other way than to deal with this as I went. I certainly couldn’t do nothing. The consequences would be worse to live with.

  Chapter 16

  “Bet you’re glad there are no cameras now,” I said to Hansen as we got out of the car at the back entrance of Ashport Hospice. Dr. Morris stood on top of the stairs holding the door open for us. It took some time getting Thomás both out of the car and maneuvered up the few steps. He walked in blindness after all, bloody pillowcase covering his head. The blood had dried at this point. I looked at the lining of my jacket. The blood there was also dried and I put it on again. This was not the time to be fussy. We all followed Dr. Morris up to the room where Michael Phillipson lay in the same bed as the day before. He lay a little on his side today, though, having been turned a little. I could only imagine the pained muscles and bed sores that would at some point make themselves known to the poor trapped souls in that hell. Even the boredom had to be torture.

  Hansen made Thomás stand in front of the bed, facing the dead-eyed kid in it, while the rest of us positioned ourselves behind him. With a gun aimed at him, he didn’t make any trouble. It was the only good thing I had to say about him. I carefully loosened the pillowcase and removed it. What more harm could he do to Michael?

  “Let the kid go.” Thomás didn’t move at the sight of the unmovable young man in the hospital bed, nor at the command I gave him.

  “Are you listening?” Hansen chimed in. “You’ve done enough damage.”

  “Do you know what these people can do?” said Thomás finally. His accent was difficult to place. Not Eastern European like the other kidnappers. That wasn’t a surprise, though. Yorov got the people they needed no matter where they came from. The south of Europe, maybe? His English was very good.

  “How do you know?” I asked, feeling my patience run ever shorter as he dragged this out.

  “I know,” Thomás began, unaffected by my tone. “Like I know you can indeed read thoughts, that your friend with the gun can do nothing, and that the doctor here should not be allowed among other human beings.”

  “You sense it?”

  He nodded. This information told me a lot. First of all, that he needed to be close to people to sense their abilities. If not, he would have known about Dr. Morris already. He must have met all his
victims beforehand by pure accident. But two abilities in one person? That was rare. No wonder Yorov had recruited him…or more likely, acquired him as a child.

  “Is it Yorov who’s ordered you to do this?” I asked.

  He gave a short chuckle at that but said nothing.

  I exhaled sharply and realized my fists were clenched. “Let these kids out of whatever prison you have trapped them in,” I told him, but he only shook his head.

  “The world is safer without them,” he added.

  “They have never hurt anyone,” Dr. Morris protested.

  “They will.”

  “For crying out loud,” I said. “You don’t know that. And anyway, if they do, we have ways of dealing with that ourselves.”

  “This way they won’t even make that first mistake,” Thomás argued, completely missing my warning. He might think he was doing the right thing. It certainly sounded like it, but he was no better than what he claimed his victims were.

  My patience had run out.

  I asked him one last time to free them. He refused.

  I set my eyes on Dr. Morris, who looked down at the floor first, but then nodded. She didn’t like this, either. But she knew what was demanded of us.

  “Give me a second,” she said and left the room.

  “Second for what?” Hansen asked. I didn’t answer him. Only looked around the room and saw the vases with flowers on a table by the window. I grabbed a bouquet of various lilies, daisies, and greenery and pulled them out of the white vase. Discarded them on the table where the water dripped down onto the floor. I stepped over to Thomás and simply clouted him over the ear, the porcelain breaking against his head as he grunted and fell to his knees.

  “What the hell?” Hansen exclaimed somewhere to my right.

  I didn’t care. I glanced at Michael who lay motionless, not even reacting to the noise. At least on the outside. No fucking way was I going to let him lay there like that if I could help it. I pushed any thought of Andrea out of the way. This guy wasn’t talking, but I might be able to help his three prisoners despite that. I hit him over the ear again, using my elbow this time. Thomás slumped over, trying to steady himself on his hands, broken porcelain cutting into his flesh. Small droplets of blood mixing with the water on the floor.

  Dr. Morris came back into the room as I grabbed hold of tawny-colored hair, controlling where Thomás could turn his head and see. Dr. Morris sat a large basin of water in front of him on the floor, carefully avoiding his gaze. Carefully avoiding mine as well.

  “Torturing me won’t help,” Thomás wheezed as he tried to regain some momentum.

  “I’m not going to torture you,” I said, dragging him the few feet to the basin, the slippery floor helping me as I got him into position. “I’m going to kill you,” I said, my voice level, the pure fact-based statement scaring me a little. Before he could respond, or think about it even, I forced his head into the water. You don’t need an ocean to drown someone, only the right incentive, a few inches of water and a well-placed knee on their back. He instantly fought against me, arms flailing and trying to get hold of me. I punched him in the kidney, hearing his muffled voice in surprise as the pain shocked him.

  “No,” I heard Hansen behind me.

  I shook my head, trying my best to ignore him.

  “Don’t do this,” he continued. I heard him step closer, knew that he was perfectly able to drag me off Thomás. Water splurged everywhere, but not enough of it to give the man under me air to breathe. I turned my head to Dr. Morris, silently imploring her for help. I had enough trouble holding one man down, and he was decidedly smaller than the one coming to interrupt me.

  “Stop, Detective,” she said as she grabbed his hand and at the same time the beautiful bouquet I had laid on the table.

  “Let her do her job,” she commanded as she held the bouquet out. It withered and rotted in front of him. The flowers crumbled and fell between her fingers to the floor, landing as dirt. “Let her do her job, so I, in return, can do mine.”

  The threat was clear. If she had to choose between Hansen and her three helpless patients…well, there wasn’t a choice.

  He remained where he was. I couldn’t see his face, but I could hear him. “Please don’t do this,” he said, barely audible over the thrashing man under my knee.

  Panic had set in now. I turned my head away from both the doctor and Hansen. There was no doubt in my mind. I didn’t think ahead. No what-ifs. That would only weaken my resolve. Yet a small part of me hoped I was right.

  Thomás’ body started convulsing, thrashing under me. No thought of escape now. Only his lungs screaming for air, using his whole body as a mouthpiece. I held as hard as I could, my only advantage being on top of him, pressing him down, every second weakening him.

  Then he stopped moving.

  His body forced water down his lungs.

  I didn’t let go, though. It could be a ruse.

  It felt like I held him there in silence for an eternity before Dr. Morris’ voice broke through.

  “Maggie?”

  I jerked a little, then nodded. With my free hand, I checked his pulse, finding that little place under the ear. There was no throbbing to feel. I let him go then, got up on my feet and stepped back. I realized I was shaking, but I turned to the bed as I noticed Dr. Morris going for the lifeless body of Thomás, getting his face up from the water.

  I stared at Michael, who in turn stared right past me, toward the door. My heart was pounding in my chest, overpowering any sound in the room. I gripped the railing on the hospital bed, trying to calm the incessant thudding in my ear. The smell of disinfectant almost made me gag a moment. And I didn’t dare look at Hansen. Could sense him standing there, but I kept my eyes on Michael.

  He stared straight ahead, eyes bland, and I thought I had seriously misjudged this. Thought that Thomás’ hold on his prisoners would be broken if he died. It had happened before. I knew very well that the doctor might not be able to bring Thomás back. It didn’t always work.

  And then…shaking and weak fingers found my hand.

  I gasped and looked down, seeing Michael’s hand trying to cling to mine. I drew breath then, making my lungs hurt a moment as I looked up and saw the kid meet my eyes. He was weak, and couldn’t speak, but it didn’t matter. He was moving.

  I heard what had to be a defibrillator behind me but didn’t turn to look. For Andrea’s sake, I hoped he would be brought back, but I kept my eyes on Michael. He managed a relieved smile.

  At least it had been worth it. I could only hope the same had happened to the rest, and God knew how many others out there. This had not been Thomás’ first time.

  I don’t know how long we stood there listening to Dr. Morris trying to resuscitate him. The loud pops of the portable defibrillator sent jolts through me every time. I both wanted him to wake up and to stay wherever he was.

  Still, as we finally heard the coughing and wheezing of the recently brought back, I sighed in a relief that took me by surprise. It wasn’t only because of Andrea, I realized.

  I turned then and saw Dr. Morris getting him into the recovery position before she leaned back on her heels, breathing heavily, eyes closed.

  “Michael,” I finally said. “Are you all right?”

  He nodded at first, then croaked out a “yes” that made me smile. I looked over at Hansen then. He was standing in silence at the foot of the bed. There was a sympathetic expression as he looked at Michael, which changed as his eyes met mine. He looked sad. It wiped the smile off my face. I knew bringing him along for this had been a bad idea. But this was how it was done with us. Would it have been better for these men to be trapped like that until they died? Which would likely have been long before they should have. I couldn’t even muster the anger I wanted to at the sight of those blue eyes and what was very nearly pity at the sight of me. I turned my attention to Michael again.

  “Good,” I told him. “Dr. Morris will look after you in a minute. You’re goin
g to be all right.”

  Dr. Morris didn’t come to his side, though. I turned to see if she needed help with something. She did. She lay on the floor, staring at the ceiling with blank eyes, her hair and white coat soaking up water from the floor.

  Thomás sat halfway next to her. He didn’t look good–pale, wet, and breathing hard and painfully. A rasping sound escaped him.

  Suddenly my heart was beating faster again, thundering away in my chest. I thought we’d had some time. The man had been dead, for God’s sake.

  He was staring past me, and I realized he was looking at Hansen. My head snapped in that direction, where I saw the detective looking back. His long frame then buckled under him and he fell hard to the floor, head flopping as he hit it.

  “Oh fucking shit,” I shouted as I realized what had happened. I ran over to Hansen, grabbed his head between my hands. His eyes were open, and I was in his line of vision, but it was as if he didn’t see me. His neck as lifeless as the rest of him. I gently let go of him.

  “They belong to me now,” Thomás said behind me. There was no glee in his voice. It was a simple statement of fact.

  “Then I’ll kill you again.”

  “How many times do you think I’ll come back?” he asked.

  “I only need you to die once,” I said as I ran a hand through Hansen’s hair. He might not agree, but this was not up for negotiation.