Storm Child (Dangerous Friends Book 3)

by Jennifer Young

  ‘It’s certainly not like any one I’d want to stay in.’ There was an expression of disgust on his face as he looked down at three mattresses on the floor. ‘Poor kids. Not even a kitchen. I wonder how long they’ve been living like this and thinking they were onto a good thing, or fearing the alternative was worse?’

  ‘It’s worse than I thought,’ I said, my voice hushed by this scene, overhung as it was by a sense not just of despair, but of resignation. ‘I hope they’re all right. I hope they are.’

  ‘Bastards.’ Anger rang in his voice. ‘It’s a pity Nick didn’t look a bit harder. He said he’d had a chat with the guy.’

  Nick Riley didn’t interest me. ‘Do you think the man really is her boyfriend?’

  ‘If he is, that just makes it worse. I don’t imagine she had much choice in the matter.’

  ‘He must be old enough to be her father.’ I looked out of the window. It faced north, where there was nothing to offer anyone any hope, no promise of any other human habitation. Nothing but a windswept moor, some more struggling trees and, if they were lucky, the occasional deer on the horizon. ‘You’d give up,’ I said, in a hushed voice, ‘if you were stuck here. Wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Yes. Now let’s get out of here. I don’t imagine there’s much more we can do until Nick arrives.’

  Of the two of us, I was nearer the front door, which I’d thought I’d left open but which was now firmly closed. Strange: I hadn’t thought there was much wind. I raised my hand to pull it towards me, but it remained firmly shut. ‘Marcus.’

  He’d realised. He shouldered past me and tried the door himself. ‘Looks like we weren’t so smart, doesn’t it?’

  I remembered then, that someone had tried to run his car off the road. I remembered the flash of blue ahead of us on the hillside that I hadn’t mentioned to him. I remembered Celina’s teasing, desperate text. I don’t want him to kill you.

  ‘It won’t do them any good. We’ve already told the police. They’ve got nothing to gain from hurting us.’

  ‘No. But maybe they don’t know that.’

  Marcus hadn’t wanted to come. I should have listened to him. ‘This is my fault.’

  ‘It’s no-one’s fault. You couldn’t make me go somewhere I didn’t choose.’ His lips narrowed.

  But I’d done just that, and it wasn’t any excuse to claim that once again I’d fallen victim to my good nature, trying to help someone and being let down. Incongruously, my mother’s voice echoed in my head. Don’t waste your time, Bella. No good deed goes unpunished. ‘Perhaps they just want to keep us here while they get away.’

  ‘Let’s hope it’s that.’ He tried one of the windows. ‘Locked. I don’t suppose they’ll have left the key around and, in any case, there are the bars to get through.’

  I tried the window at the north side of the building, with the same result. ‘Oh God. Look. You can just see there’s a car in the woods. You can’t see it from the farmyard.’

  ‘Is it the one that Celina drove off in?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Blue?’ he asked, with an old man’s sigh. ‘Volvo?’

  ‘Yes. How did you—?’

  ‘Close encounters. Too close. Remind me not to criticise Nick for not checking things out thoroughly in future. I’m as bad.’

  I looked at him, and his expression was sombre. ‘It’s just to keep us out of the way.’

  ‘To be honest with you, Bronte, I’m not sure whether we aren’t better off if it is. But I always like to keep my options open, so I’d like to find a way out, if there is one.’

  ‘There’s the skylight. If it isn’t barred.’

  ‘No. Locked, but not barred. Looks like that’s our only way out.’ He stretched upwards, managing to press the tips of his fingers against it. ‘Yes. It’s not budging. I can’t quite reach. Pass me up one of those chairs and I’ll see if I can force it.’

  The chairs weren’t robust, but they were all we had. I took a second to choose the strongest of them, hoping that it would bear his weight, and as I picked it up and turned back towards him, an unwelcome smell struck my nostrils. ‘Marcus, can you smell petrol?’ And even as I spoke, I saw something being poked beneath the door.

  Cardboard. Wet cardboard. For a moment, I stared at it in puzzlement and then, just as I understood what it was, our situation turned perilous and flames leapt beneath the door.

  Chapter 36

  ‘What’s your friend doing?’

  ‘God knows.’ Finally accepting the inevitability of defeat, the collapse of his small slice of empire, Cas turned the car up into the hills. ‘Cleared off, I hope. I don’t think I particularly want to meet him when he realises we’re going to turn ourselves in.’

  A shiver ambushed him. Dougie’s record of violence was bad enough, and in the short term he had to be prepared to confront it. It was enough for him to hope that the police got to them before his business partner.

  Beside him, Celina’s face showed that she understood, belatedly, just how hard Yer Man actually was. She reached out a timid hand and laid it on his arm. He tried to divine her mind, whether she thought what he’d done was good for her or not, whether she thought he could have treated her better or worse. As this adventure moved towards a cataclysmic end, she must know that she had no-one else to depend upon but him. And he’d let her down.

  ‘You have me. We have each other.’

  ‘For about fifteen minutes, until they cart me off to prison.’ He swung off the main road, over the cattle grid, towards the cottage, his reluctance evident in their slow progress, in the grinding of the gears. Turning his head, he offered her the feeble reparation of a smile, but she was staring out of the window, her chin stuck out in a last attempt at defiance.

  ‘I hope the others are all right.’

  ‘Dougie will have taken them somewhere safe.’ He eased his way through the trees. ‘Is that his car, up there?’ That was bad news. It meant that Dougie hadn’t had time to get them away, and that he’d have to face up to him. ‘Let’s hope the police are here soon.’

  It was surprising that they weren’t already there, because he’d taken his time heading up and now he wished he’d taken even longer.

  There was another car parked outside the cottage, openly rather than tucked away in the woods. ‘Cas. Whose is that car?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He heard the tenseness in his own voice and hated his weakness.

  She smiled. ‘Oh, I do. That’ll be their car. Bronte and her boyfriend.’

  Suddenly alarmed, Cas shot the car forward as if a few seconds could make a difference, and skidded to a halt in the yard. The door of the barn was locked and Dougie was just turning back from it, his face twisted with fury.

  ‘You fucking bastard, Cas. What have you done?’

  He jumped out. The game was up, but there was still something to play for. Celina depended on him. ‘What have you done with those boys?’

  ‘Told them to run like hell, and if they ever mention my name to anyone, I’ll fucking kill them. Slowly. And that goes for you, too.’

  ‘I should never have listened to you!’

  ‘Aye, but you had no choice, did you? You’re so fucking proud, such a big man in the town. But you can’t run a business, can you? You’re a weak, dependent—’

  It’s over. It’s over. And at last Cas was angry enough to be brave. Curling his fist into a weapon, he hurled himself at Dougie Henderson in a moment of self-destruction, and felt the immense satisfaction of his fist connecting with the other man’s jaw.

  *

  Cut off from what was going on around her by the impenetrable barrier of a foreign language, Celina got out of the car and stood for a moment, seeing what Cas had seen but a fraction later. Heart racing, she struggled to take in the scene. Yer Man, in front of them, turned back from the closed door of the bunkhouse, and Cas — weak, spineless Cas — raced across the yard and swung a fist.

  Her back to the car, she looked instinctively for Krystian, but the
door to the bunkhouse was closed. Seeing no sign of him or the others — nor of Bronte, or her boyfriend— she scanned the abandoned yard before turning back.

  ‘Cas!’ she shouted at him. ‘Stop it! Stop it! You’ll get hurt!’ But the two men ignored her, jostling and swearing like a pair of cage fighters.

  She should intervene, because Cas’s face showed fear and Yer Man’s expression held nothing softer than naked fury. She looked about her for a weapon, even for a bucket of water to throw over them as if they were two fighting dogs, but the farmyard was bare.

  Distracted, she stopped, sniffing the air like an animal. A smell of burning assaulted her nostrils. Smoke, menacing and black, seeped from underneath the door of the bunkhouse.

  For a second, she froze. ‘Cas! The boys? Are they inside? Krystian! Krystian!’

  ‘Celina!’ A voice from behind her. ‘We’re all here.’

  ‘Krystian!’ She spun in the direction from which he’d called, to see him standing forlorn and uncertain, an expression of bemusement on his face. Behind him, two more shadowy figures meant that they were all accounted for. She turned towards them, her smile bursting out like the spring sun in the knowledge that their adventure was all but over. ‘It’s going to be all right.’

  And then she remembered there were other lives at risk. Bronte haunted her with her impulsive kindness, her readiness to pay back fear with goodwill. Where was she? Surely, if they could, she and her boyfriend would have appeared in the yard? Turning yet again, struggling to take in the dizzy craziness of what was happening all around her, Celina understood.

  Behind the barred window of the bunkhouse, bright orange flames flickered, and the glass burst outwards.

  She stood for a second and watched it, appalled, then jerked into action. ‘Cas! Get them out!’

  Cas and Yer Man were trading blows now, as though there was something they could achieve by it. In a panic, she ran towards the bunkhouse, scrabbling in her pocket for the key that Cas had so recently trusted her with. Feet away from the inferno, the fierce heat met her like a wall. The paint on the front door blistered in front of her, and her fingers burned as she struggled with the door.

  It buckled in its frame. A sob burst from her, as she dared to put her hand to it. Inside the bunkhouse, something exploded.

  The door gave way.

  *

  Marcus, lent strength by desperation, pushed up at the skylight. ‘Okay. Now let’s think.’

  ‘How can you be so calm?’

  How? Because if calmness couldn’t save them, nothing could. Smoke caught at his throat and his eyes, and it was all he could do to keep the fog of fire out of his brain. ‘We have a minute. Let’s use it to think this through.’ He was reaching up as he spoke, pushing at the window frame, feeling some give in it but knowing it wasn’t enough. As he glanced down, the flames licked along the threadbare carpet, tasting the first of the armchairs and feasting on it.

  Under his fingers, the lock gave way. Fresh air seeped in, and he breathed it in with gratitude. ‘I can give you a lift up and you can get out via the roof. It’s not far to jump down.’

  ‘And what about you? How will you get up there? I’m not strong enough to pull you up.’

  ‘We’ll just have to hope I can get myself up.’

  ‘Don’t be so bloody ridiculous!’ Even on the edge of hell, Bronte found passion and fury rather than craven fear. ‘We’ve had this conversation before! I will not let you sacrifice your life for me. If you’re going to die, I’ll—’

  ‘Bronte.’ Jumping down from the chair, he slammed the door to the storeroom to buy them a moment or so more. If they were fated to die together, then that was how it would be, but he’d fight it all the way. ‘We don’t have time for an argument.’

  ‘Then you have to get up on the roof and help pull me out.’ She choked in the smoke, a reminder, if he needed it, of how little time they had. Rapidly reassessing their position, he saw that she was right. If both were to live, he had to be first out.

  ‘Okay, but you’ll have to give me a leg up.’ Time was running out, but he spared a second to touch her face. Her eyes were wide with terror, and streaming from the smoke, but at least they could both still breathe. ‘If I can get out onto the roof, I’ll pull you up.’ He balanced on the chair and she cupped her hands below his foot.

  ‘Now!’ With a desperate effort, he pushed upwards against her fingers, then heaved himself up, catching at the frame of the skylight and hanging there, legs flailing in mid-air. And then, miraculously, he was up and on the roof.

  He grabbed two mouthfuls of lifesaving air. On the skyline, the blue lights of an approaching police car flashed out the message that the adventure was almost over, but he had no time to stop and look. Rolling onto his stomach on the steeply-pitched hot roof, he reached downwards and seized Bronte’s wrist with one hand, clinging onto the skylight with the other. ‘I’ve got you. Now, you have to jump. Now!’

  She jumped. They swung for a moment, balanced together for so long that he thought her weight would pull the two of them back into the brewing inferno below. In desperation, he flung himself backwards, still holding onto her, until her fingers clutched at the edge of the skylight. Somehow, he hauled her up, pulled her over onto the roof, and then the two of them slid, with increasing speed, down from the roof to fall eight feet onto the soft ground below.

  Feeding on the fresh supply of oxygen, sparks funnelled upwards through the skylight and into the still spring air. As Marcus lay winded on the wet earth, staring up at the grey pall of smoke, part of the roof of the bunkhouse exploded into the sky. Someone, too far away to be Bronte, screamed. In his memory, the G8 riot flickered into 3D, cars and buses set alight, air heavy with smoke and angry with violence. He forced the memory back.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Scrambling to a sitting position, he turned towards Bronte.

  ‘Yes. Yes.’ Struggling to her knees, she looked beyond him. ‘Oh God, Marcus! What’s she doing?’

  He looked over her shoulder. The stillness of the yard had erupted into frenzy against the backdrop of the burning building. Two men, one of them Cas Janosik, broke apart from brawling in the centre of it. Three shabby figures stood in frozen uncertainty on the edges of the wood. And at the side of the yard, Celina was fighting with the door to the bunkhouse.

  ‘Celina, stop, we’re all right!’ But she didn’t hear.

  ‘Marcus, I have to help her! I promised her everything would be all right!’ Bronte was on her feet, lunging across the yard, but he was too quick for her.

  Nothing in the world, no-one in the world, mattered to him as much as she did. They’d come through ice and they’d come through fire. He wouldn’t let her go through any more. ‘No, Bronte! No!’

  She struggled in his arms. ‘I promised I’d look after her!’

  ‘Yes, and I promised I’d look after you.’

  ‘You can’t just let her die! You can’t!’

  But he could, and he would if the alternative was losing Bronte to the flames so soon after he’d plucked her from them. ‘No. Stay back. It isn’t worth the risk.’

  Still she struggled, still he held her. And then, from the melee of people appearing around them from nowhere, Casimir Janosik flung himself into the burning building.

  ‘Celina!’ he shouted. And he reached her as the ceiling caved in.

  *

  Fire branded my eyes, smoke grew thick in my nostrils, the palms of my hands smarted from the hot slates of the roof. I’d thought the G8 riot was the worst thing I would ever experience and live to tell the tale, but I was wrong, and this time, Marcus fought against me rather than with me, holding me back as I struggled to free myself. All I could do was watch as Celina dashed into the bunkhouse, her boyfriend following.

  Then the whole thing went up like a Roman candle.

  I stopped fighting, turned my face from the inferno as people erupted from everywhere around — from the trees, from two police cars that skidded up into the farmyard with
a wail of sirens. ‘Oh God, Marcus. She’s dead. She must be dead.’

  He relaxed the iron grip that had restrained me, draped an arm around my shoulders, and guided me away from the fearsome heat. A cool breeze fanned my face. The shouting went on around us as he held me close against him. His fingers stroked my hair and, in that moment of shared stillness, as rescue turned to tragedy, I listened to the rattling of his heartbeat and tried to draw some comfort from it.

  The pause between us lasted a few seconds before events overcame us. More shouting. Sirens. The sound of a car screeching to a halt, preceding the unwelcome voice of Nick Riley, in authoritative mood. ‘Is anyone in there?’

  ‘It’s all right, Bronte.’ Marcus’s voice was soft and compassionate in my ear. ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘It isn’t okay. How can it be? She must have thought we were in there. She must have tried to save us, and we let her die.’

  His arm tightened around me. ‘Trust me.’ There was a note of excitement in his voice. ‘You didn’t see. He got her out. I don’t know how, but he did.’

  I turned, his arm still around me. The heat of the barn still blasted us, the scene still reminiscent of some fantasist’s idea of a dystopian hell. But Celina, her face smeared with soot, the sleeve of her jacket burned away and with Cas Janosik’s hand on her arm, stood in front of us, blinking as if she’d woken from sleep.

  *

  Had she let him down, or hadn’t she? Would everything be all right? And, most urgently of all, would the stench of soot and smoke ever leave her throat, her eyes ever stop smarting from the flame? Celina coughed — a deep, brutal cough that seemed to drag a century of dirt from the lining of her lungs. Tears streamed down her face, and she turned away in shame, because she never cried. Shaking Cas’s hand from her sleeve, she turned her back on him to stand still and alone while the world went mad around her.

  ‘Are you all right? Are you hurt?’ A woman, a complete stranger, was speaking to her in her own language, shepherding her away from the fire. ‘We’re here to look after you. You won’t come to any harm. You won’t get into any trouble.’