by Elise Noble
The window. It had to be the window. There was no other way out, but fortunately, I’d had plenty of experience at jumping out of buildings.
In keeping with the rest of the house, my escape route had been built about a hundred years ago and not updated since. No fancy double glazing here. Five generations had painted over the old sash frame in thick yellowed gloss, and the damn thing was stuck shut.
On any other occasion, I’d have thrown the chair through the window, but the door handle rattled behind me as my pursuer caught up. No, the chair was otherwise engaged.
Her voice floated through the door, taunting, playful almost. “Nowhere to hide, you little bitch.”
Nerves got the better of me. “Leave me alone! I haven’t done anything.”
Humourless laughter came, muffled by the wood, and then the door shook in its frame as she threw herself against it. At least in the nineteen-whatevers, they’d built houses to last. I hoped she broke her damn shoulder.
But the door jolted again, and fear raced through me. I hated that feeling, one I’d felt too many times on the streets over the last few years. At least in London, there was a chance somebody would hear me scream. Out here in the sticks, I only had Lenny and a few semi-conscious partygoers for company, and in Lenny’s present state, he wouldn’t be playing the hero.
There was nothing else for it—I’d have to go out the window. While the woman pounded on the door, I drew one foot back and aimed a sharp kick. Then another, and another. First the glass shattered, then the wooden frame gave way and tumbled fifteen feet to the ground outside. I didn’t hesitate. I couldn’t, because as I leapt from the window, tucking and rolling on impact, the bedroom door gave way and the woman came after me.
A quick glance behind showed blood streaming down her face, but that didn’t slow her down. She was the bloody Terminator in tight jeans and a black leather jacket. And me? Normally when I practised parkour, I felt like a character in a computer game—which is to say kind of invincible but always on the verge of using up a life—but now? I moved with all the grace of a Teletubby.
By the time I realised she was jumping after me, I’d lost precious seconds, and she’d halved the distance between us. Worse, by turning to look back, I missed the gnarled old tree root sticking out of the leaves in front of me, hooked my foot under it, and went flying. I felt as well as heard the knee tear out of my jeans—my only pair of jeans—taking a good chunk of skin with it. But panic overrode the pain, and I kept running.
So did she. Her footsteps sounded louder than the rush of blood in my ears as I headed for a tumbledown barn fifty yards from the house. When did it last get used for animals? Not recently, that was for sure. The giant doors hung askew on the hinges, gaping and dark like a shortcut to the underworld. Or a trap. Instead of running inside, I headed to the right, only to be faced with an impenetrable barrier of brambles. Left with no choice, I switched direction to the back of the barn, where a rickety wooden staircase led up to a hayloft. Was she following? Yes. Good. If I could just get ahead of her, I could run through the barn, jump down to the ground floor, and leg it out of the front doors while she hopefully impaled herself on a piece of rusty farm machinery. Maybe she deserved it, maybe she didn’t—all I knew was that I’d never been chased through a farmyard by a freak-slash-supermodel before, and if I didn’t lose her soon, I’d have more than a cut knee to worry about.
I feared the half-rotten steps might give way beneath me as I bolted up them, but I made it through the small door at the top with the bitch hot on my heels. The cavernous space was filled with a delightful stench of dead rat—a smell I was all too familiar with from some of the places I’d lived back in London.
Why me?
It wasn’t as if I went out looking for trouble, despite what my former foster parents might have said. Trouble just had an uncanny knack of finding yours truly. Like the time I crawled into a warehouse to sleep and accidentally found myself in the middle of a drugs bust, or that night when starry-eyed me joined an up-and-coming pop star for drinks and came to getting raped in the back of his limo. With that in mind, on a scale of zero to the pinnacle of my fucked-up life, today’s episode rated as a mere blip.
A blip getting closer with every step.
I kicked over a pile of wood, booby-trapping the way to a narrow ladder before I shinned down it. Fuck, ouch, that hurt my damn toe. The open doors gaped ahead of me, giving me hope, and I sucked in a ragged breath as I stumbled forward. Let me out. With a bunch of spiders and a lunatic as my witnesses, I was never gonna nick a car again. I stretched for the line where darkness became daylight, and just as I made it outside, the clatter of metal reached my ears, followed by the sweet sound of cursing. Maybe somebody up there was smiling down on me today after all?
That was the last thought I had before a pair of arms closed around me—a man’s this time—forcing me down, down, down to the ground. The newcomer was careful not to make the same mistake as the blonde bitch with regard to requiring facial reconstruction because he knelt on my back, pinning me against the damp earth so I couldn’t move.
I turned my head to the side, wincing at the pain in my neck, and even though I couldn’t look up more than a few inches, I felt her glaring down at me. She shifted, and a shadow fell across my face. I waited for her to say something, but it was the man who spoke.
“I should be mad, but it’s not every day I get to watch Action Woman versus GI Jodie.” His American accent was a surprise, but the tightness in his voice wasn’t.
“Who are you?” I asked, but it came out as a mumble because my face was still smushed into what might have once been a lawn but was now mostly mud.
“She broke my fucking nose,” the woman snapped.
“Shit. We should—”
His grip loosened slightly, and I tried to wriggle free, but I soon regretted it when the woman bent to twist my arm behind my back. I bit my tongue to stop a yelp from escaping. No way was I giving that bitch the satisfaction of knowing she’d hurt me. Who the hell was she? And more importantly, how was I going to get away?
“Keep her still. I’ll be back in a sec.”
Drops of blood splattered onto the ground beside my face as she straightened, and a wretched fear began to claw its way through my guts. The last time I’d been trapped like this, a man had torn me to pieces, both physically and mentally. The panic welled up, threatening to overflow, and I made one last-ditch effort to throw my captor off, but this time he was ready. He held me in place until the woman came back with a pair of handcuffs and snapped them around my wrists.
Wait, handcuffs? Were they cops? For a moment, the crushing weight lifted, and the prospect of being arrested had never felt so good. How much trouble would I be in for stealing a car? It wasn’t as if I’d damaged it, so maybe I’d get off with community service if I apologised? Judges liked offenders to show remorse, or so I’d heard.
Then I realised no one had read me my rights, and when the woman began duct-taping my legs together, the overwhelming sense of dread came rushing back. Even if I could scream, nobody would hear me. Nobody conscious, anyway. Where was Lenny? What about his friends?
Part of me wanted him to rush in to save me like a white knight, but deep down, I knew he was incapable. He could barely walk straight on a good day, and this pair didn’t mess around. Better for him to stay hidden, then raise the alarm. If he even realised I was in trouble, that was.
“Wh-what do you want?” I managed to choke out. My mouth was full of gritty mud, and my stomach threatened to heave.
“We’ll ask the questions,” the woman said. “Let’s start with your employer. Who do you work for?”
Should I tell them? My job at Harlequin’s wasn’t exactly a secret—my arse was on their website home page—but why did they want to know? My boss had the odd dodgy dealing, but he’d given me a job when nobody else would, and I didn’t want to cause him any problems.
“Fuck you,” I mumbled.
I half expected a k
ick in the ribs, but what came was silence. Silence broken only by the quiet purr of an engine followed by the crunch of gravel. Another visitor?
“Who the hell is that?” the man muttered. “Are we expecting anyone?”
“Nope. I’ll wait here with our friend while you find out who it is.”
“Me?”
“Dude, I look like I’ve been playing in a slaughterhouse. Take my knife and your charming personality and get rid of them.”
“I brought my own knife.”
“Then what are you waiting for?”
The woman hauled me upright, careful to keep to the side of me this time. She’d taped my knees rather than my ankles, and she propelled me forward as I took little shuffle-hop-steps towards the barn. Now I got a better look at her. I’d done a good job on her nose if I said so myself, between the wonky, swollen bridge and the blood splattered across her face and clothes. She would have been pretty otherwise. Beautiful, even. And also…she was vaguely familiar. Ah, fuck. She was the woman I’d seen getting out of the sports car at Tesco. Up close, the air of toughness was all too evident, hardness combined with sharp edges, and being honest, I couldn’t see myself getting the jump on her again. I was surprised I’d managed it once.
She produced more handcuffs from somewhere—how many pairs did she have?—and secured me to a solid-looking metal bracket inside the old building. A second later, she slapped a strip of duct tape over my mouth.
“Shh.”
Like I had a choice.
Something glinted in her hand, and as she stepped towards the barn door again, I realised it was the aforementioned knife. Bloody hell. Who was this psycho? And what did she have planned for whoever was outside?
CHAPTER 9 - BETHANY
“MAM, I AM not sure this is a good idea. What if the thief is dangerous?”
Rafiq was a worrywart. He’d spent the whole trip making dire predictions about my fate, which I found kind of ironic considering the way he drove.
“It’ll be fine.” I tried to sound more confident than I felt. “I’m not going to confront her or anything. Hey! That’s a red light!”
Instead of slowing down, he hit the accelerator. “Is okay. It has no camera. Mam, you have the asthma?”
No, just possible cardiac arrest. I forced myself to stop hyperventilating and focus on Rafiq’s phone screen as my heart threatened to hammer its way through my ribcage. Was it better to be unemployed or dead? That seemed like a decision I might need to make in the near future. At least my will was in order—I’d carefully written Piers out of it and left all my worldly goods in trust for Chaucer, with anything left over going to an equine charity at the end of his life.
“I’m perfectly healthy. Have you considered sticking to the speed limits?”
“Time is money. Benjamin Franklin say this. You know Benjamin Franklin?” Not personally, no. “He was the president of the United States of America. My cousin lives there.”
“Lovely.” Americans came into the gallery on occasion, and they were always so loud, so pushy. Give me a quiet, reserved Brit any day. Apart from Piers, of course. As far as I was concerned, he could take a running jump off the white cliffs of Dover and good riddance. “I think in this instance, it might be preferable to get to our destination just a teeny bit slower.”
And also alive.
“Which way we go now?”
“Right at the roundabout.”
Five minutes later, Rafiq slammed on the brakes as we approached an overgrown driveway, and I crossed myself as I lurched forward. I wasn’t even Catholic, but it seemed like a good idea to hedge my bets.
“We are here?” he asked.
“According to the phone, we are.”
“You should call the police now.”
And risk losing Hugo’s painting again? Not a chance. “I’ve got a better idea. You go down the driveway, and if the car’s empty, I’ll jump behind the wheel and we can quickly drive away.”
Rafiq was the master at that.
“What if it is not empty?”
“Uh, perhaps you could say you’re lost, and then we’ll have a rethink?”
“You mean lie? I do not lie. It is rude.”
“Ordinarily, I’d agree with you, but do you think you could make an exception today? Say you took a wrong turn? Just a small fib?”
“A fib is not as bad as a lie?”
“No, no, definitely not. I fib all the time.”
For years, I’d complimented Piers on his appearance when in reality, he’d turned into a beluga whale who’d stumbled across Saville Row. Day after day, I’d assured my sister she wasn’t overreacting when she wasn’t just a drama queen, she was a supreme overlord. And as for my mother, every single room in her house looked like a death match between Trump Tower and the Palace of Versailles. Twenty-four-carat over-the-top opulence. I told her it looked fabulous.
“Okay, then I will fib. Should we go down the driveway right now?”
Good question. A brave person would probably have got out of the car and snuck through the trees commando-style for a recon first, but I wasn’t brave and I was also wearing stilettos. Running would be a problem. Why hadn’t I changed my stupid shoes when I stopped to pick up the spare key? And my pencil skirt. That wasn’t conducive to a swift escape either.
Dammit, I really wasn’t cut out for this.
“Yes, drive slowly. If you see a red Ford Fiesta, stop as close to it as you can.”
I’d sat in the back of the cab like a regular passenger, and the seat blocked my view as we trundled forward. Should I hide? What if the girl recognised me? She’d only seen me for a brief moment, and hopefully she’d been more focused on stealing my key than memorising my face. I arranged my hair so that it masked my features and scooched down in the seat a bit.
Trees met overhead, giving the tunnel-like driveway a foreboding appearance. Between terror and the humidity, I was sweating like a pig in a sauna, and I almost told Rafiq to turn around. This wasn’t my life. I was born to make small talk at cocktail parties, not hunt down teenage hoodlums.
An old brick-built house came into view, battered by time and the elements, shutters hanging crooked by the windows. The front door sagged open. Was the girl inside? Surely nobody actually lived there?
A flash of red at the side of the building caught my eye, and I sagged with relief. My car! And the boot was still closed, so hopefully that little brat hadn’t found Hugo’s painting. Not that she’d know what to do with it if she did. A girl of her ilk probably couldn’t tell the difference between paint-by-numbers and a Picasso.
“I see the car,” Rafiq said, a hint of excitement in his voice. “This is excellent news.”
“Yes, it is.” Honestly, the best part was that I wouldn’t have to ride back in the taxi with him. “Just pull up alongside it.”
I fumbled in my pocket for the key, eager to get away from this horrid, horrid place, but Rafiq’s sharp intake of breath stopped me. What now?
“There is a man.”
A man?
“Where?”
Rafiq pointed past the house, where the corner of an old barn was just visible. Sure enough, a tall, well-dressed man was walking towards us, and if it were at all possible, he looked even more out of place than I felt. Who was he? Why was he here? Was he involved in the theft of my car?
As he came closer, I realised there was something familiar about him. I’d seen him before, but where? I considered telling Rafiq to reverse, but then what would happen to my car? The man didn’t look dangerous, not in a serial-killer way, in any case. Dangerous to a girl’s heart, perhaps. Mine skipped as he got closer.
Then I remembered where I’d seen him. At the gallery. The freaking gallery. Last night, he’d been at the show with a stunning blonde, and I’d been trying to sell him a sculpture until Henrietta had practically elbowed me out of the way. An American. Slightly brash but not at all suspicious, and yet here he was, incongruous among the undergrowth in a blue button-down shirt, grey
flannel slacks, and polished brown brogues. What the hell was going on?
A thousand possibilities flew through my mind. What if I’d got this wrong and my car hadn’t been stolen by an opportunist thief? Perhaps they’d lured me here as part of a kidnap plot? My family had money, although I wasn’t convinced my father would shell out for a ransom payment.
“Uh, I think we should leave.”
“But your car is here.”
“Yes, but—”
Too late. The blonde from last night parked a black car behind Rafiq’s taxi, blocking us in. Shit! I fumbled for the lock with trembling fingers, but the man pulled the door open before I could find it.
“Ms. Stafford-Lyons, this is an unexpected pleasure.” He was still smiling, and it was quite disarming. “Good drive?”
“No, it was bloody terrifying.” The words popped out before I could stop them. Did I mention my tendency to babble when I got nervous?
He motioned for me to exit the vehicle, and then Rafiq piped up.
“We are lost.”
Good grief. The man rolled his eyes, and a hysterical giggle bubbled up my throat. My accomplice and I were so bad at subterfuge it was laughable.
Just for a second, I wondered if this could all be a bad dream. If the American and the blonde and the teenage car thief were figments of my overactive imagination. I dug a pink-lacquered fingernail into my arm, and it hurt. Dammit.
I climbed out of the car slowly, hesitantly, because I didn’t have much choice in the matter. The blonde exited her car too, and was that blood on her?
What the hell had I got involved in?
CHAPTER 10 - ALARIC
LOST? ALARIC HAD met a lot of bad liars in his time, but this guy won the trophy. Who was he, anyway? Another fool Pemberton had suckered into his sly little game?
On the plus side, it wasn’t the owner of the shitty farmhouse who’d arrived home, but making up a story to get rid of Stafford-Lyons and her sidekick wasn’t an option. She knew too much, perhaps even more than him.