Betrayed

by Jake Cross

  Almost calm, he moved so he was sitting in the driver’s seat. Now his eyes were accustomed to the darkness, and he could see everything. Standard gearstick, for instance. It was his antidote, his ejector seat, his paramedics all rolled into one.

  He’d been a driver most of his life and all the basic movements were in his repertoire, like walking through your own home in the dark. But not this. This was a blind stroll through a stranger’s house, and would need finesse and care. He had to visualise the actions in his brain first. Slowly he jammed the clutch down with his right foot, and lifted his left and hooked it over the gearstick like a monkey. Finesse, care. He jerked his foot to the right and back. Felt the gearstick engage reverse. More care and finesse as he swapped feet on the clutch, and then, like a tightrope walker reaching safe hands and a sturdy platform, he let out a loud sigh of relief.

  All alien movements until this point, but now the hard part was over. Now light had been shed across that stranger’s house. From here on it was just basic driving, and that was all muscle memory, no finesse nor care nor brain visuals needed, and he didn’t require his hands, either.

  Clutch up fast as the accelerator was pounded down. The idling purr of the engine became a shriek, like an animal stabbed. The shapes in the wing mirror jerked upright. He heard a voice shout something. Then his bare chest slammed into the steering wheel as the van leaped backwards.

  He heard the heavy thump of something against the rear doors. A yelp a half second afterwards. The van rushed backwards a few more feet, then the rear dipped and it stopped dead, tearing him away from the steering wheel and throwing him hard into the seat. He heard another shout. In the wing mirror, a black shape pelting alongside the van, growing bigger. If he’d hit the men with the van, it had been only one, because here came the other.

  Then he was at the window. A tall guy, stocky, with curly black hair and a thick black beard, and black eyes, although maybe that was a trick of the night. Exactly the kind of face you didn’t want to see in the dark woods, especially wearing this guy’s angry sneer.

  The driver’s door clicked, started to open. He yanked up his legs, toppled left across the centre console, and pistoned his feet outwards, straightening his body. No way this is going to work, he thought, even as he did it. But amazingly it did work. A scene right out of a Hollywood action movie. Feet into door, door into body, body onto ground.

  But it wasn’t over. The man was rising, cursing. The naked man sat up, turned, planning to escape into the passenger seat and then – what?

  Too late. The guy was back. A hand grabbed his arm. The naked man pulled back, then thrust his head forward, striking his assailant hard in the nose. Down went the assailant again.

  But the vice-like grip on his arm was still there, so the assailant had a passenger for his journey to the ground.

  Before the guy under him could even start to struggle, the naked man pulled back and then thrust his head forward. All lizard brain this time, fight or flight, the amygdala forcing a reaction before his nervous system could even register the continued danger from a man who’d avoided Hollywood unconsciousness. Three quick headbutts, like a woodpecker, and it was all over. Over even before the naked man realised it was.

  And the guy was out this time. On his back, one arm above his head, the hand clutching a short blade. Other arm tucked awkwardly under his back. The naked man rolled off and got to his knees. Heart thudding, breath rasping out of him. Then he started to relax, because the way that guy’s arm was awkwardly bent under him was a sure sign the guy wasn’t faking.

  Then he remembered: two of them. The panic rose again, like bile. He struggled to his feet and staggered away, curving a semi-circle so he could angle himself to look behind the van, to give himself a second or two to think if the other guy came dashing out. He knew he should have turned, should have bolted, but he just couldn’t turn his back on that dark area behind the van.

  The van had hit a tree. Actually, not quite. Between the tree and the van, there he was, an unmoving black shape jammed there in a funny sideways position, as if he’d been caught as he turned to dart aside. Jammed real tight, so he was going nowhere, unconscious or not.

  The heart calmed. The breath slowed. Danger over. For now. But he felt no better for it. One moment all had been fine in his life, and the next he was naked, tied up, and facing violent death and burial in the woods.

  Why?

  Because the danger was apparently over, the flood of adrenaline became just a trickle, and his calming brain got back to the business of sending a blizzard of pain signals. Fiery, overwhelming, inescapable. And with it, a lucid thought that he had to get out of here. But not while still tied up.

  He found a rock jutting from the ground and sat over it, and used a sharp edge to cut the binds around his wrists. A cable tie. Effective, easy to apply, but just thin plastic, easily sawn through.

  He looked at his throbbing fingers, putting them close to his face because it was dark, and went to the van to check his face and shoulder. Fingers: tips raw and red, prints burned away, maybe by acid. Shoulder: skin missing, flesh scoured rare, his old shoulder tattoo now a ragged mess with just fragments remaining. Face: bashed up, dried blood all around his mouth and his teeth broken, seemingly all of them, making him look like some horror film zombie after feeding on flesh. The pain was no surprise in light of this.

  All his distinguishing marks gone. Clearly his kidnappers had wanted his body to yield nothing identifying should it be found out here.

  Before he could dampen it, a bloom of anger sent him striding back to the unconscious guy on the forest floor. And with beautiful timing, because the guy was coming round, beginning to move and moan. Three hard stomps to the face, all rage-fuelled, sent him back into dreamworld.

  Then the rage was gone, and in its place was again the urge to get the hell out of here. The guy jammed behind the van was not moving. He couldn’t see the face because the head was lolling towards him and he wore a baseball cap. But that guy was going to offer no threat, even if he came round. He was wedged nice and tight.

  He returned to the other guy and stripped him. It felt wrong, but being naked was worse. Training shoes, tracksuit bottoms, and a bomber jacket. All a good fit and in good nick, except that the jacket had blood all over the front from the guy’s crushed nose and lips. Dark colours, good for a man who needed to be invisible in the night. And he needed to be – that was a feeling he couldn’t shake.

  In the jacket pockets he found two wallets, an economy Nokia mobile phone and a rusty knuckleduster. The phone got his immediate attention, but it had no signal out here in the woods. The first wallet was the guy’s. No identification inside, just eight ten-pound notes and a crumpled receipt for a sandwich from a Tesco store. The second wallet was his own. Everything there, even the cash: nearly a hundred pounds in notes and coins. His driver’s licence had a big dirty thumbprint on it, as if the guy had held it close to scrutinise it in the dark. Maybe to check they had kidnapped the right guy. But what did this pair of bozos want with a lowly security firm owner called Nathan Barke?

  Nate transferred all the cash to his own wallet and dropped the other one and the knuckleduster into the dirt. Then he picked up the weapon again. He was loath to discard it, although he didn’t know why he felt the urge to keep it. But he was reminded of that old saying about it being better to have a gun and not need it. So, the knuckleduster went back into one of the bomber jacket pockets.

  Now to get the hell out of here. Since he didn’t know where he was, how far from home, he decided to use the van. The engine had stalled after he’d crashed into the tree – and the other guy, of course – but while it started again, it wouldn’t move. The nearside rear wheel was floating over one edge of the grave the men had dug, and the grounded wheel couldn’t get enough traction to propel the vehicle forward. It just spun in the mud.

  So much for that. He got out and looked around. Nothing that hinted at the way out, except for the van’s tyre trac
ks. At least he could follow them and find a road.

  They cut a semi-circle and then a straight path for a short while, then turned left to go around a ditch filled with junk, then onwards again in the same direction. By this time he could hear traffic ahead, and this buoyed his spirits. Traffic meant people, and people meant help.

  He exited the woods through a gap in a fence at the treeline, onto a busy road running left and right. He was about to flag down a car when he spotted a petrol station across the road, sixty or so metres to his right. It had a skip in the forecourt, where builders had been fixing part of the roof that had come down. He knew this because he knew that petrol station.

  Putney Heath, Wandsworth. The men who’d kidnapped him had tried to bury him just a few hundred metres from his home.

  His heart soared one second: he was close to home. Then deflated the next: being so close to home might mean the kidnappers had snatched him from the house. But home was shared with his brother, Pete, and they ran their security business from it.

  What if they had targeted his brother, too?

  Certain that the danger was far from over, Nate emerged slowly from the woods that surrounded Putney Village, eyes everywhere, seeking strange vehicles or pedestrians. He calmed his impatience. Home was now only a sixty-second walk away, but he couldn’t afford to just go running there. Not while he was uncertain whether the two kidnappers had been acting alone.

  The road was empty. No lurking pedestrians or cars parked in the shadows. He relaxed. Sixty seconds and he could be at home with Pete, kettle on the go. He spat on his hands and rubbed at his mouth to remove dried blood. He flattened his hair with a wet palm. He scraped dirt from the backs of his hands. Wouldn’t be good to have the neighbours see him unkempt. He checked his handiwork in a car’s wing mirror, decided he looked okay, and set off.

  He made the turn onto his street with a casual walk, hoping to look like just some guy heading home after a routine day that didn’t involve nearly getting killed.

  And stopped dead.

  The street contained large houses behind lawns and walls, and driveways barred by ornate gates. And was usually very quiet at night. Not now.

  Some of his neighbours were on the street, all staring towards his house, some fifty metres along, near the corner. There was a guy on a motorbike by the side of the road and a car a short way ahead, near the crowd, both probably having turned down this street and found their way ahead blocked. The whole street was blocked. Outside his gates, filling the road, were emergency service vehicles, lights flashing like a vast alfresco disco. All three types. Police, ambulance–

  And fire.

  Now he noticed, even in the dark sky, great plumes of smoke rising into the air from above the trees that mostly hid his house from view. He stepped into the road, closing on the ragged back row of the people massed on the street. His legs wobbled as he caught a view of his home through the trees. He saw a blackened, busted window, and more smoke foaming out of it. He could hear the roar and crackle of fire gorging.

  His house was burning.

  The right thing to do was rush forward, barge through the crowd, grab someone in a uniform and tell his story. The police would take him aside, explain what they knew, ask questions, and soon this would all be cleared up. But he didn’t do that. Instead, Nate had a great urge to get away, even if it meant not yet finding out if his brother was alive, if his house was salvageable. He didn’t know why. But he knew he needed to get away and come at this thing from a new angle. Some animal instinct deep within that wouldn’t be denied, maybe.

  So, he took a step backwards, and that was when a motorcycle with a black-clad rider swerved in front of him. It was the bike that had been parked at the side of the road. The rider flicked up his visor and Nate saw young eyes staring at him beneath curly blond hair pressed flat against his forehead by the helmet.

  ‘Nathan, thank God you made it. Get on quick before they spot us.’

  ‘Who?’ Nate said. He was frozen on the spot, shocked by the appearance of this guy like a spectre. How did the man know his name? How did he know Nate would be here, outside, watching his own home burn to nothing?

  ‘Quickly!’ the guy barked. ‘Before it’s too late. They’re going to kill you.’

  The guy’s eyes were full of fear, and that decided it for Nate. He didn’t know this guy, but so what? He could find out that much once they were a mile or so away from whatever threat the guy thought was out there.

  So, he swung a leg over the back of the bike and hugged the guy’s chest with under hooks, and squeezed tight as the bike leaped forward, turned, and shot off. At the end of the road it swung a right and roared away.

  ‘What’s going on? Who are you?’ Nate shouted into the back of the guy’s helmet as they rushed by trees on their left and more houses on the right. In seconds the houses were gone and it was all trees, which blocked the moonlight and made the world dark. Back into the alien world. Nate realised then that the bike’s headlamp wasn’t on. He could barely see the road ahead, but the guy seemed to know where he was going.

  ‘Someone with the same problem as you, Nathan,’ the guy yelled back.

  Before he could wonder where they were going, or how this guy knew what the hell was going on, the bike stopped. Fifteen seconds’ riding. The guy pulled into the side of the road just before a junction, at a lay-by sheltered by overhanging branches like a canopy. There were no people or cars around, which Nate knew was always the case with this part of the village this late.

  He hopped off the back and moved away. ‘So, you know what’s going on? That was my house burning. What do you know about it?’

  The guy got off and removed his helmet. He was a good-looking guy with floppy blond hair and big white teeth, like a surfer. Maybe early thirties. ‘I know it was your house,’ he said. ‘The people who set fire to it are the same ones who kidnapped you.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ Nate said, still wary. He took another step back.

  The guy took a step back also, maybe just to reassure Nate, and pulled out his mobile phone. ‘Just wait a moment, Nathan. I’m here to help you survive the night.’ He typed a number into the phone and stepped further back.

  Nate’s eyes were seeking exits. The trees seemed the best bet, but he really didn’t want to go back into the woods. Not now, not in broad daylight, not ever again.

  ‘My brother, I think he was at home. Where is he? Is he okay? Who were those men and why did they kidnap me? I think I was drugged.’

  ‘You were drugged, Nathan. And your brother is fine. I’ll explain everything, but first I need to make this call so we can both get out of this city alive.’

  ‘We need to go to the police. They burned my house. My brother might be kidnapped as well. They were going to kill me and bury me in the woods. How do you know my brother’s fine? Tell me.’

  ‘I know, Nate, I just know. Trust me. We’ll be in a police station within twenty minutes and we’ll meet your brother after that. But we won’t get there alive if I don’t make this call. Just a moment.’

  Nate took another step back, away, and his feet hit the kerb. The guy was twenty feet away now. Holding his phone to his ear. One arm resting on his hip. Definitely not looking like he was about to launch himself at Nate. So Nate relaxed. Nothing else he could do right now but wait. He sat on the kerb, dropping hard onto his ass like a man who’d just finished a hard day’s work dropping onto a comfy sofa. He let out a long, ragged breath. Here to help, remember that.

  And right then the phone in his pocket started vibrating.

  The one he’d taken from the kidnapper.

  He looked at the biker, and the guy nodded at him, held up a finger as if to say just a moment. Nate’s heart sank, and his fear rose. His eyes found the exits again. Surely this was a coincidence… Surely the biker couldn’t be ringing the kidnapper’s phone…

  Nate slipped the old phone out of his pocket and, holding it low and shielded by his body, looked down at the scree
n without moving his head. It continued to vibrate in his hand. A number was listed there, but no name. He pressed the green button to answer the call. He prayed he was wrong.

  The biker rubbed his nose, as if to hide his moving lips. Then Nate heard a low, tinny voice come from the phone.

  ‘Damar, it’s your lucky day because I just love to hear a nice fuck-up story. So, why don’t you tell me how a dead man with his hands tied and his balls hanging free managed to get the fuck away from you?’

  A dropping feeling, as if the ground had collapsed below him. The horror was real, then. Nate looked at the biker, who winked at him, surely a move designed to calm him, let him know everything was going to be okay. This guy was one of them, one of the men after him. But how had he known that Nate had escaped the others’ clutches? Or had he been watching the house? Just sitting there and enjoying his team’s handiwork, when along came the last man he ever expected?

  The biker turned away, still with the phone to his ear.

  From the phone: ‘He turned up at his fucking house, Damar. Smartly dressed and not tied up and not dead. If I hadn’t been there, he’d be talking to twenty cops right about now. What the fuck happened?’ A pause. ‘Hey, you there?’

  The biker turned back to Nate. ‘No answer yet from the people who are going to help us get through this, Nathan,’ he called over. Nate heard his voice from two sides. ‘I’ll just be a moment and then we’ll go to the police.’

  Phone: ‘Damar, is something wrong?’

  Nate pressed the button to kill the call, his mind racing, his heart in his throat.

  The biker looked at his phone, anger on his face, and put it away. He looked up and down the street. Still no-one around. He started walking towards Nate.

  ‘Hey, my men will know where my phone is, and they’ll track it and be here soon. We need to get off the road. Into the woods.’