A Chance Encounter

by Rae Shaw

  ‘Armed police! Put your hands where I can see them.’

  Julianna's eyes sprung open. Instead of walking towards the car, the policeman had ducked behind his vehicle. He held in his hands an automatic gun and wore a bullet proof jacket and helmet. Drawing up behind the BMW was another police car, blocking the road. The occupants scrambled to surround her car. One of the guns she had taken lay on the passenger seat, the other had tumbled into the footwell.

  More demands for her to comply, and they weren't friendly shouts. The police officers were aggressive and jittery. The one in front was aiming his weapon directly at her head. She had just manufactured a high-speed chase – hardly the actions of a feeble victim. They thought she was part of the gang.

  ‘Oh dear,’ she muttered. Her tense hands ached so much they had glued themselves to the steering wheel.

  Relief was replaced with a peculiar sense of disappointment. She turned to apologise to the women. She had let them down.

  42

  Mark

  SATURDAY 6 a.m.

  Mark crashed out on a sofa in the lobby of the top floor, the same spot where a few months ago he had waited with Neil. He lay on his back, stretched out with the crook of one arm blanketing his eyes. Jackson's office door was wide open. There was no news about Julianna. Mark was overhearing one half of Jackson’s phone conversation with a member of his security team. What puzzled Jackson was the same thing that Mark wanted answering – who had betrayed her?

  ‘Tess, have you compiled the list?’ Jackson asked. ‘Who’s at the top of the pile?’

  Jackson said something; Mark thought he heard, ‘Ex-coppers.’

  The security team was an amalgamation of vetted ex-coppers, army veterans and career security experts. If one of them had shafted his girlfriend, he hoped Jackson would throw them behind bars, preferably after he had used the bastard as a punchbag. Quietly, and out of sight, Jackson was on the warpath, hunting for his traitor, and Tess was his insider, working to find out who had exposed Julianna.

  One call ended, then another began. Jackson spoke softly to Hettie, reassuring his fraught wife. Mark failed to hear the exact words, only the undulation of his pacifying voice. As for Ellen, she was safe, according to Derek's brother, whom Jackson had contacted around breakfast time.

  Jackson joined Mark in the lobby, his low shoulders burdened by unproductive authority. ‘Diana asked me once why I don’t have a comfortable seating area in my office so that my meetings are in more relaxed environment.’

  ‘And why don’t you?’ Mark asked from under his arm; he appreciated Jackson's efforts in distracting him, but they weren't working. He hid his eyes because the light blinded him. He had been sick twice in the toilet while Jackson was downstairs giving his team words of encouragement as a good boss should. Mark despised his own weaknesses. While Julianna suffered with fear, he had succumbed to a migraine.

  ‘Snug seats?’ Jackson laughed. ‘Hard chairs keep my meetings short and on agenda. Nobody lingers with small talk when their arses are planted on rocks. Unfortunately,’ Jackson sighed, lying back on the other sofa, ‘it doesn’t make for a pleasant waiting room.’

  The two men fell silent again until a phone rang. Jackson's office line.

  Mark reached the phone first. Chris Moran’s mobile number was on caller display. Jackson let him pick it up.

  Mark licked his dry lips and spoke into the microphone. ‘Chris—’

  ‘Mark!’

  ‘Julianna!’ Mark crumpled into a nearby seat while Jackson, his head bowed over the table, leaned on his white knuckles.

  ‘I’m okay.’ Julianna choked back a sob.

  ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘No. Nothing serious.’ She laughed a nervous titter. ‘I almost got shot by the good guys, but Chris turned up like the cavalry and just in time to vouch for me. He wants me to go to hospital for a check-up.’

  Mark wanted to hold her, see for himself that she was intact and untouched, but she was still miles away from him. ‘You should go.’

  ‘I want to be with you—’

  Jackson interjected. ‘Julianna, Chris will take you to the hospital where Sophia is. She will want to see you too. Mark and I can meet you there.’

  ‘Sophia?’ Julianna's voice crackled on the line. ‘Is she okay?’

  ‘Broken arm and a bump on her head. She’s due to be released this morning.’

  ‘Honey, go. I’ll be there to meet you,’ Mark said. The relief felt palpable, almost as unbearable as fear. Adrenaline worked its magic in many ways. ‘I’m... I can’t...’

  ‘I know, Mark, me, too.’ She started to cry. He had never heard her cry before. It ripped into his chest and crushed his heart.

  ‘She’s fine,’ Chris's voice boomed in comparison to her weak one. ‘Shock. I’ll look after her.’

  ‘We’ll see you at the hospital. Thanks, Chris.’ Jackson punched the call end button.

  The drive to the hospital in the south of London was eternal. Every street elongated to the horizon and beyond. The traffic lights magically turned red every time they approached a junction, and nobody seemed to want to yield to let them pass. It was the final torture knowing she was waiting for him. Jackson followed in another car, giving Mark the privacy he needed to re-assemble his battered emotions. His chauffeur was appropriately silent.

  In the emergency room cubicle, he rained kisses down on Julianna’s pale face and she flopped against his chest until she had had enough of his affections and gently cuffed his arm.

  ‘I was so afraid to think of you in case I went mad.’ She plucked a loose thread off his t-shirt. Her fingernails were dirty, blackened with grime and a few were chipped or torn. She had fought or clawed at something. He smelt diesel, old tobacco and antiseptic wipes, things that were strangers to her. Tangled hair snaked around her face, but she couldn’t hide the injuries: a vivid bruise on her cheekbone, another discolouration on her chin and a scratch above her eyebrow. Given the depths of the hollow shadows beneath her eyes, she had to be exhausted.

  ‘I want to see Sophia,’ she said, impatiently.

  He gently kissed her forehead. Mark bet that for a brief while, she thought she had killed her friend and dreaded coming back to face Luke and Jackson.

  ‘Soon,’ he said, without letting her go.

  43

  Julianna

  SATURDAY 8 a.m.

  Julianna sipped on a glass of water and swallowed the painkillers the nurse had left.

  Jackson appeared from behind the privacy curtain. ‘You’re one remarkable person, Julianna. I like to employ the best.’

  Jackson was a different man that Saturday morning. Cautious in his mannerisms, his lips twitched as he shook her hand, then, changing his mind, he leaned over to kiss her unblemished cheek. She wasn't sure if she liked this version of him: tired, somewhat awkward, and possibly frustrated. He should be elated. She had probably killed Zustaller, Jackson's bitter foe, and the gang was in turmoil. Yet, he was anxious. Her kidnap had happened on a quiet London street and if she was in Jackson's shoes, she would want to know how that happened. She also owned him an explanation about Sophia.

  ‘I’m not going to ask forgiveness for what I did to Sophia. It was a calculation I took at the time based on what I knew these guys are capable of doing. After what they did in the cellar of that farmhouse, I definitely made the right decision.’

  Mark stiffened next to her. ‘Jules, you said—’

  ‘I wasn't touched,’ she said, swiftly. ‘I was, how should I say, inspected. If Sophia had been taken with me...’ She grimaced and a shiver cascaded along her spine. Mark blanched into an even paler version of himself. With a thicket of stubble on his chin and eyes sunken into troughs, he looked dreadful. She had grown into her bruises since she had been locked in the cellar but hadn’t lost the icy shivers. She clasped her grubby hands into a ball and hid the trembling.

  ‘Tell me, are the other two okay?’ she asked.

  Jackson answered. ‘Kind of. The
doctors have sedated the younger one. She's an addict and needs help. I think she's a student and we're cross checking the missing list to see if she's on it. The Irish woman is singing loudly about her experiences. She’d been kept in a house in London for some time. A long-term sex worker, she was forced into a brothel. They were planning on shifting her abroad. The other girl joined her in the cellar a few days ago. Escaping on your own was a major achievement, Julianna, but to successfully bring two other captives with you is, as I said, remarkable.’

  She didn't want praise; she wanted answers. ‘There was a gunfight. I'm not sure if it was anything to do with me.’

  ‘I'll tell you after your X-ray. Then let's go see Sophia and I'll explain. She wants to hear about your daring escape. We all do.’ Jackson drew the curtain back.

  ‘My kidnapper—’ She reached out and caught his sleeve.

  ‘I'm working on it,’ he said. ‘Chris is about to update me on things.’

  After the X-ray, the verdict was given on Julianna’s injuries: a mild concussion and bruising. She was discharged. Free to leave the emergency room, she and Mark went to see Sophia in her private room. Sophia was waiting for her discharge papers. Luke hadn't left her side since her mother had been sent home to sleep. Jackson was there, too, sitting in the corner.

  The two women hugged until Sophia winced. Julianna perched on the bed.

  ‘I know you think you probably took a risk in the car,’ Sophia whispered into Julianna’s ear. ‘But thank you for pushing me out. I froze and—’

  ‘It’s okay. I made a snap decision and I don’t regret it,’ Julianna said firmly.

  She described in a halting voice her escape and car chase. Her audience listened attentively as she pieced the fragments together. ‘So, I drove batshit crazy, basically. Frankly, I won't complain about driving Hettie around boring London streets ever again.’

  ‘Hettie is very lucky.’ Sophia’s left arm was in a cast from elbow to knuckles and a smattering of abrasions dotted one side of her wan face. There weren't any stitches visible, but according to Luke, she had grazed her back badly. Her dopey eyes had brightened when Mark and Julianna arrived, and she seemed content to lie on her side and listen.

  Jackson cleared his throat. ‘I've spoken to Chris, who's been updated by the police. They’re still trying to piece it all together; the information uncovered is a gold mine. The location of the farmhouse used to hold Julianna captive was on the GPS of the BMW. You drove all over the place trying to escape your pursuers, but you ended up a few miles away from where you started in that derelict building; one very similar to the one Chris Moran arrived at earlier in the morning.’

  ‘Two farmhouses.’ Julianna's mouth formed an ‘O’ as she thought it through. ‘One to keep the girls, the other for the gang to hole up in.’

  ‘Exactly. The hideout where the officer was killed was unknown to the police; they doubt their man had been there before; he would have informed them somehow. It's likely he was taken there by force. However, the gang didn’t suspect him of being an undercover policeman, they thought he was a spy from another gang.’

  ‘Muscling in on their operations?’

  ‘Something like that. Zustaller probably has many hideouts across Europe. Evidence collected so far indicates there are another three in the south east around London. Raids are ongoing at the moment. Your abduction coincided with this other gang attempting to snatch the girls from Zustaller’s farmhouse. He probably got word of it while torturing that poor bloke. In the ensuing panic, he shot him dead and hurried to the farmhouse where you were being held. By then the shoot-out had happened, killing gang members on both sides. Four bodies were found, including one that fits the description of one of the abductors.’

  Baseball cap man. She knew he was dead. The number of shots fired had been significant, but she hadn't realised there were so many killed. She had only seen the man she had injured and Zustaller finished off.

  ‘So,’ she said, ‘he comes back and finds me leaving, gives chase until they—’

  ‘Crash into a riverbank and tree,’ Jackson said. He fished a piece of paper out of his pocket. ‘Confirmation of identification of the two bodies in the Audi will take time. The man you beat up in Dublin is Roman Stazki and the other fits the vague descriptions we have of Freddie Zustaller. Let’s hope it is him.’

  ‘It is. He made personal references to Mark. To Bill. Even Ellen. It was a vendetta against Mark's family.’

  ‘Zustaller bled to death. A branch had gone straight through him. He deserved worse,’ Jackson said coldly.

  Luke, whose quiet manner often left him to one side of the conversation, stirred. ‘How did the police end up at the wrong farmhouse?’ he asked.

  ‘Chris said her handbag was there with the tracker inside. Why it was at that farmhouse isn't clear. What we do know is Zustaller’s empire is crumbling. The rivals elbowing in, the police investigations, my foundation's work. He's too thinly spread and struggling to move the girls.’

  Julianna spoke. ‘Then he got reckless with a vendetta against two people who ruined a routine abduction in Dublin.’ She glanced at Mark. ‘Ellen wasn't a target this time.’

  ‘I think Stazki initiated this act of revenge not Zustaller,’ said Jackson. ‘I can't see him being that reckless. I expect he found out what Stazki was up to and turned up in person to see you out of curiosity. They gave up on Mark. I’d put too tight a ring about him. Zustaller may be gone, but there are always others.’ His quiet voice tapered into nothing, then his eyes lit up as he remembered something. ‘As for your handbag.’ He retrieved it from a plain carrier bag by his chair. ‘Chris assumed you'd like it back.’

  ‘Honey, the all-important handbag.’ Mark grinned and passed it over to Julianna.

  She unzipped a compartment. She stared at the contents for a few seconds before bursting into laughter, the shaky, tired laugh of somebody who had found the answer to a puzzle.

  The smile dropped off Mark’s face. ‘What?’

  ‘I had to activate my tracker somehow,’ she explained. ‘They had my handbag and I needed access to it. I took a gamble. I hoped they'd be squeamish about handling sanitary stuff. I told them my period had started, and I needed the tampon in my bag. So they brought it to me and I activated the beacon while fishing out the tampon.’

  ‘Clever,’ Mark said. ‘What’s the joke?’

  ‘I only had the one.’ Julianna delved into her handbag and held up a handful of tampons in their wrappers. ‘They took it to the other farmhouse to fill it with supplies for me. All those nightmarish threats and they took the time to fetch me tampons.’ She laughed, but it wasn't a joyful laughter. She wiped a tear from her face. She couldn't stop crying. Mark held her close.

  Jackson leaned forward and touched Julianna’s arm. ‘I know you think if the handbag hadn’t moved, the police would have come to the right farmhouse and the girl might not have been assaulted. But you know they wouldn’t have got there in time. ‘

  ‘I had to listen—’

  ‘Please, Julianna, don’t go there,’ Mark said gravely, and she heeded his interruption – there was no point in replaying things over and over in her head, it would drive her crazy.

  Jackson continued. ‘Though it delayed your rescue and put you at risk in the shoot-out, the police were able to locate the second farmhouse with your tracker. Not only have the police being able to recover the body of their colleague, and his body would have disappeared without trace, they've found a mountain of information, data, maps, details of routes and most importantly a client list. In the coming days many police forces across Europe will be kept very busy ripping apart the dregs of Zustaller’s network.’

  ‘All for a pile of tampons.’ Luke chuckled. ‘I’d love to present this case in court.’

  The nurse entered the room and paused in bemusement as laughter greeted her arrival.

  ~ * ~

  The small convoy of cars pulled up outside Fasleigh House. Mark and Julianna, along with Lu
ke and Sophia, would have preferred to be in their own homes, but Jackson, in an enigmatic and quite fierce fashion, told them they were to rest at his house until he received the all clear from his security team that none of the remnants of Zustaller’s gang were after them. Julianna heard the executive bite in his voice. It still amazed her that he had the ability to snap orders at others and not lose their respect.

  Hettie greeted her husband on the doorstep. Jackson lifted her off her feet with his embrace. Julianna looked away, somewhat embarrassed by the intimacy. They were her employers, a state of affairs she couldn't escape.

  ‘Lunch is laid out; you must be very hungry.’ Hettie swept them into the house with her busy arms. ‘The kids are waiting for you in the snug.’

  Hettie hugged Julianna with an overt display, almost squeezing the breath out of her. ‘Oh, my dear. Thank heavens you're safe.’

  She kissed Mark, too.

  Julianna reclaimed him, wove her fingers through his and followed him into the house.

  44

  Mark

  SATURDAY AFTERNOON

  Mark, together with Julianna, Luke, Sophia and Jackson, ate in the kitchen. The spread was a cold buffet and easy food for queasy stomachs. Mark, unsettled by exhaustion, picked at his. Having finished playing hostess, Hettie slipped out of the room and joined the children.

  Jackson piled the food high on his plate. ‘I am so hungry.’ He quickly reduced the mound while the others toyed with theirs.

  ‘Why are we here, Jackson?’ Luke asked. ‘Something else is going on.’

  ‘Can’t hide a thing from you, can I?’ Jackson winked.

  ‘You were rather adamant we should remain behind your fences, so don’t be coy.’ Luke sharpened his tone.