Fractured (Unreel series Book 1)

by Sanna Wolf-Watz

  “Do you know we are?” she asked Thomas.

  He gave a start and looked at her in surprise as if she’d forgotten that she was still in the car. He shook himself. “No. Can you google it?”

  “With what? They took my phone,” Sofia said and bent to check the glove compartment. “Bastards,” she added when she found it empty. She supposed it would have been too much to ask for a GPS or even a map.

  Thomas overtook another car and cursed.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “We don’t have a lot of fuel left.”

  Of course they didn’t. “I guess that makes sense with the way you’ve been driving.”

  He glanced at her with a scowl. “If you are…”

  “I’m not complaining!” she hurried to say, putting her hands up. “To be honest I’m impressed. I didn’t know you could drive like that.”

  Thomas relaxed. “I didn’t know that either,” he admitted. “I should try drag racing.”

  “You should,” Sofia agreed. “It’ll be easy peasy for you after this. No one shooting at you, a full tank of gas. Child’s play.”

  Thomas grinned and glanced at the rearview mirror. “I don’t see them anymore. Should we just keep going?”

  “We can get off at the nearest gas station or town, whatever comes first. All we need is a phone to dial 911.”

  “And to not be shot as while we make the call,” Thomas ground out.

  “Can we please not talk about that?”

  “Fine by me.”

  Sofia turned to the window, watching the pine trees flanking the road on both sides. She closed her eyes, trying to get her head around and deal with the events of the last twenty four hours.

  She had almost managed to convince herself that what had happened had not actually happened, at least not to her, when the physical reaction of shock caught up with her and the next moment she was shaking uncontrollably.

  Thomas was so focused on the road he didn’t notice Sofia’s shaking right away. He held his mind and memories in a tight grip. He would not relax, could not relax, yet. The danger was not over until they were back home, in a police station or a bomb shelter. He would prefer a bomb shelter.

  He gnawed on his lip. The lamp indicating an empty tank flashed. He hoped there would be a gas station nearby or they’d run out of gas and be stranded in the middle of nowhere.

  He overtook another logging truck and looked over at Sofia who was being uncharacteristically silent and was shocked to see tears pouring from her eyes. She didn’t make a sound as she cried, but she was trembling in a rather alarming way. A wave of panic crashed over him as he watched her. Could she not find a better time to break down? How dare she leave him to deal with all of this on his own?

  He wanted to shake her, but he didn’t dare take his hands of the wheel. They may not be going at two hundred an hour anymore, but he wasn’t taking any chances. Besides, his hands were grasping the wheel so tightly he wasn’t sure he’d be able to relax them if they… when they found somewhere to stop.

  He stole another glance at her. The tears still poured down her cheeks and crushed the impulse to reach out and brush them off her cheeks, his own eyes stinging.

  He had not cried for years. The sequence in the interrogation room, which he was determined not to think about, did not count. That had been a physical reaction to pain. It had not been like… He glanced at Sofia again…like that. He envied her the ability to let go so completely. And leave him alone to deal with the situation.

  “Sofia,” he said.

  She didn’t reply.

  “Sofia!”

  She still didn’t show any sign of having heard him, just kept staring ahead of her, her tears gushing.

  “SOFIA!” he shouted and she flinched as if he he’d hit her. She turned her head towards him and tried to focus on his face.

  “Sofia,” he said in a calmer voice.” Stop crying and get a grip, will you? We need to find a gas station.”

  She didn’t reply. He cast another look at her. Her tears had finally stopped. She was still shaking, but in a different way and, he concluded from the look of utter contempt on her face, for a different reason.

  “Thomas Jefferson. You are such an asshole,” she hissed.

  “What? I’m an asshole? Excuse me, but who is it sitting here crying and who is that have been driving like a crazy person trying to save both of us? Huh?”

  She ignored this. She always ignored what he said. “You’re so insensitive. You see someone crying and do you comfort them? No. You shout at them!”

  “Well it did you wake you from your wallowing in self-pity didn’t it?”

  “I was not wallowing in self-pity! I happen to be in shock!” she snivelled, drying her nose on her sleeve. “Obviously.”

  “Oh, come on! You were wallowing.”

  For a second he was worried that she was going to start crying again. Instead she took a deep, steadying breath.

  “I hate you.”

  She said it so quietly that he almost didn’t hear it. Almost. The words hurt more than he would have expected them to.

  “I hate you too,” he said back. Loudly, quickly to repel the pain.

  She didn’t reply. She didn’t seem to have heard him at all. “There’s a gas station coming up on our left hand side within a mile,” she said in a louder voice.

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because even when I’m wallowing I can read the road signs”, she snapped.

  He was about to reply when the car made a coughing noise and the engine stopped.

  21

  Great Balls of Fire

  The speed they had been keeping when they ran out of the gas kept the car rolling. Since they were going downhill they managed to keep going long enough for Thomas to steer the car into the gas station before coming to a complete standstill. That had been a close call. Too close.

  She glanced at Thomas who was looking as pale as a ghost. He was still mumbling to himself and wouldn’t let go of the wheel. They would both need a vast amount of psychiatric therapy once they got home.

  She opened the door and got out right before Thomas managed to pull himself together and do the same. They looked at each other over the car.

  “I can get the phone,” they said in chorus.

  Thomas cleared his throat. “Go back inside the car. It’s not safe.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “Still, it's not...”

  “How about you fill up on gas and I go in and try to get hold of the police? They might not let you in with that … exotic attire you’re wearing.”

  “Who might not? There’s no one here.”

  He was right. The gas station was abandoned, as was the road they had come off. She hurried up to the store. The lights were turned on, but when she pulled at the door she found it locked.

  She knocked at the door. Nothing happened and she called out with frustration. Then she heard the unmistakable sound of cars approaching and ran back to Thomas who was still trying to get the pump to work.

  “Something’s wrong! Go back in, we …”

  The rest of her sentence was cut off as several cars pulled in, surrounding them. The car doors opened and suddenly the gas station was swamped with people.

  “Get behind the car! Get down!”

  She ducked as shots rang out from all around them. Why were these people shooting at each other? Someone took her hand, pulled her to the ground and dragged her to the other side of the car.

  “Do you have a death wish? Why were you just standing there?” Thomas asked furiously, tightening his grip on her hand.

  “I… look… what?”

  Thomas shook his head. “I don’t know why I care.”

  He dropped her hand and tried to peek out from the side of the car.

  “What is going on?” Sofia wondered out loud as she took in the carnage around her.

  It was a scene that looked like it came straight out of a war zone. People were running this way and
that. She gasped as a man in a suit running towards them was shot in the back. A woman was hit by another bullet and sent sprawling to the ground next to him.

  Blood splattered the asphalt as more and more of the people around them fell to the ground. The bile rose in her throat. It was too chaotic for her to be able to make out who was on what side. It was people wearing black and suits versus other people wearing black and suits.

  Their kidnappers had obviously followed them here. What she couldn’t understand was why they would shoot at each other and leave her and Thomas alone.

  A man took a bullet in the chest and landed a few feet away from the car they were hiding behind, his arms pointing in an awkward angle and a thick stream of red forming a puddle around him.

  Sofia decided that she had seen enough and pulled back behind the car. She closed her eyes, but that made her more aware of the pungent stench around her. Gunpowder and something metallic that made her head swim.

  She opened her eyes again. Thomas was sitting with his head between his legs, looking as if he was trying not to throw up. They had to get out of here.

  Thomas screamed as someone tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Hush! It’s me,” Sofia told him and he wondered briefly if she was going to slap him again. She would enjoy it even more this time after the way he treated her in the car.

  “Sorry,” Thomas said.

  “We need to get out of here before we get shot,” Sofia said, darting a gaze over the top of the car. She ducked and the sign above the pump exploded over their heads.

  When the red pieces of plastic had stopped raining down on them he asked her how they’d do that.

  “They left the cars running, see? Those cars will have gas and that golden Volvo is the one closest to us.”

  Thomas looked past her to the parked cars some distance away. There was nothing there to cover them as they made a run for it, but they didn’t have much of a choice. It was only a matter of time before they were hit by some stray bullet. Hopefully everyone would be too busy to notice them running.

  “Okay,” he said. “Tell me when.”

  Sofia peeked out around the back of the car. “Now!” she said and took off.

  He followed closely behind her and together they sprinted across the slick asphalt. He ran faster than he ever had in his life and Sofia wasn’t more than a second behind him. She was quicker than she looked.

  “Okay,” Sofia panted when they reached the car. “Get in the driver’s seat, Thomas. I’ll take the…”

  “The what?”

  Thomas turned to see why she had stopped giving him orders mid-sentence and found himself looking down the barrel of a gun. He blinked and focused on the person holding the gun.

  Well, he could see why Sofia had been rendered speechless. The man pointing the gun at them was movie-star pretty. Perfectly symmetrical features, strong jaw, deep blue eyes and dark hair.

  Thomas hated him on sight and it wasn’t just because the man had pulled a gun on him. When he smiled, showing his perfect white teeth, Thomas wanted to run his fist through them.

  “Turn around,” the man ordered.

  Thomas apparently didn’t obey quickly enough because the man suddenly grabbed hold of his shoulder, whipped him around and smacked him up against the car.

  “Ouch!”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” the man said, not sounding sorry at all.

  Thomas grunted as his arms were pulled to his back. The next second he felt cold steel close around his wrists. He had been handcuffed. Again. The man pulled him back and he was shoved into the back seat of the car. The force of the push sent Thomas rolling from the seat to the floor.

  He hissed in pain as he narrowly avoided getting his nose broken by letting his shoulder take most of the impact. Sofia landed on top him a moment later, knocking all the air from his lungs. He heard the man get into the car and slam the passenger door shut. Another door opened and closed and then the car lurched forward.

  Sofia, who had barely managed to pull away from him and back onto the seat, fell on him again.

  “Do you mind?” she yelled to the driver who apparently thought they were in a race.

  “Not at all, babe. Knock yourselves out”, their new kidnapper replied.

  Sofia tried to make her way back up to the seat and pushed her knee into his kidney.

  “Ow!”

  “Sorry!” she said and wriggled back.

  She pushed herself onto the seat and Thomas tried to get up as well, but the car turned so all he managed to do was roll around so that he was lying on his back instead.

  This made it easier to breathe, even if it was uncomfortable to have most of his weight on his cuffed arms. He tried to pull them up and lean more on his legs and butt. It eased the pain, but he knew that he was striking a pose that made him look absolutely ridiculous.

  He glanced up at Sofia, ready to reply to a smart comment, but she wasn’t paying him any attention. Instead she was looking through the rear window, her eyes wide.

  “Oh, my,” she mumbled to herself.

  A wave of heat hit the car. It made the car swerve and the rear window shattered right before Sofia was thrown off her seat and once again landed on top of him. This time her knee hit him in a more delicate place and when he groaned in pain, his mouth filled with her hair. He shook his head, trying to spit it out.

  ”I’m sorry,” she muttered.

  “You know what? Just stay here,” Thomas hissed at her when he finally had gotten his breath back and she had pulled away from his face.

  “Are you okay?”

  Thomas grunted in reply. He was going to be covered in bruises by this time tomorrow. At least she had shielded him from the worst bits of glass from the broken window.

  He glanced at her hair. It was shimmering more than usual and he was grudgingly grateful that all that glass hadn’t ended up in his face.

  “Er…and… thank you for not letting me get turned into a glass porcupine,” he added.

  She raised her head and looked at him. “You’re welcome. Can’t have anyone mess up that pretty face of yours, can we?”

  “You said it was butt ugly.”

  “It is, but it suits you,” she said and smiled at him.

  There was that smile again. It made a strange warmth spread from his chest to the pit of his stomach. He found himself smiling back at her without meaning to. The next moment he became acutely aware that she was lying on top of him and that he was wearing next to no clothes.

  “Sofia, you have to move.”

  She looked surprised. “But you just told me not to,” she said, patting his cheek.

  This situation was beyond awkward. The worst part was that she was still smiling at him. He had to get away from her.

  “Yes, and now I’m telling you to move!” Thomas hissed and tried to push away from underneath her. Not smart, he realized when it only resulted in her getting closer to him.

  Sofia looked taken aback. Then she apparently decided to ignore him, because she lay down and put her head on his chest.

  “Don’t be an idiot. The seat is full of glass and you make a decent mattress, even though you smell weird and won’t shut up.”

  “I smell weird?”

  “Yeah, you do. Not bad, but… weird.”

  Well, that was definitely the weirdest … compliment that he had ever received.

  “Yeah? All the same you should get up.”

  “I don’t see…”

  “Shut up both of you!” their kidnapper roared from the front seat.

  “You shut up!” Sofia yelled back. “No one forced you to kidnap us. You could have been driving around all by yourselves in a nice and quiet car.”

  “We didn’t kidnap you, we saved you from being shot.”

  “Is that so? In that case I don’t suppose you’d mind saving us from your company by dropping us off at the closest police station?”

  “We can’t do that.”

  “Of course you can’t. Because you
’re not saving us, you’re kidnapping…”

  “I swear, you keep talking and I’m coming back there to gag you myself!”

  “Zack!” a woman’s voice admonished. She must be the one driving the car. So there were two of them. Great. “It would be better if you could try to get some rest before we arrive,” she told them in a voice that nearly sounded kind.

  “Rest? Cuffed and forced into a car with two assailants who…”

  “That’s it!” the man said again and shifted in his seat.

  Sofia froze and Thomas shifted a little to look up. The guy in the passenger seat was aiming a gun at her.

  “If I hadn’t already been a pacifist this whole experience would have converted me to a strong belief in non-violence,” she told the man irritably.

  “No! Don’t…” Thomas started to say, but the man pulled the trigger and something hit her in the throat. Surprised, she reached up to her neck and pulled it out.

  “What?” she said and fell back to his chest.

  “What did you do to her? Sofia!” Thomas yelled. She wasn’t dead, she couldn't be dead.

  “Calm down! I only stunned her.”

  Thomas stopped moving. “You what?”

  “She was getting too loud.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Zack,” the woman driving them said. “We were only supposed to use that in a case of absolute emergency.”

  “It was an emergency. She was giving me a headache.”

  “What is wrong with you?”

  Thomas wished they would both be quiet. He was trying to make sure that Sofia was still breathing. He wanted to turn her into recovery position to make sure she didn’t choke if the sedative made her throw up, but there was no way as long as his hands were tied behind his back like this.

  “… never hurt anyone. She was working herself up into hysterics.”

  “We could have dealt with it,” the woman complained.

  “If you’re going to be like this I’ll shoot you too.”

  “I’m driving the car!”

  “For now you are.”

  Thomas did his best to shut out the rest of the conversation. He tried to find a more comfortable position on the floor and concentrated on the feel of Sofia’s heartbeats against his chest.