by Lucy Wild
“A single,” I said to the driver when I reached him.
“Where to?” he asked.
“Surprise me,” I replied, throwing a twenty at him and turning to climb the stairs after her.
NINE
JAKE
She was looking out of the window when I got to the top of the stairs. That suited me perfectly. I was about to grab her when the bus set off. Changing my plans, I walked past her and moved to the back, sitting in the middle of the back row with a perfect view down the aisle. If she moved, I’d see. Better not make a scene unless I had to.
If she turned and spotted me and made a run for it when we stopped, I could be on her in a few steps. I’d already clocked who else was on the upper deck. Nine people, none of them a threat though one caught my eye twice. He turned to look at me from the seat behind Isabel and he looked at me for a moment too long though I pretended I was staring into the middle distance so he didn’t spot me watching him.
A few minutes after we’d set off, I was watching him again because he’d shuffled across to the edge of the seat near the aisle. He leant forwards, his head on the back of the seat in front of him and then I knew what he was doing before he did it. I let him though, I didn’t want to make a scene while we were moving, better to wait until we stopped.
Without his head coming up, his left hand reached along the edge of the seat and found her handbag which was on the corner of her seat as she continued to stare out of the window. He was good but he wasn’t that good. He was doing it too slowly, all she had to do was turn and she’d see him.
If it had been me, I’d have the job done by now but he was still dipping his hand into the bag. When he finally brought her purse out, he moved faster, jamming it into his coat pocket before leaning back on his seat and acting for all the world as if he was asleep.
The bus moved out of the village and I caught sight of what she was watching for outside. We passed by the campsite I’d seen in the postcard. Only when we’d rolled past did she turn away from the window, pulling the handbag onto her lap and slumping slightly in her seat. Look down, I told her silently, look down and notice.
She didn’t and when we reached the first stop forty minutes later, she was oblivious to the thief walking past her with her purse in his pocket. I was torn. Did I stick with her or get her purse back? The job meant I should stay with her but after last night I felt a vague sense of something, like I wanted to protect her, though I still had no real idea why.
Perhaps it was just because she was so innocent and in my line of work, no one was innocent. It didn’t square with the other thoughts I kept having about her though, thoughts that I’d always switched off while at work before.
“Five minutes,” the driver called out. “Five minute stop. Toilet stop only.”
Five minutes was long enough. I got to my feet and followed the thief down the stairs, making sure I didn’t look back at her in case she recognised me. I got off the bus and found myself in a grubby car park. The thief was walking towards a battered old Cortina in the corner and I picked up the pace, not wanting him to drive off before I reached him.
He was just climbing into the driver’s seat when I got to the car. “What do you want?” he asked as I grabbed the door and leant down towards him.
“I’m curious,” I replied, taking the keys from the ignition. “See how fast I did that?”
“Give me my keys back!”
“You were too slow,” I said, spinning the keyring on my finger. “Like on the bus when you took that purse.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, lunging for the keys.
I shoved him back in his seat, holding him in place with a grip just tight enough to press into the flesh of his shoulder. “Give me the purse and I’ll give you your keys back.”
“Fuck you, you’re mental,” he said, his arms flailing towards me again.
“Maybe I am,” I replied. “But a deal’s a deal. The purse.”
“I haven’t got any fucking purse.”
“If I reach into your pocket now, I won’t find anything that shouldn’t be there?”
“Fuck off, get your hands off me.”
I leant past him, sliding my hand into his coat pocket and bringing her purse out. “Well, would you look at that? What a surprise.”
I threw the keys at him. “Go on, off you go.”
“Give me my purse back.”
“You either leave now or I smash your face into that steering wheel so hard, you might never wake up.
“You’re a psycho,” he said, gunning the engine and racing away.
I turned round in time to see the bus pulling out of the car park. “No!” I called out, running after it as it drove off leaving me alone. I leant back against a wall behind me and swore loudly. It would be a long walk back to my car.
“Why are you following me?”
I spun round at the sound of the voice, finding Isabel stood with her arms folded behind me. “You’re on the bus,” I said in shock.
“Answer my question. Why are you following me?”
“Why did you tie my shoelaces together?”
She shrugged. “I thought it’d be funny. Did you not think so?”
“No, no I didn’t.”
“Why are you following me?”
“Listen, Isabel. It’s time for you to go home.”
“Oh, God. Did my father send you after me?”
I nodded.
“Hang on, you’re supposed to take me home?”
“Yes.”
“How are you doing that then? Piggyback?”
“I’ll call for a car.”
“Good luck getting a signal round here.”
I dug my phone out and realised she was right. “Shit.” I should have kept the thief’s car.
She laughed, a high happy laugh that echoed around the car park. “You’re not great at this, are you?”
“It’s not what I normally do.”
“What is it you normally do, apart from take unconscious girls to your hotel room?”
“I work for Tony Matteo.”
“So he sent you then.”
“Yes.”
“And I’ve got to go home with you.”
“Yes.”
“And if I say no?”
“I’m to take you anyway.”
“By force?” She looked frightened as she said it, as if the reality of the situation was just starting to hit her. I liked seeing her look frightened. Stop it, I told myself.
“I’m sure it won’t come to that. Look, there’s a cafe over there. Let’s sit down and talk about it, shall we?”
TEN
ISABEL
“Why don’t you want to go home?”
I looked up at him when he asked that. I’d been staring at my coffee for so long it was ice cold when I took a sip. “It’s a long story.”
It wasn’t that long a story but I didn’t know how much he’d been told. I didn’t know anything about him, not really. He’d appeared in the bar, the most infuriating man I’d ever met. Then I’d woken up to find myself in a hotel bedroom, the blandly anonymous paintings on the wall a dead giveaway as to my location.
I shot upright and was about to cry out when I saw him in the corner of the room. He looked as if he was staring at me, sat rigidly upright with his arms folded across his chest. But looking closer, I realised his eyes were closed.
He hadn’t touched me. I knew that. He could have done and I wouldn’t have been able to stop him. But all he’d done was take my shoes off and tuck me into bed. Then he’d just sat there and fallen asleep.
I was as quiet as I could be, tiptoeing out of bed and collecting my boots. I had no idea how I’d ended up in that bed but I had no intention of staying. My head throbbed painfully as I crossed the room and I was about to open the door to the corridor when a childish impulse struck me.
I told myself that I was tying his shoelaces together to slow him down if he came after me. That was partiall
y true but I also thought it was a pretty funny thing to do to the big mysterious man in black, able to take on three men at once but unable to defend his own shoes.
A tiny whispering part of me wanted him to be cross, wanted him to spank me for teasing him like this. I stamped on that whisper. It wouldn’t help me to have anything to do with a brute like that.
I climbed onto the first bus I saw, wanting only to get away, it didn’t matter where. I hadn’t seen him climb on, so I assumed he was still fast asleep in the hotel. But when he’d walked past me out of nowhere and headed down the stairs, there was no mistaking that gait of his, his strong profile standing out amongst the other passengers, the way he had to duck slightly to stop his head from banging on the roof as he passed.
I followed him off the bus and found him talking to someone in a car, someone who seemed in a hurry to leave. Why did I follow him? Why not just stay on the bus and carry on my way? I can’t really answer that one. Maybe the whispering voice was winning.
Something told me to follow him, so I did. That’s all there was to it. Right or wrong, I ended up sat opposite him in Maggie’s Cafe, a cold coffee in front of me and him sat opposite, the chair creaking under the sheer bulk of him.
“I have to take you back,” he said, sounding as if he was almost sorry that was the case. “You do understand that, don’t you?”
“Please,” I replied. “I could have left you here, I could have carried on but I didn’t.”
“I’d have found you.”
His arrogance was staggering. There was no self doubt in his voice. He was simply stating a fact.
“I don’t think you’ll take me back.”
He was silent for a long time after I said that. I looked down at my coffee, turning the cup in my hands, thinking about what I was doing. Could I trust this man? I didn’t know but I knew that if he chose to pick me up and carry me out of the cafe, drag me kicking and screaming back to my father, there wasn’t a huge amount I was going to be able to do about it.
“Why don’t you want to go home?” he asked and for the first time his voice sounded softer, the rough edge slightly smoothed. He sounded almost capable of emotion.
“Have a look at these,” I said, reaching into my pocket and pulling out the letters. I slid them over the table and waited while he read through them. It felt strange sharing them with someone but I hoped they’d make him see I was a real person, not just a parcel to be delivered. “What do you think?”
“I think they’re letters,” he replied, sliding them back across to me.
“I love the boy who wrote those letters. Well, the man now.”
“So?”
“So that’s what love is, in those letters. Love isn’t marrying the man your father chose for you. Love is marrying the man you want to.”
“Is that,” - he tapped the letters with his finger - “the man you want to marry?”
“I don’t know, I just think I need to find out.”
“You’re going to see him, aren’t you?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess, maybe.”
“I’ve got to take you back.”
“Can’t you just pretend you didn’t find me?”
He shook his head. “Afraid not.”
“Then we’re done here.”
I got up and walked out of the cafe without looking back. I was an idiot for listening to my gut. I should have stayed on the bus, I should have known better than to try and reason with hired muscle. He didn’t know what love was. He probably didn’t know what an emotion was. He was a cold, hard, brute.
He’d looked at the letters that contained every nuance of young love and lost love when we’d parted and he hadn’t reacted, he hadn’t cared. He just cared about getting paid for returning me to my father and I was a bloody fool for getting off the bus. Well, it wasn’t a mistake I was going to make twice.
I crossed the road to the bus station and pushed open the door to the traffic office. Looking up at the screen above the glass fronted booth, I scanned the destinations. Gladwell, that was just a few miles from where Ben lived. Perfect. The letters hadn’t mentioned the address he was moving away to, I only found that out much later. There was no way they’d find me there.
I looked around to make sure he hadn’t followed me out of the cafe before approaching the bored looking figure on the other side of the glass. “Single to Gladwell please,” I said, reaching into my handbag.
With a frown, I glanced downwards, unable to find my purse. Swearing quietly, I began rummaging for it, beginning to panic.
“Looking for this?” a voice said behind me and I turned to find the brute standing there, holding my purse out towards me.
ELEVEN
JAKE
She looked furious with me when I gave her the purse. “You stole it,” she said, snatching it from me.
“If you say so.”
Her expression changed from anger to confusion. “Didn’t you?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Then why have you got it?”
“I haven’t. You have.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Well, not everyone is as alert as I am.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means if you paid more attention to your surroundings, people wouldn’t be able to dip their hand in your bag and steal your things while you stare out of a bus window without a care in the world.”
“I do pay attention. Stop pretending you know me. You don’t know me.”
“I know that you’re not capable of coping in the real world. Take your father’s cards away and you wouldn’t have a clue what to do.”
“I’d get a job.”
“Really?”
“I could get a job.” She turned to face the man behind the ticket booth window. “You’d give me a job, wouldn’t you?”
“Course I would,” he replied.
I grabbed hold of her, dragging her outside. There was a wooden bench next to the travel office and I shoved her down onto it. “Stay there!” I snapped, raising my voice just enough to see fear flash across her eyes. “You’ve given me enough trouble. I’m taking you home.”
“Why are we even talking about it? You don’t want to take me, you’d have done it already and besides I can see it in your eyes.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, feeling unnerved by the question. Of course I knew about Kingsley, as much a wet blanket as his father was a cold hearted villain. Crueller in his own way, no match for someone as innocent as her.
“He hits his girlfriends,” she said quietly, looking up at me with puppy dog eyes so wide, she was almost a cartoon version of herself. “I know what kind of man he is and I will not marry him.”
“I can protect you,” I said, sitting next to her on the bench. “Even after you’re married.”
“Who made you the Godfather all of a sudden? I don’t need your help, I’m doing just fine on my own.”
“So you won’t come with me voluntarily?”
“Not until I’ve seen Ben. If he won’t have me, I’ll marry Kingsley. How does that sound?”
I thought for a minute before answering. “Listen, how about we make a deal?”
“What kind of deal?” she asked, her eyes narrowing suspiciously.
“I’ll go with you to see him.”
“See who?”
“The guy who wrote those letters.”
“Ben? But why would you agree to that?”
“Because I’d rather you want to come back, it’s easier than dragging you back. Matteo doesn’t want you damaged.”
“What am I, a Faberge egg?”
“Would you rather we go home now?”
“No, God, no.”
“Well then let’s get some tickets shall we?”
I watched her digging out her card. It didn’t matter that her father would see the purchase, he wouldn’t know where she was travelling to, not from a credit card statement.
&n
bsp; Why was I doing this? This wasn’t me, this wasn’t who I was. I didn’t make deals with people, I took what I wanted, what I needed, then I was gone. But something was different about her, something I couldn’t put my finger on.
Part of it was her vulnerability. She genuinely seemed lost in the world, unable to look after herself without help. She stood buying the tickets with her shell of cockiness intact but I could tell it was all for show. I could see straight through it to the little girl she was inside.
It would break her to marry into the Matteo family. She’d get money, sure, power too, maybe. But not help, not protection, not comfort, not the things she so clearly needed. The little girl would get crushed in that world and she’d become as cold as them, as empty hearted as me. No one deserved that.
You want to fuck her too, I thought, doing my best to ignore that fact. It didn’t help me think straight and I needed to think straight.
I thought instead about the relationship between her and her father. That was one thing that was clear no matter how clouded my thoughts were. I’d always been good at seeing through people to who they really were. She yearned to be close to her father but something had happened to drive them apart and now she hated him. I couldn’t put my finger on what it was but it probably involved Tony Matteo.
She loved the boy in the letters, that was obvious too. The words and emotions poured off the page. If I wasn’t so dead inside, I’d have felt something when I read them. Maybe her father had driven them apart, maybe that was why she resented him so much. Combine that with finding out she was supposed to marry a cruel drip of a man and it was no wonder she’d run. She couldn’t hide for shit though, that much was obvious. She’d never had to hide in her life and she had no idea how to do it.