Samuel’s grip tightened around my waist. My heart skipped a beat.
“She goes where I go.”
A light gleamed in Davis’s eye.
“Is that it? Is that the real reason?”
Samuel scowled. Davis looked amused.
“Alexander’s not a man to share,” Davis winked at Samuel, whose glower deepened.
I went from face to face, mystified.
“Hope she’s worth it,” Davis said, scrutinising me keenly. I looked at the floor.
Samuel was willing to walk away from everything he’d built here, walk away from Alexander, just to get me out? Davis seemed to assume that Samuel… wanted me. But I was just useful to him; his operative. His bombmaker. Wasn’t I?
There was a long minute of silence. I sensed that things were being decided, could all but see the cogs whirring behind Davis’s eyes.
“Look, Samuel,” he leaned forward again, fixing Samuel with a piercing stare. “You’re asking for a lot here. Getting you across the border is child’s play, you’re right. And I can always do with a man of your experience, for the cause… and other things. Especially if you’re bringing your little explosives expert along. But you’re planning to piss off a very dangerous man. And I happen to know for a fact,” Davis paused, looking hard at me, “that Alexander’s quite partial to that little plaything you intend to disappear with. So if I help you, I’m making a statement. I’m taking a side.”
That sounded like no to me, but Samuel didn’t look disappointed, just resigned, cautious.
“What do you want?” he asked.
Davis grinned wickedly.
“Alexander,” he replied.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The cheese on the pizza had cooled and congealed, but Samuel still hadn’t eaten any. He sat with his head in his hands, eyes burning a hole into the carpet. On the low, ugly coffee table in front of him sat a bottle of whisky. The top was off and about a third of the liquid was gone. Without looking up, Samuel fumbled for the neck. his fingers curled around it, then lifted it to his mouth where he took another heavy swig.
I sat across the room, curled into the armchair, my legs drawn up until my chin rested on my knees, watching him.
We hadn’t said a word since Davis had left half an hour earlier. The afternoon was bleeding away into evening, and Samuel’s mobile had rung three times. He hadn’t answered it. We both knew who it would be.
Alexander. That was Davis’s price for helping Samuel: for getting him – and me – into Wales; for giving him a fresh start, a chance to focus completely on fighting for his all-important cause. Davis wanted Alexander’s cold, dead body, lying in the ashes of his crumbled empire. Because according to Davis, Alexander had grown just a bit too big for his designer boots, and though he couldn’t prove it, he was sure Alexander had sold his operatives down the river on the Wall job, raking in cash or favours for the tip-off.
Samuel was ideally placed to pull the trigger. In fact, he was probably one of the only people – barring Zane, whose loyalty was absolute and unwavering – who could ever get close enough to do it.
But Alexander was his brother. His flesh and blood. Family.
When Rhys Davis had suggested it, I’d expected Samuel to refuse point-blank. I’d thought he would storm and rail and throw Davis and his entourage out. But he didn’t. He listened in silence, and when Davis had finished spelling out exactly what he wanted, Samuel’s face had been completely impassive. Rhys had left him to think it over.
That’s when Samuel had sent me out, face lathered in make-up, for the whisky.
“What do I do, Lizzie?” Samuel asked, his voice mumbled through his hands.
I swallowed audibly, wide-eyed, shocked to be asked my opinion.
Samuel looked up when I didn’t answer, green eyes piercing, jaw clenched tight. I shrugged, unwilling to voice the thoughts screaming in my head. Because I wanted Alexander gone. Dead or just far away, it didn’t matter. Though I loathed him for treating me as his slave and I could not forgive him for dispatching Mark so coldly, still I owed him my life. If it were not for him, I’d be dead. I had no stomach for revenge, no desire to cause Alexander pain and suffering. I just wanted him to vanish, disappear.
But that was for my own, selfish reasons.
“I don’t know,” I whispered, feeling a need to fill the thick, suffocating silence.
Samuel dropped his gaze from mine. He pressed his palms together as if he were praying and rested his chin upon his fingertips.
“I’m a bad man, Lizzie,” he said at last, sighing heavily.
“No you’re—” I tried to disagree but Samuel flicked his stare back up to mine, shaking his head at my denial.
“Yes, I am. I’ve killed a lot of people, for different reasons, good and bad. I’ve stolen, I’ve damaged. I’ve ruined innocent lives peddling Alex’s drugs. I’ve broken so many laws they could throw a library at me, never mind the book.”
I tried to smile, but my mouth wasn’t working.
“But can I kill my brother?”
I knew from the way he said it he wasn’t talking to me any more. He was asking himself. Really asking.
I watched him take another slug of whisky, then another. There was just over half the bottle left now. The rest he’d chased straight from the neck. Shot after shot. It would have floored me. But, though his eyes were glazed, it didn’t seem to be having much effect on Samuel.
“I don’t know,” he said, rubbing at his temples. “Alex is… Alex is…”
He trailed off, unable to find a phrase to describe his brother.
“A bad man?” I suggested timidly.
Samuel smirked.
“You don’t know the half of it,” he said. “Some of the things he’s done… He deserves to die. But by me? I don’t know. Christ, I don’t know.”
“Could you do it?” I asked.
Samuel stared at me hard for a long moment, and I realised he didn’t have an answer. That surprised me. I’d thought the brothers were close. Samuel had come all the way from Cardiff to be with Alexander; and together they’d built up a business, together they’d carved out a sizeable chunk of London as their ‘patch’. They spent every day together. Alexander even allowed Samuel to shorten his name, something others had died for, as I knew only too well.
But Samuel had come for a reason: to fight to bring Wales back into the United Kingdom and out of poverty and chaos. Alexander had told him he wanted that too; and maybe he did, but he wanted money and power more.
“Lizzie, you know Alex,” he said. “He’s a total shit. He’d kill someone as soon as look at them. He doesn’t give a crap about anything or anyone, unless they can make him money. He’s not who he used to be. He’s not the brother I grew up with any more.”
I gave a tight smile. It was hard to imagine Alexander as anything other than a cold, ruthless bastard.
“What was he like?” I asked.
“Normal.” Samuel twisted his mouth to the side. “He was smart. He didn’t do well at school, but he had a head for business, you know?”
I nodded.
“He had plans to set up a restaurant. He was just… normal.” Samuel smiled. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, he was tough as nails even then. He had a criminal record for assault by the time he was fifteen. But he was nothing like he is now. He was my big brother. Our parents, they weren’t… Da was pissed more often than not and my mam, she was a shadow. It was Alex who stepped up to the mark, kept a roof over our heads, stood up to Da when he got mean. He looked after me. Now… I’m not sure there’s anyone he wouldn’t step on to get what he wanted. Even me.”
“What are you going to do?” I asked. We’d come full circle.
Samuel ran his hand through his hair.
“Jesus, I don’t know.”
The phone rang. It was shrill and piercing, the volume increasing as Samuel pulled it out of his pocket, stared at it and sighed.
“It’s Alex,” he said.
O
f course it was.
“What are you going to do?” The same words, a different question.
Samuel gave me a twisted smile and raised a finger to his lips.
“Hey,” he said.
I bit my lip. Could Alexander hear the stress in his voice as easily as I could?
“Yeah, sorry. I couldn’t answer. No… nothing’s wrong.” There was a long pause. “I’m sorry, Alex.”
Samuel winced into the phone, probably imagining, as I was, the curdled look on Alexander’s face as he poured his quiet outrage into Samuel’s ear.
“No, I’m coming back now. Yes. Right,” Samuel’s eyes flashed to mine. “I understand, Alex.”
Samuel hung up and stood in one decisive movement. He stared down at me. Was he swaying, or was it just the blood pumping behind my eyes? I swallowed back the question I most wanted to ask: whether the last part of his terse conversation with Alexander had been about me.
“You have to go?” I asked, my mouth automatically turning down. I sensed another prolonged period of lonely isolation.
“I have to go,” Samuel agreed. “Sorry.”
I glanced down at the depleted bottle of whisky.
“Are you okay to drive?” I asked quietly. That was easier than telling him I was desperate for him to stay.
“I’ll have to be.” He shrugged.
He crossed the room in three steps and tucked a finger under my chin, stroking along the length of my jawbone. I kept utterly still and stared at him, trying not to pout, trying not to beg him to stay. It was dark outside and through the dirty net curtains I imagined shadows lurking, just waiting for their chance when I was alone.
“But I’ve decided,” he said, apropos of nothing.
“Decided?” I echoed, yanked temporarily away from my morbid thoughts.
His face turned serious, his eyes seeming to darken in the muted light.
“Davis can have Alex.”
Then he turned and marched away from me. I watched him go, saying nothing until he had his hand on the door. Suddenly I jumped up.
“Samuel!”
He paused, twisted his head to face me.
“Why…?” I shook my head, baffled. What had changed in the last two minutes?
Bizarrely he smiled at me, an impish, almost embarrassed expression.
“Isn’t it obvious?” he asked. Then he disappeared.
I puzzled over Samuel’s strange remark for a while, rolling it round and round in my head, using it as a distraction from the fear I felt in the house on my own. Perhaps I was being incredibly dense, but it wasn’t obvious at all. Not to me. The only conclusion that I could come to, which might conceivably make sense, I dismissed out of hand. Because it was ridiculous.
I turned the television on to stop myself tuning in to every tiny bump and creak, and to pass the time I ate cold beans straight from the can, using a fork to pick out one bean at a time, making them last. Because I knew once I got to the end of the can, there would be nothing more to do but sit on the lumpy sofa, stare blankly at the telly, twiddle my thumbs and try not to go insane waiting for Samuel. I was right at the bottom of the can, using the long tines of the fork to force the remaining beans into a smiley face, when two things happened at once: there was a knock at the door and the phone rang.
I launched myself off the sofa so fast it was like I’d been electrocuted. Then I froze, only my head moving, whipping from side to side, staring at the front door, then at the table in the kitchen where my phone sat, then to the door, back to the table. The knock came again, loud, aggressive bangs. Whoever it was sounded impatient. I half turned towards the sound - I wanted to stop the noise - but sense caught up with me before I’d even lifted my foot to take the first step. I’d no idea who was on the other side of the door. I’d closed the thick, dusty curtains over the large window so that no one would be able to see my shadow moving around the room from the street outside, but that also meant I could see nothing beyond the confines of the room. It could be anybody out there.
Whereas, I knew with almost total certainty who was on the other end of the phone.
Ignoring another three powerful raps, I darted to the kitchen table and snatched up the tiny mobile.
“Hello?” I whispered as soon as I had the thing to my ear.
“Lizzie, are you all right?” Samuel’s voice was hard to hear over the roar of a car engine.
I opened my mouth, but he didn’t wait for my answer. I’d been all right enough to answer the phone and what he had to say couldn’t wait.
“Zane knows where you are.”
“What?” But I’d mouthed the words. Terror had strangled me. My eyes swivelled of their own volition to stare at the door, just visible across the length of the living room.
“Lizzie?” Samuel’s voice was terse, urgent. The engine noise dropped as he changed gears, then revved even louder than before.
“There’s someone at the door,” I stuttered quietly into the mouthpiece.
“Don’t answer,” Samuel ordered.
I nodded, too numb with panic to realise that he couldn’t see me. Instead I tiptoed back into the living room, my searching fingers fumbling for the off-switch on the television and then the light switch on the wall, whilst my gaze never deviated an inch from the door handle, waiting for it to swivel on its axel, waiting for the door to open.
Even though I’d made it happen, I gasped when the room was doused in darkness. I felt blind and clumsy rather than hidden and, like a moth to a flame, my eyes were even more fixed on the tiny hallway, where a small pool of light slunk in through the frosted-glass pane.
“What’s happening?” Samuel dragged me out of my trance.
I was halfway through the word ‘nothing’, when the knocks came again, cutting me off. They were so loud this time that even Samuel heard them.
“What do I do?” I hissed.
“Go out the back door.”
I obeyed automatically, my feet shuffling backwards so that I could keep the door in sight. My heels connected with the corner of the armchair with a low thud that barely reached my ears, but I winced like I’d sent all the china in the kitchen cupboards crashing to the floor. I edged sideways two paces, then reversed through the kitchen door.
“Are you out?” Samuel asked in my ear.
His words almost drowned out the quiet click of a door opening. I stopped mid-step, my eyes widening, the blood draining from my face. The front door was still fully closed.
Cool air tickled the back of my neck as the backdoor swung silently open just two metres behind me. One heavy foot stepped onto the linoleum, squeaking quietly, the rubber treads wet from the dewy grass. Before the second foot could join it, I ran lightly back across the living room, my thumb hanging up on Samuel, holding down the button to turn the phone off completely. If he’d spoken, if he’d even made a noise on the other end of the line, Zane would know exactly where I was.
I made it to the hallway before my intruder had time to step fully inside the kitchen and close the door. I heard the low scraping of a key turning in the lock, then another noise that could only be the sound of that same key pulling out of the door before it slipped into a pocket. One escape route closed off. For the briefest of moments I paused in the light. Did I have time to get the door open and closed before whoever it was crossed the kitchen and saw me? Maybe.
But maybe wasn’t good enough. I heard the snap of a gun being cocked and the noise drove me up the stairs. At the top I went straight for the only door with a lock: the bathroom. But I didn’t close the door. I needed to see, needed to hear. I needed to know what he was doing.
Something cut out the light in the hallway, plunging me into a deeper darkness. Suddenly the noise of my breathing seemed incredibly loud, like a beacon. I swallowed and concentrated on slowing down my breaths, pulling the air into my lungs quietly, calmly. Immediately my chest began to burn, demanding oxygen, but I ignored the feeling. I closed my eyes and focused on my ears. What was he doing?
&n
bsp; I didn’t have to wonder for long, because he decided to announce himself.
“I know you’re there.”
No whisper. No menacing growl. It was almost conversational; his harsh Northern Irish twang sounded amused. Or delighted. At last he had the go ahead to do what he’d been itching to do to me since the moment we met. I could imagine the broad grin stretched tight across Zane’s face.
As his first foot trod lightly on the bottom step, I eased myself into the bath, pressing against the wall between the patterned glass screen and the old electric shower. A drop of cold water seeped out of the showerhead as my shoulder nudged the coiling steel hose, landing in the middle of my forehead. I bit down on my tongue to quell my startled yelp, my teeth coming together so fast they drew blood.
I pressed my lips together tightly, inhaled deeply through my nose. Calming myself; preparing myself. If I could just survive Zane’s cursory inspection of the bathroom I might be able to run back down the stairs when he moved on to check the two bedrooms. Surely that’s where he’d expect me to be. There were much better places to hide in there: under the bed, in one of the cupboards, in the laundry basket even. I frowned, pushed my ear closer to the glass screen. I couldn’t hear anything. Why wasn’t he continuing up the stairs?
I got my answer a second later. The bathroom flooded with light, blazing in from the naked bulb in the hallway. I groaned, my face falling. Zane had obviously decided that I wasn’t armed. He didn’t need to hide from me, and light was his best weapon. It pinned me in the shadows – for as long as the shadows remained. Panicking, I glanced around the room, hunting for something I could use to defend myself, or, better yet, a way out. But there was nothing. A yellowy-white plastic toilet brush and a small blue towel. The window was no use either. The larger pane was fixed in place, and though I was small, I wasn’t small enough to squeeze through the tiny section at the top that opened. I toyed with the idea of locking the door, but decided against it. Zane could easily force it open, by shooting out the lock or just giving the flimsy wooden door a good kick. And in any case, with the door locked, he’d know exactly where I was.
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