by Elise Noble
“They must be in the forest,” Ana said, coming to the same conclusion as me.
Black waved a hand at Pale. “After you.”
Picking up a trail was hard enough in daylight, and to this day, I didn’t know how Pale managed to find the spot where our quarry had gone into the woods. He’d just stared at the trees, at the barely penetrable wall of black and grey and said, “There.”
I saw the occasional footprint, half washed away in the mud, but for the most part, I just followed, staying alert for Ridley and careful to leave a ten-metre gap between Pale in front and Ana behind. Black brought up the rear.
“Three people came through,” Pale said. “Two females in tennis shoes, one male in boots. They were all running.”
“Do the sizes of the women fit Bethany and Rune?” Black asked.
“I’d say so, yes.”
The going was slow. Rain hammered down, splashing through the tree canopy in big, messy drops, reducing visibility and threatening to wash away any clues. It was a race against time. We took several wrong turns and had to backtrack, and although I didn’t let on to anyone else because Alaric was still listening in, I began to worry that we were too late. The Smokies covered hundreds of thousands of acres. If we lost the trail, it’d be like hunting for a contact lens in the ocean.
Pale stopped at the top of a near-vertical slope. Even I could see the broken branches, the crushed leaves where someone or something had crashed through. Fucking hell. They went down there?
He responded to my unasked question. “Pass the rope.”
We hadn’t gone much farther when Pale stilled. Not the “let me work out which way” hesitation I’d seen from him several times, but the instant rigidity of “fuck, there’s a problem.” I raised my scope and looked past him.
What the…? Was that Ridley? Judging by the size and body shape, it was definitely a man, and who the hell else would be running around in the wilderness at this time of night? Well, not running, exactly. He was just lying on the ground face up, arms by his sides. A ploy to lure us closer? Or was he injured?
I followed Pale’s lead and faded back into the trees, and we covered the last forty metres at a snail’s pace, careful not to make the slightest sound. I could feel Black and Ana behind me, but I couldn’t hear them or see them.
A branch cracked. I resisted the urge to whip my head around and turned slowly instead, gun raised, finger hovering over the trigger. Did Ridley have an accomplice? After he’d killed two of his men, I’d kind of figured the rest would bug out.
Two eyes stared back at me. The interloper shared many characteristics with Ridley’s goons—he was ugly, hairy, and he weighed about two hundred pounds—but he was only three feet tall with tusks and a snout.
The wild hog stared at me. I stared back.
Shit.
I’d never got into a punch-up with a pig before, and I didn’t particularly want to start now. Did they attack humans? Remind me to insist on a proper briefing next time I decided to schlep through a forest at night.
I risked a glance sideways. Ridley’s hands were empty. No weapon that I could see. Black came forward, darting the last few metres in case Ridley moved. But he didn’t.
With the main threat neutralised, I fired a warning shot into the ground at the hog’s feet. If Beth and Rune were still alive, I didn’t want to kill them with a stray bullet. The beast turned tail and ran, hurtling through the undergrowth and vanishing into the darkness.
Phew. Crisis averted.
Black checked Ridley’s pulse. “He’s still breathing.”
Unceremoniously, he flipped the motherfucker onto his front and pressed on the back of his head with one boot. Ridley woke up a bit, gurgling into the puddle, but he didn’t seem to have the strength to fight back properly.
“We’ve found Ridley,” I informed everyone not present.
“Alive?” Alaric asked.
“Just a minute…” Ridley had stopped moving, and this time when Black felt for a pulse, he smiled. “No.”
“What about Beth and Rune?”
Pale was on the move again already, and this time we had one significant advantage. It didn’t matter how much noise we made.
“Beth? Rune? Are you there?”
CHAPTER 50 - BETHANY
PERHAPS WE SHOULD have stayed in the cellar after all. Rune was drowsy, my ankle had swollen to the size of a melon, and even if we could have kept walking, the rain clouds had covered up the stars and we had no idea which way to go. And it was cold. Freezing. I was soaked through, and my teeth wouldn’t stop chattering. I hugged Rune tighter as we curled against the base of a gnarled old tree.
“Stay awake,” I whispered to her. “Just a little longer.”
“I’m so…so tired.”
We needed a miracle now. More than once, I’d almost drifted off, and I knew that if I fell asleep, I’d never wake up. If we died out here, would anyone even find our bodies? Or would we get eaten by one of the creatures that we could hear moving around in the forest?
Bang.
I’d been on the verge of passing out, but the gunshot jolted me back to life. Somebody was far too close for comfort. Ridley?
Rune let out a quiet sob. “Is it him?”
Please, no.
Although maybe a quick death would be preferable to a long, drawn-out demise.
“I don’t know, but who else would be shooting out here?”
“We need to run again.”
I tried to get up and almost passed out from the pain. Rune hauled on my arm, and I clawed my way up the tree bark. One step, and fire burned through my leg.
“I-I don’t think I can even walk. What if we hide instead?”
“He’ll find us.”
Rune suddenly stiffened, and her fingers dug into my arm.
“What?” I whispered. “What is it?”
“I heard something. Shh.”
And then I heard it too. The sweetest sound in the world, drifting from a distance on the chilly breeze. A woman’s voice, and it was shouting my name.
“Beth? Are you there? Rune?”
“Over here!” Rune yelled. “We’re over here.”
I never thought I’d be glad to see four gun-toting commandos running in my direction, but how things had changed. Wait a second… Was that… Was that Emmy?
“Are you okay? Are you injured? You’ll have to excuse the make-up.”
I burst into tears.
“I need food,” Rune said, staying remarkably composed. “I’m diabetic. And I need insulin, too. Beth’s hurt her ankle.”
“We’ve got glucose gel, raisins, and injectable glucagon as well as insulin. Beth, let’s get some painkillers into you. Are you allergic to anything?”
“Assholes.”
“Don’t think there’s any of those left around here.”
“Eric Ridley… He was chasing us.”
“He’s no longer a problem.”
“He’s dead?”
She nodded. “We found him lying in the woods. Not quite sure what happened to him, to be honest.”
“About four hundred units of insulin,” Rune said.
Emmy looked at her with newfound respect. “You did that?”
“She’s so very brave,” I said.
“Do you want a job?” Emmy pressed a hand to her ear. “Ouch. Okay, Alaric says I’m not allowed to offer you a job.”
“He’s there?” I asked. “Alaric’s there?”
“Yup. He was backstop in case Ridley went in the other direction. You’ll just feel a little prick now.”
For some reason, a vision of Piers popped into my head, and I quickly shook it away.
“Can I talk to him?”
Emmy removed her headset and passed it over. “The earpieces are custom-made, so they won’t fit properly, but if you hold it close, you should be able to hear, okay? It’s an open channel, so don’t get too slushy.”
I pressed it to my ears with both hands. “Alaric?”
�
��Fuck, it’s good to hear your voice.”
“I’m sorry for all this trouble.”
“Sweetheart, it’s me who should be apologising. I’m the one who got you into this situation.”
“It wasn’t you. It was that madman. And it’s your friends who are here to help us, to save us… Uh, how are we going to get out of here? I can’t walk.”
“We’re going to carry you,” Emmy told me.
Somebody tucked a foil blanket around my shoulders, and I clutched it tightly around myself. Then lights came on, illuminating the whole sorry scene.
“Carry me? But it’s miles. I think.”
“Let us worry about that. Rune, will you be able to walk out of here once you’ve had some food? Or do you need a ride as well?”
“I can walk.”
Half an hour later, I was hallucinating nicely from the morphine as Emmy helped me to lie down on the stretcher the men had made out of two saplings and several ponchos. They wrapped another poncho over the top, and everything got to me—the drugs, the relief at being rescued, four days with hardly any sleep—and I basically passed out. The last thing I remember was being hoisted into the air.
I woke I don’t know how long later to the sound of singing. No, not singing. Chanting. The stretcher jostled in time to the words. I opened my eyes a crack and saw Rune beside me, riding on Emmy’s back as we marched through the woods.
Superman’s the man of steel,
but he ain’t no match for a Navy SEAL.
Wonder Woman’s fast as light,
but an English bitch will win that fight.
Iron Man is tough as fuck,
but even he can get rusted up.
Ridley was a massive dick,
but he got slayed by a little prick.
Heeeeey we’re Blackwood,
Get off your ass and follow us.
I’d follow these people anywhere just as soon as I could walk again. The pain had faded to a dull throb, but I couldn’t see myself putting weight on my ankle anytime soon.
“Beth!”
Oh gosh, I recognised that voice. I turned my head to the other side and saw Alaric looming over me, and then I was in his arms, halfway in the air as he squeezed the breath out of me. I didn’t care—after the death I’d been facing earlier, it would be a pleasant way to go. He loosened one arm enough to drag Rune into our little huddle, and then we were all crying.
“Beth,” he said again, burying his face in my shoulder. “Rune. Fuck, I’ve never been so scared as when I found out you were gone.”
“My next car’s going to be a tank,” I joked, then remembered what I’d done to the BMW. “Emmy, I’m so sorry I crashed your car. Something flew at us—it looked like a log—and I swerved to avoid it, and… I’ll pay for the damage. Somehow.”
“Oh, who gives a shit about the car? You and Rune are far more important than a heap of metal. At least the airbags went off.”
“Don’t worry about anything,” Alaric murmured in my ear. “We can fix it all later.”
“I could do with some ice for my ankle.”
“You could do with going to the hospital,” Emmy informed me. “Where’s the car?”
“I brought them both up to the old house,” Alaric told me. “All the hardware’s in the Suburban—I’m assuming the Queen of Darkness’ll want to make herself scarce.”
The woman who wasn’t Emmy glared at him but didn’t argue. I didn’t know her name. Nobody had introduced her, and she’d barely said a word in the woods.
“I’ll take my leave as well,” Black’s friend said. “Don’t forget to cancel the manhunt.”
“And call an ambulance,” Emmy added as she scrubbed at her face with wet wipes. She’d already stripped off weapons and goggles and removed a belt adorned with pouches. “Now that we look like search and rescue rather than a bunch of assassins, it’s time to bring in the authorities, although I wouldn’t exactly be devastated if we left Ridley’s corpse out there to rot.”
Neither would I. A funeral was too good for that man.
Black’s friend glanced over his shoulder as he walked away, a faint smile gracing his lips.
“Won’t be much left to bury once those hogs have finished with him.”
Hogs? “What hogs?”
“Long story,” Emmy said, grinning. “It can wait until later.”
Later… I’d live to see later now, and the feeling of relief was so overwhelming I burst into tears for the second time.
Alaric quickly wrapped me up in his arms, and Rune as well. “It’s okay. Nobody’ll hurt you again. I promise.”
“I thought I was dead. Everything was fading away, but then a gunshot woke me up.”
Alaric lifted me into the front seat of one of the SUVs and reclined it so I could rest while we waited. Rune crawled into the back seat, tucked herself under a blanket, and fell asleep in three seconds flat.
“That girl,” I whispered to Alaric as he sat on the door sill, gripping my hand. “She’s the smartest, bravest person I’ve ever met. You’ve done an amazing job bringing her up.”
“It was a joint effort.”
“I know. We talked a lot in the cellar, and she told me stories. She said she has four fathers instead of one.”
“Indeed she does. That’s why I’m Alaric instead of Dad—she calls us all by our first names because having Dad, Pop, Papa, and Pappy would be confusing. Plus Ravi’s only seventeen years older than she is.”
“That doesn’t upset you? That you’re her father, yet she thinks of your friends in that way too?”
“Not at all. Why would I begrudge her their love and protection? But now… Now I’m hoping she’ll have a mom too.”
“Me?” I choked out the word, and the tears threatened to make a reappearance.
“Well, I was planning to put an ad on the internet, but if you’re interested in the job…”
“Oh, gosh. I… I… Of course I am. I’ve always longed for children, and I never thought… But will Rune want that?”
“Yes,” she mumbled from the back seat. Oops. Not quite as asleep as I thought. “Don’t get mushy, Mom.”
How could I not? The tears came yet again, and I hurriedly tried to wipe them away when Black materialised behind Alaric.
“Cavalry’s five minutes out.”
Alaric kissed me softly on the forehead before he rose to his feet.
“I know we’ve had our differences,” he said to Black, “but I need to thank you for everything you did on this search. If you hadn’t taken control of this operation…”
“As I’ve suggested before, don’t dwell on what didn’t happen. Focus on what you want to happen tomorrow.” After a pause, Black held out a hand. “Truce?”
Alaric didn’t answer straight away, but after a long moment, he nodded and shook. “Truce.”
The first siren sounded in the distance, a high-pitched wail distorted by the trees. Well, my new life had certainly gotten off to an exciting start, hadn’t it?
CHAPTER 51 - ALARIC
“TIME FOR BED?” Alaric asked.
Beth had yawned twice in the last two minutes, and the movie was finished.
“I just need to take a painkiller before we go upstairs.”
It had been a long three days. Beth and Rune had spent the first of them at the hospital—a comprehensive check-up for both of them, plus X-rays on Beth’s ankle. She had a hairline fracture as well as a horrendous sprain, but they’d strapped it up and given her the good stuff when it came to medication. Both girls’ bruises were ugly—big purple welts—but they’d fade.
Then had come the hours of police interviews. Emmy’s lawyer had kept them as short as possible, but the cops still needed to know the details, and the Navy too since Ridley had escaped on their watch. Nobody seemed bothered by Ridley’s death. Reporters were lauding the “unnamed teenager” who’d been kidnapped at random along with her stepmom and somehow managed to escape from the fiend. Media outlets in Afghanistan and Rojava seemed parti
cularly happy with the turn of events.
Beth and Rune had come back to the Riverley estate yesterday afternoon, both still exhausted. Black had offered the guest house again, and although Alaric would have preferred Hillside House and its privacy, the high walls and advanced security at Riverley won out for now. Rune needed it.
As Alaric had feared it might, Rune’s stoicism in the immediate aftermath of the rescue had faded now that the immediate danger had gone. The same thing had happened in Thailand. She’d spent weeks fearful of being alone, terrified her old captors would come and snatch her back.
When they’d left the hospital in Phuket and taken her to the rented apartment, of course she’d said she was okay. She always did. Alaric hadn’t needed a degree in psychology to understand that when they first met, she’d been afraid that if she put a foot wrong, they’d send her to an orphanage. They’d had to teach her that it was fine to have an opinion. Okay to rock the boat now and then. Rune had come a long way in five years, only for Ridley to knock her back again. But they’d work on it, the same way they always did.
Last night, Judd had slept on a fold-out bed by her window with a gun under his pillow, Naz stayed in the room next door to hers, and Ravi took the couch downstairs. This morning, she’d at least looked as if she’d gotten some sleep. Once again, they’d get through this together, and this time, they’d have help from Beth too.
Her tears had dried up, and she’d even joked about having the full set now that she’d broken both ankles. Resilient. That was the best word to describe Beth. Resilient and tired.
“I’ll get you a glass of water.”
“Wish it was wine.”
“Did I mention I have a share in an Italian vineyard?”
“The estate you told my father about? I thought it was abandoned. You said it was just sitting there.”
“Turns out it isn’t.”
“Ah.” Beth suddenly smiled and nodded to herself. “You bought the vineyard with Emmy, didn’t you? You were together once?”
“A long time ago. Are you okay with that?”
