Behind the Facade

by Rebecca Heap

  She glanced sharply across at Sebastian. His gaze was on the road but she spotted a small sly smile creasing his face.

  “Please could you take your hand off my knee,” she demanded tightly.

  He turned to her, his smile broadening. He removed his hand only to transfer it to her upper thigh. “Is that better?” he asked his eyes widening in an exaggerated expression of artlessness.

  “No!” she asserted, swiping at his hand. “Take your hands off me!”

  She’d reached her limits when it came to being misused, and wasn’t about to be mauled by her father’s lackey.

  Sebastian glared at her now. “You’re not showing much gratitude are you?” he grumbled. “After all my hard work rescuing you, the least you could do is be a little more agreeable.”

  His gaze returned to the road but his attention was diverted by the sound of a low groan coming from the back of the car. He looked at Kate again and nodded his head in that direction. “I bet boyo back there didn’t have to ask permission. I bet he gave you a right bloody good seeing to!”

  Kate gasped and was too stunned at first to find words in answer to this. The blood drained from her face but soon returned in full force, lit by the outrage in her belly. “You can’t speak to me that way! He never touched me and what makes you think you can? Do you think I won’t tell my father what you’ve just said to me?”

  “It’s not going to be just me you know…everyone will assume he’s fucked you. You’re damaged goods darlin’, so don’t get all hoity toity with me.” He seized her hand now and placed it deliberately on his crotch. “Come on, be a good sport. Show me what you’ve learnt.”

  Kate hastily yanked her hand away and spat, “Get lost! Just leave me alone!”

  She sat tense and shaking, her arms drawn in and her hands curled into fists. This was just beyond bearing. She’d thought she was safe but now she wasn’t so sure. Had she exchanged one demon for another? She hoped Sebastian had at last got the message. He seemed to have gone back to concentrating on his driving.

  She was wrong. Sebastian’s blood was up and he wasn’t about to be denied. Kate failed to notice him discreetly undoing his flies. In one rapid movement, he unclipped her seatbelt, grabbed her head, gripping her hair painfully, and yanked it towards his lap. “Don’t think you get away with it that easy. I’m due a thank you and that pretty mouth of yours needs to start giving me one.”

  Kate screamed and tried to struggle out of his grasp but he was far too strong. Just before her face was crushed into his groin, her eyes fell on the discarded taser on the dashboard. Whilst trying with little success to move her head and combat his downward pull, she also blindly reached for the taser. Her flailing fingers glanced it and almost knocked it on to the floor and out of reach but she somehow managed to catch one edge. She improved her grip, struggling for breath as her face was unpleasantly rammed against his obscene erection.

  Sebastian was laughing uproariously and ignorant of the fact Kate had acquired the taser, believing her completely defenceless. He briefly took his eyes from the road and altered his hold, tugging on her hair and forcing her head up.

  “You can do better than that!” he berated, but before he could say anything more, she’d lodged the taser against his neck and shrieked, “You’re right, I can!”

  She discharged it without any thought for the consequences, engulfed as she was by the compelling need to stop him. Kate was briefly pleased with the results but then appalled. The electric current that shuddered through him was powerful, the taser being a modified illegal version with higher voltage capacity and set to full charge. He bellowed in pain and fell back, convulsing.

  Kate wasted crucial seconds gaping in shock at the paralysed Sebastian. She reached for the steering wheel in sudden panic but, by this time, the car had veered towards the concrete wall of an approaching motorway bridge. They were still doing at least 60mph and, in her alarm, she overcorrected and was unable to avoid a car travelling even faster and trying to overtake in the offside lane. The Range Rover clipped the other car and, with no-one to properly control the steering or use the brakes, it span around into the face of oncoming traffic. Kate screamed in terror as the cacophonous sound of honking car horns filled her ears and the car completed its turn to slam punishingly into the safety barrier. The last thing she saw was the horrified face of her abductor in the rear view mirror.

  Sean opened his eyes. When he had first come round in the back of the car, the pain in his skull had been excruciating. He had remembered the fight with Sebastian and the brutal blow to the head he had given him. He now had the mother of all headaches but at least he no longer had to fight to maintain consciousness. He gingerly unfolded his crumpled body and moaned as his injured leg voiced its displeasure. It slowly subsided to a more muted ache, joining the other competing aches of his abused body. He quickly checked himself over and, though he was in pretty poor shape, he was relieved to find that at least he didn’t seem to have picked up any new injuries. He could hear groans coming from the front of the car but they sounded decidedly masculine and he was concerned that he could not hear any sounds at all coming from Kate.

  He was still bound and, ironically it seemed, this state had probably prevented him from being hurt in the impact and may even have saved his life. The dynamics of the crash, in conjunction with his own weight, had caused the anchor point to yield. As he twisted around to examine it, he saw that the metal ring had stayed attached to the interior of the car but had sheared away in a jagged line. It didn’t take long for him to deduce that he could use this fortunate occurrence to his advantage.

  He pulled his tied hands up and away from the now detached grapnel and then shimmied back again and began to hurriedly rub the rope binding his hands against the serrated metal. He hissed in pain on a few occasions, as the improvised saw caught skin instead of hemp but he got through the rope surprisingly swiftly. Once his hands were released, it took him a minute to massage the life back into his arms and hands and he winced at the cramping pains inflicted by his returning circulation.

  He untied the rest of his bonds as fast as his reluctant, objecting body would allow. Luckily, either Sebastian had left the rear door unlocked or the mechanism had been disengaged in the crash. As soon as he was out of the car, he staggered round to the passenger side. At least they had ended up out of traffic and on the hard shoulder but he was dismayed to see how much damage had been done to the car on that side. The warped door squealed in protest as he forced it open.

  He cringed as he caught sight of Kate’s sagging, lifeless body. He could barely see the colour of her hair, with all the blood that was covering her, and she was splayed out awkwardly over the air bag that had discharged. Sebastian seemed oblivious to Kate; he appeared to be semi-conscious and had his head in his hands, muttering half articulated curses to himself. Michael felt an overpowering rage wash over him; it was this fucker’s fault they had crashed. Admittedly, it had allowed him to escape but he hoped fervently that it wasn’t at the expense of Kate’s life. He had caught some of what had gone on before the accident and he knew that Sebastian had assaulted Kate somehow and she had managed to retaliate.

  Much as he would have loved to have murdered Sebastian now, especially when no-one would have been any the wiser, he contained his fury and concentrated on getting Kate out of the car. He knew this might not be a good idea, especially if she had any spinal or internal injuries, but he was worried that she wasn’t breathing. The consequences of him moving her would be irrelevant anyway, if she died before the emergency services arrived. That’s if she wasn’t dead already.

  If she had been a heavier person he might have struggled, especially since he was weakened by his own injuries, but he managed to wrestle her out of the car and on to the ground. She was completely unresponsive and he immediately began CPR. He had yearned to kiss her again but this type of kissing wasn’t what he’d had in mind. He knew that he could not stay with her for long, as he simply could not affor
d to be around when the authorities arrived.

  Something twisted inside him when he looked at her bloodied, battered face. She appeared so badly hurt and he wondered whether there was really any point in trying to resuscitate her. He stopped the compressions after a minute or so and checked for a pulse, not expecting to find anything there. When he felt a weak flickering, he kept his hand there for a good minute he was so doubtful. The emotion that flooded him was so overwhelming that tears rushed into his eyes. He quickly began mouth to mouth again. A weak cough and a fluttering of her eyelids, reassured him that she was reviving.

  As the sound of sirens grew in volume, he laid his face next to hers and whispered hoarsely, “I’m so sorry, a chuisle. So very sorry for everything I put you through.” He then put her in the recovery position and rose clumsily to his feet.

  A very dishevelled and bloody Sebastian appeared in front of him, having finally emerged from the car.

  “You!” he began, but Sean had no time to exchange pleasantries. He limped rapidly away from the scene.

  CHAPTER 11

  Charlie screeched into the ambulance bay at the hospital and sprang out of the car. “Hey! You can't park there!” someone yelled but Charlie didn't even hear them. His heart pounded deafeningly in his ears. He lifted the lifeless girl from the back seat, her body flopping like a rag doll in his arms. The sheet covering her was black with blood. A sob erupted from him and his knees almost collapsed from under him, her negligible weight not a factor, just the weight of the despair that overpowered him.

  “Somebody help me!” he screamed, staggering towards the nearest entrance. He heard raised voices and a flurry of activity around him. The girl was lifted out of his arms. He heard somebody yell, “Get me a crash trolley here now!”

  Someone put a hand on his shoulder and guided him over to a chair. It was a woman in a blue hospital smock. She started talking to him and he watched her mouth as it moved but his brain just didn't register the words. She may as well have been talking in an alien language. She frowned, smacked her hands on her knees in a gesture of frustration and moved away.

  Charlie sat there for a little while longer, just gazing in to space, too shell-shocked to unscramble what was left of his overloaded brain and senses. Someone came again and sat next to him but he did not acknowledge them. A warm hand was placed on the one he had clenched in his lap. He looked numbly down at it.

  “I know you're in shock, mate but you need to talk to us. We don't even know who the girl you brought in is.” The girl had not made it and the hospital had already called the police. But the young doctor speaking thought it was prudent not to mention either of these facts to the man beside him.

  Charlie eventually looked across at the medic. He had short dark hair, a smooth rosy face and a smiling mouth. He looked about the same age as he was, but Charlie felt about a million years older. The doctor hadn't said as much but Charlie could read it in the way his smile failed to dispel the sorrow in his brown eyes: the girl hadn't survived.

  Charlie was about to speak when someone shouted, “Where's the idiot who parked their car in the middle of the ambulance bay?”

  Charlie glanced up. He didn't care about where he had left the car but regret over Brenna pierced him like an already overused knife.

  The tall, angry orderly must have seen this guilt in his face and descended upon him. “Is it yours?”

  Charlie stood up but the man didn't wait for his reply. “Can you kindly move it out of the effing way?” he asked belligerently. “Don't you realise that your stupidity could mean the difference between life and death?” Charlie mouth twitched at this unknowingly shrewd observation.

  Before the man could continue his tirade, he held up his hands and said, “I'm moving it. I'm moving it!” and ran outside.

  He heard the doctor shout something after him but he ignored it. The man was probably worried about him doing a runner but he had no intention of doing that. He knew he'd been in a bit of a state in there but he hadn't gone through everything and let that girl die for nothing. He would go back in to the hospital and speak to the police about what he had stumbled across.

  He eventually found a legitimate parking space some distance from the A&E entrance. He bought a parking ticket, the thought of having his usual rant about paying for parking at a hospital flitting through his brain but barely registering. Instead he felt a brief and bitter nostalgia for the time when he thought such irritations were worth getting stressed over.

  As he bent to stick the ticket on his car window, his eyes fell on his phone still sitting in its holder. His thoughts returned to Brenna and her dreadful desperation to get in touch with someone before she died.

  He picked up the phone and looked at it. The number might still be logged. He exited the SatNav function and saw the number on his screen, still there waiting to be dialled. He would forever debate the wisdom of giving that poor girl the phone in the first place, but perhaps he owed it to her to ring that number.

  Entering the car, he sat down in the driver's seat to make the phone call. He pressed the green dial key and listened tensely to the line ring out. It connected and he immediately began to speak, babbling in his nervousness, until he heard a loud tone and realised that he had been transferred to voicemail. He took some deep breaths to compose himself and began to leave a more coherent message, introducing himself and giving the girl’s name. He knew he must sound like a crank, as he didn’t even know who he was talking to. Because of this, he was reluctant to go into any detail about how he had come to have Brenna in his possession. Nevertheless, he mentioned that Bespoke Cars were to blame and gave the name of the hospital. He couldn't bring himself to say that the girl was dead. Nobody wanted to hear that kind of news as a recorded message.

  He couldn't decide if he was relieved or disappointed that he hadn't managed to speak to someone. He sighed and pushed the phone into his back pocket. He remained sitting for a few minutes, resting his head on the steering wheel. A persuasive part of him wanted to just start the engine and get the hell away. He'd done the best he could and he wasn't sure he had the courage or the strength to relive what had happened and attempt to explain his actions. However, the police would no doubt track him down using the hospital cameras and his car registration. Driving away would just make his story even harder for them to swallow.

  The slam of the passenger side door brought him back to his senses. His head snapped up and he found a stranger sitting next to him. Charlie lurched back in surprise but the man placed a restraining hand on his shoulder.

  “Please don't be alarmed Charlie,” he urged in a pleasantly soothing voice. “I'm here to look after you.”

  He was well-built, dark haired and had the kind of dazzling good looks that could easily have given him a successful modelling career. Charlie allowed himself to relax, not pausing to question why this man knew his name, the light of this man's beauty blinding him, as it had many others. In a society obsessed with appearance, we don't like to believe that a beautiful face does anything other than reflect inherent goodness.

  He felt pressure at his side and looked down to see the barrel of a gun pressed against him. He gasped in surprise and stared with horrified dismay into the dark eyes of his accoster. When the man's gaze locked on to him, his composure shattered instantly like a blown bulb. The eyes were an unusual purple-black colour but lacked any warmth or depth; they were as soulless as the eyes of a carnivorous insect.

  Charlie opened his mouth to scream but the scream was reduced to a choked cry of pain as the breath was jolted from him. The gun had been used to administer a well-aimed jab to his abdomen.

  “Do as I say or I will kill you.” The man's soft tones had now taken on the sibilant menace of a snake.

  Charlie closed his eyes. The world seemed to tilt for a moment. Would he ever awaken from this nightmare? When Charlie reopened them, the man was still there smiling at him. There was something innately creepy about it, like the false human smiles they put on dogs
in a famous television advert.

  “Drive,” he commanded.

  “Where to?” Charlie asked, trying not quite successfully to keep the fear out of his voice.

  “To your house, of course,” the man replied as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. He prodded Charlie again with the gun and his eerie smile widened as Charlie grunted in protest. Charlie nodded in mute acquiescence and started the car engine.

  As they drove onto the main road, he watched in his rear view mirror as the lights of the hospital building diminished, his hard won resolve fading with them.

  He drove home, the gun in his side a constant irritation, along with his companion's maddening grin. It did cross his mind to try and cause an accident but he never attempted anything. Perhaps this was because, in some strange way, after all the agonising decisions he’d had to make it was almost a relief to hand responsibility over to someone else. He also clung to the belief that this man was not a killer and, if he did as he was told, he would come out of this alive.

  He parked the car up in his garage and killed the engine. He somehow managed to will his legs to move and he staggered out of the car. The gun was now swiftly relocated to his back and he was marched up to his back door. His shredded nerves had now yielded their tenuous hold on his body and he stabbed at the lock with his key like a drunken man. Once inside, the man gestured for him to sit down on the sofa.

  “Now then, Charlie,” said the handsome man, his eyes crawling over his face. “My name is Sebastian.”

  Charlie looked at him warily. Why was this man introducing himself?

  Sebastian continued, his voice light and conversational. “I have no grievance with you. I have no feelings regarding you whatsoever.”

  He crouched in front of Charlie and slowly ran the cold barrel of the gun down his face, cocking his head, his dark eyes dancing with devilish mirth. “I'd just as happily fuck you as kill you.” Charlie smothered a whimper. Did this man know his sexual orientation? Was he threatening to rape him?