by Aria Ford
“Yes, boss,” the other man, one of the first who had spoken, replied.
“Okay,” he sighed. “So now things get fun.”
“Boss…” the man sounded miserable.
“What?”
“I don’t think we should. I mean, last time…”
The first man sounded sad. The boss sounded furious when he answered.
“Last time?”
“Boss, none of us like killing.”
He laughed. “I don’t like being boss. Not for you lot. But I do it. So do it.”
I could hear his gang weren’t happy. Which made me feel a whole lot better. Not that I really thought they’d rebel and refuse to do it, but because they were not willing to kill me. That gave me faith in people. It didn’t stop me being absolutely terrified.
“What if he does what you told him to?”
“You think I really want that?” a laugh. “Yes, I want to take what he has. But I want to hurt him. And this will do that.”
I knew then that I was going to be killed. Whoever this was had hated Alexander with devotion for years.
The only thing that puzzled me was who was last time? Who was it these people had killed. Was it someone of Alexander’s, or some other case altogether.
“Alex…” I murmured. The moment I did it, I realized how that would not help anything. Now they knew who I was.
“See?” the first man said. “We have the right girl.”
I felt the atmosphere in the room change. It was as if the light dimmed. They all knew now that they would kill me. I felt a strange sense fill me. It was a sense of regret. Of goodbye. I was absolutely not ready to die. Not now. Now when my life was happy in a way it had never been before now. I thought of the kids, of little Cammi and Jack who had been so important to me. I saw their angelic faces and I wept. I would never see them again. I saw another face, severe with its hollow cheeks and perfect nose, its level brown eyes and its severe hair. I would never see him again. Never.
“Alex,” I said again. This time I was sobbing. I couldn’t help it. They were secondary to the drama that was mine, the trauma that was mine. I was going to stop living. To stop waking up to sunshine and going to bed with the stillness of night and the presence of my lover beside me. I would never see the kids grow up.
“Shut her up,” one of the men said, disgusted.
But I would not shut up. They could kill me, it was true. But they were going to do that anyway. This was my life. These were my last few glorious minutes, and they could not stop me. I sobbed. The more I remembered, the more I sobbed. His hands in my hair. His kisses.
“Alex…” I sobbed. I heard someone move in the room, felt a blow on the side of my head. It did not affect me. I convulsed, my tears running down my cheeks. “Alex,” I whispered. “Alex. Alex.”
I was hysterical and knew it. But it was the saddest I could remember being. I started screaming, his name on my lips every time I did.
“Shut her up! Hit her, put a gag on. Anything!”
The man was joined by another and they did both. The one hit me on the head and the other one lifted my head. They would not shut me up, not unless they shot me.
“Alex!” I screamed.
A sudden shot rang out.
At least, I thought it was a shot. A fine dust sprayed across me and the room filled with shouting and confusion. I coughed. There was dust filling the room. And sunlight.
The men were rushing about and shouting, and I had no idea what was going on. I felt some stones fall onto the skin of my face and I jerked back, wanting to shake them off: cement dust makes me itchy.
Cement. The wall.
I dimly saw that someone must have infiltrated. The running feet were probably my captors. I heard a shot, and then another. I stopped trying to slide toward the patch of sunlight and lay very still, praying no one would hit me.
I heard voices shouting, swearing. None of them were voices I knew, besides the voices I knew from my recent captors’ conversation. Then, the sounds became less frequent. I lay exactly where I was and listened as two more shots rang out and then there was silence except for a crunch where two men walked on stones near me.
“There!”
I knew that voice.
“Alex!”
I was crying. A pair of feet ran across the crunching dust and stopped at my head. Someone bent down and a hand reached out. The touch I knew so well stroked my hair and someone was whispering my name, over and over.
“Emma. Emma?”
“Alex…” I was suddenly so tired. Everything seemed an effort, even opening my eyes. My head dropped forward and I heaved in a breath, and then lay still. At the moment, Everything hurt and everything was too hard. All I could do was sleep.
“Emma!” Alex shouted and then called out to someone. “Jan! Ric. For pity’s sake! Scissors. A knife?”
One of them must have had something, for I felt him stretch across me to where my hands were bound by my sides. I felt a sudden chill on my arm as a blade passed below string and then the sound of rope, fraying as he cut. The knife bumped me and I grunted in shock.
“Emma! Oh, no. Did I cut you?”
He sounded so concerned that the small part of my mind that remained conscious outside the haze of exhaustion that overran me wanted to laugh. I was going to be shot, I wanted to say. And you’re scared of getting me on the top layer of the skin with a bread knife?
Then my hands were unbound. I felt the sudden warmth of blood flowing to them and then the agony struck. I had no idea how long I had been like that, but my fingers sure did hurt. I knew it would be even more painful when he did my toes.
“Are you okay, eh?”
I gritted my teeth and nodded. “Think…so.”
“Good! Thank Heavens!”
I wanted to laugh again. He sounded so correct, so British, as she should be spoken, but my body was simply too exhausted. I made a sighing noise, then collapsed.
I woke up later. I was in the back of a car. The motion hurt my head, which was, now that I thought about it, in agony. I groaned.
“Emma!” I heard his voice. “You’re awake now!”
I blinked. Where was I? It was Alex in the front seat, but who was driving? And where had I just gone to?
Memory filtered into my agonizing head slowly. The room. The men. My rescue.
“Safe,” I murmured.
I heard a funny sound from the front seat. It could have been laughter, but in truth I think someone sobbed.
“Yes,” he said, and his voice was shaky, so it was Alex himself who sobbed. “Yes, you’re safe. We’re going to go home, now. It’s okay. You’re safe.”
I sighed. I closed my eyes. I felt myself drifting off to sleep, then, because I knew it was okay.
Alex was here and we were going home and it would be safe.
Chapter 14
Alex
I was beside Klaas as we drove back. I could feel my heart pounding with every inch of that trip back. We had Emma, that was true. But we had no idea if Team Two was fighting the kidnappers. And Emma was in serious conditions.
I shouted at Klaas. He had to go faster. Faster. We had to see a doctor, and as soon as we possibly could.
“Mr. Carring,” he said quietly. “This is my job. I don’t tell you how to do your one, do I?”
I wanted to hit him. I think I actually almost did, but thought against it at the last minute. He must have seen me unclench my hand, as he gave a short chuckle.
“I know that’s outta line, sir. But had to be said. You know.”
“I know,” I said, feeling my body suddenly weaker with the stress and the needless arguing.
Whoever it was didn’t say anything, and we were alone together, all three of us. I felt my eyelids heavier now and I closed my eyes, drifting into sleep.
Sleep was short lived, however. Someone—Alex, because I smelled his aftershave—carried me up some steps. Then he bellowed at someone.
“Paula! Get Dr. Harris down here
.”
Chapter 15
Emma
I felt bad that he was shouting so unnecessarily and I tried to say it but the words refused to come out. I closed my eyes and let him carry me into another room and put me down on a bed. That made me even sleepier and I felt my eyelids become heavy and I stifled a yawn. Everything still hurt from having been tied so tightly with ropes and so I grunted in pain.
“Dr. Harris?”
I heard good-quality male shoes in the corridor, sticking a little to the tiles in a way that proves they are brand-new shoes. Then I felt a hand touch my head.
“Seems okay to me, sir.”
“For pity’s sake, man! I don’t pay you to stand here. Go have a look!”
I felt the touch probe more gently and then my head was consumed with burning pain.
“She has a fractured skull.”
I heard that sentence, and then I passed out.
I don’t know how long I slept. I only know that I woke much later with no idea where I was. I moved my feet down and they slid on cool fabric. I moved my shoulder back and it slid beneath a coverlet of what was obviously the same kind of cloth, or at least the same kind of cloth. I didn’t say anything but I guessed I was in a bed somewhere in the house. I was proved right.
“Emma? Emma! I’m here. It’s okay. Wake up. Do try to wake up? Doctor said you shouldn’t sleep too much.”
“Thanks.” I was being ironic. I really badly wished to sleep. He heard the irony and chuckled.
“Emma,” he said, his voice sounded raw. “I’m so glad you’re back now. You were kidnapped.”
“I know.” I was tired. Why was he telling me things that I knew? I wanted to shout at him for that alone, but I was too tired.
“You’re here, now,” Alex was saying. His hand stroked my hair and I bit my lower lip and wished he would avoid the tender place. He did so, if closely. “I had to promise the kids I’d bring you in. They’re beside themselves. They keep thinking you’re going to die like…”
“Like.”
I made it a statement, not a question. He sighed. “I thought I told you?”
“No.” I was angry, actually. I simply didn’t have the energy or I would have shouted it at him. But I didn’t, so I didn’t.
“Well,” he said, “I had a wife. You knew that…Jack and Cammi’s mom. Remember?”
I tried to make an affirmative noise, but my whole head hurt, and so I nodded. Yes.
“Well, she was my first wife. I married her. They shot her. Years later, after the company really went big.”
“What?” Even in my complete exhaustion, I had enough energy for that statement. I had no idea his first wife had died. That she had been shot by the same people who took me seemed uncanny. What did they get from doing such horrible things to the wives or friends of Alexander Carring?
“They shot her like they planned to do to you,” he said quietly. “I couldn’t let that happen and I wouldn’t. I came here straight away.”
I felt sobered. They were not just making empty threats. They really had meant to end my life. I felt really scared and I reached for his hand with my aching one and held it fast.
“It’s okay.”
I felt him stroke my hair again and again. He kept on repeating those words and when I did fall asleep I fell asleep with understanding.
It took three days for me to be well enough to get out of bed in the morning. But eventually I managed it. I held his arm and together we made a tour of the sitting room, starting at the crackling fire to the door at the other end of the hall. Then, as we sat side by side in front of the fireplace, me snuggling up closer, he told me.
“When I was married for a few years, I started making serious wealth,” he explained slowly. “I bought other companies. Sometimes, during the mergers, people lost their jobs. Sometimes the people who had owned the companies were not satisfied. Sometimes companies had managers who didn’t like my ideas and so they were retrenched.”
I saw where this was heading. “They resented you.”
He nodded. I felt it even though my eyes were closed. My head was on his chest and even the richness of his voice filled me.
“Yes, they did.” He nodded again, then picked up his story. “Two people at a phone company lost their jobs because of me. I wouldn’t have believed it possible but they made a gang. They were terrible at their work, apparently. But they still got the jobs, and so they should not have hated, but they did.”
I felt my hand tighten at that statement. “They shot your wife? From jealousy?”
I must have sounded absolutely horrified. I was.
He gave another hollow chuckle. “I had actually offered them other things. I tried to get down to the bottom of this, but they weren’t buying.”
“They hated you,” I said softly. I knew, now, that I had been right in what I had heard. The leader would do anything to Alex to get him.
“Right…” I whispered. I wanted to tell him he was right, but I wasn’t sure he had understood me. All I knew was that my head was aching and I felt sick and very sleepy and I knew I was dozing again.
“They wanted to kill me,” I whispered.
The laugh was brief and dry. “You.” He sighed. “They wanted to destroy me first Make me destroy all I had built up.” he sighed. I heard his voice wobble. “I should have done it,” he said, and he really was crying. His face was soaked in tears and I could feel them on my one shoulder and he still rocked, crying. “If I had done as they asked, if I had destroyed everything, they would have immediately left her alone. They said so.”
“No,” I said. I stroked the side of his face. I knew now that was not true. That was not what they had told me. The leader planned to end my life and he always had. He hated Alexander.
“No?” He stopped sobbing.
“Alex,” I said. This time I found the strength to turn a little so that I could face him directly. “I was there. I know they planned to kill her always. They were going to kill me. You didn’t have to give them anything. They would have killed me. They would also have destroyed you.”
“Emma?” he said, and he had shifted so he looked directly into my eyes, long legs folded under him where he sat with his knees on the floor before me.
“Uh?”
“If they had killed you, they would have destroyed me anyway. Emma! How can you not know how I love you?”
I stared. My head ached, but even on a day when I was perfectly healthy that would make no sense. He loved me? Alexander loved me? Alexander Carring?
“You…love me?”
He laughed again. “You silly woman!” he said, ruffling my hair in a teasing kind of manner. “how could you possibly not see that?”
I laughed. He laughed. We kissed. We sat there all afternoon, talking to each other, reassuring each other that we were not going to disappear. That it really was okay now.
We slept together in the big bed. Later, when I woke and the first light touched me, we made love, then we slid out of bed and sat in front of the fireplace.
“I can’t believe you are okay,” Alex said, something he had said over and over again for the last day or so. I laughed.
“Yes, I am okay,” I said, and kissed his cheek.
While we sat there he explained what had happened between my captivity and his finding me. He had called a security firm that helped him find my location: a disused warehouse on the outskirts of town. They had found me. They had sat for a long while deciding how to save me.
“I was all for the suggestion of blowing the place off the map. But then, that would have hit you and that would have been the worst thing. So we just came inside.”
He explained how there were explosives in the cellar at his home. It had been a collection he saw and bought purely for interest, not because he actually wanted them. He and his helper, someone called Klaas, had set them against one wall and blown it in. Then they had come in and saved my life.
“Emma,” he said again, stroking my hair. “Emma, I
can’t lose you.”
We dozed again with each other held in a firm grasp. We had made our choice.
Epilogue
We were married in a private ceremony. Alex had wanted it in some exotic place or other, but I wanted it where my friends could be there. So we had it just outside town. The kids had attended. Of everyone there, they were the only ones who seemed as if they had known all along.
“You might have thought they planned it,” we chuckled that night as we lay in bed together.
He laughed. “I know. They kept telling me they always knew. I don’t know how.”
I smiled. “Well, they’re very smart kids, you know,” I paused, kissing him on the side of his face, “and they get some of that from you.”
“Some of it?” He roared with laughter. “All of it, probably.”
He kissed me and we were silent a while.
I snuggled in closer to him, thoughts alive with the memory of our lovemaking from the previous night: how passionate and tender it had been, how loving.
“Emma,” he whispered, breathing into my hair. “I want you. We could…”
I giggled.
He grew quiet and I waited for him to say something. I had such excitement building in me.
“Emma?”
“Mm?”
“What were you going to say?”
I smiled, then. I couldn’t help it. I was so, so elated. “Well,” I paused, unsure of how to begin. I had no idea, but I decided to say it straight. “Well, I’m going to have a baby.”
Deathly hush. Then,
“Emma?”
“Uh huh?”
“You’re really sure?” he said hesitantly. “How do you know? I mean…”
I laughed, then. “How do I know? Alex, don’t be daft.”
He ruffled my hair, breathing his warm breath into the roots of it as he chuckled again.
“I don’t believe it!” he said, and his face was split with happiness. “Emma. Really?” he laughed. “Okay, okay! I surrender. Anyone who didn’t was certainly going to have something happen to them.”
