by Anna Jacobs
The helicopter lights were getting closer.
‘Come on. Let’s get a bit nearer,’ Chas said.
‘What about Louisa?’
‘Your ex is the least of my worries. She helped cause our current trouble and fed money to a criminal organisation so she’s going to be in big trouble when we pick the HOD operatives up. Also, she came here voluntarily, so her safety comes second to yours. By a long way.’
Louisa heard the helicopter and turned to her guide. ‘You didn’t say you were bringing in a helicopter.’
‘It’s not ours.’ He turned to his colleague. ‘How the hell did the police get on to us?’
‘Is that the police?’ Louisa asked. ‘We have to get out of here!’
‘We have to get inside, you mean.’
‘I’m not staying to be caught, even if I have to walk back to civilisation.’
‘I thought you wanted to see your ex?’ the man said sarcastically.
‘I do. But you promised the police would know nothing about this.’ She turned to leave and he yanked her inside the house.
She yelled and kicked, and he cursed as she bit him. He dumped her on the hall floor.
‘Shut up, you!’ the other man said. ‘We’ve heard more than enough from you on the way here.’
Another man came to join them in the hall.
‘Where are they?’ Louisa’s guide asked.
‘They’ve locked themselves in the cellar.’
‘Well, break the damned door down.’
‘It seems to be steel-lined.’
‘Shit! This must be one of their prime safe houses, then. We shouldn’t have come here. They’re not going to let us go easily.’
‘We do have one card to play if things get tough.’ He gestured towards Louisa.
She gaped at him. ‘What the hell do you mean by that?’
‘You’d make a useful hostage if push came to shove. You can always pretend we kidnapped you, so you’d not get into trouble with the police.’
‘No way am I acting as hostage. Hostages can get shot. All I want is to see my husband. Leave me out of the rest.’
‘If you mean your ex, he’s probably locked in the cellar with the others.’
She looked towards a window. ‘Well, if that’s the police, I’ll see him another time.’
One man wagged a gun at her. ‘Stay where you are and shut the hell up.’
He went to the window of the front room to look out. ‘They’re landing in the field.’ He slapped the flat of his hand against the wall several times, cursing.
Spotlights suddenly shone on the outside of the house and a voice called, ‘This is the police. Come out with your hands up.’
‘We’ll go out behind her. Better tie her hands.’
Louisa began screaming and yelling, trying to beat them off, but they had little trouble subduing her. She continued to yell at the top of a very shrill voice.
‘Stuff a gag in that big mouth of hers. We don’t need that racket. Now, open the door and stand her there.’
He waited till this had been done, then yelled, ‘We have a hostage. If you don’t let us go, we’ll kill her.’
There was silence, then the disembodied voice from near the helicopter asked, ‘Who is she?’
‘Louisa Parry, ex-wife of the novelist Jivan Childering. If you let us go, we’ll release her when we’re away from here.’
‘No deal.’
In the field to one side, Jivan was listening to this. ‘Are they going to let these people kill her?’
‘Still got the hots for her?’ Chas asked sarcastically.
‘No. But I don’t want to see her killed.’
‘They’re just playing for time. Those thugs wouldn’t keep their word. They’d definitely kill her after they leave. Our side is actually trying to save her life. It should be quite easy to track them. Someone will have crept forward to put a tracer on the car while they’re talking.’
‘The HOD people will find that surely?’
‘They don’t have time to check it.’
They listened to some arguing and negotiating and, in the end, it was agreed that the police would let the men and their hostage go.
Chas’s phone buzzed.
He answered it.
‘Where are you?’
‘In the field between the house and the main road.’
‘Can you block the road with your vehicle if we delay this lot a bit longer? We want to get them away from the house before we act.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Do it, then.’
He turned to Jivan. ‘This time you stay here. I’ll move the car.’
Jivan nodded and crouched there, looking towards the house, which was still brightly lit by the spotlights. Where was Jessica? Was she all right?
After some more arguing, the men came out of the house holding Louisa in front of them, and got into the car.
As they started to drive away, there was an explosion inside the house and it burst into flames.
Mary’s phone rang and she listened intently. ‘Oh, hell! Yes, sir. We’ll do that.’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘They set the house on fire as they left. We have to get out of here before the steel panels buckle in the heat and trap us inside.’
‘How?’
‘The other exit.’ She went over to another wall and fiddled around. A panel slid aside and she nodded in satisfaction, then turned to Jessica. ‘Still got that rounders bat?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Hold it ready in case he gives us any trouble.’ She marched across to Tom. ‘We have to get out. You too unless you want to be fried alive. Your friends have set the house on fire. If you give us any trouble, she’ll hit you good and hard.’ She paused to study him. ‘In fact, I wonder if we’d better knock you out first then drag you out of the house.’
‘I’m not stupid enough to get myself burnt alive,’ he snapped.
She undid the ropes tying him to the chair and the ones tying his feet together, leaving his hands still bound. ‘Let’s go. You can walk between us.’
The tunnel was low so that they had to bend, and after a while it began to slope upwards.
They got to the exit and Mary dealt with the door. As it opened, Tom suddenly shoved her hard and kicked the gun out of her hand. He tried to scramble over her, in spite of his bound hands, but Jessica thumped him good and hard over the head with the rounders bat. She hit him again for good measure, terrified he’d turn and fight her.
He fell unconscious across the threshold of the exit.
The two women dragged him out of the tunnel and away from the house. Flames were spreading rapidly through it now. Mary tied his feet again and fastened him to a fence post away from the fire. ‘Thanks, Jessica. Let’s find out what they’re doing.’
Another short phone conversation ensued. ‘They want us to go into the field on this side. They’ve got a hostage situation but they daren’t let the HOD fellows go. Unfortunately, the land team has been delayed. Keep hold of that bat, just in case.’
Jessica nodded, surprised to find herself smiling. Well, this was the first time she’d ever found a rounders bat useful. She’d spent years as a child completely failing to hit the ball with such a narrow piece of wood.
Bending low, the two women crept across the field, in time to see a big four-wheel drive roar round the house and disappear into a lane on the other side.
There was the sound of a crash and they ran forward to look down to where the road dipped.
‘Well placed!’ Mary said with satisfaction.
But one of the men managed to get out of the car and he was holding a struggling woman in front of him. There was enough light to see the blood pouring from a cut in her head.
‘That’s Jivan’s ex-wife,’ Jessica whispered. ‘He thinks she’s gone mad.’
‘She’s got a loud voice. Oh, no.’
The man shook Louisa like a rat and tried to force her to walk. As she sagged down, he to
ok out a gun and threatened her.
When she continued to scream and struggle, he raised it.
‘He’s going to kill her!’ Mary raised her own gun. ‘Hell, I’m too far away to risk a shot.’
At almost the same moment, Jivan and Chas also saw what was happening, from the other side.
Jivan was much closer.
‘Fire near him, see if you can distract him,’ Chas called in a low voice.
Jivan raised his gun, aiming it carefully. He didn’t want to fire, but he could see the moment when the man focused his gun on Louisa. So he fired two shots at the fellow.
The man stood very still and for a moment Jivan thought he’d missed. Then his target crumpled to the ground, dragging Louisa with him.
Chas raced past him and approached the two figures with caution.
‘You got him! You are a good shot.’ He bent over the figure. ‘Good. He’s dead.’
Jivan suddenly felt sick and bent over, vomiting helplessly.
Chas dragged the woman away. ‘Come and hold her while I check out the other men in the car.’
Jivan moved forward, reluctant to face Louisa under any circumstances. But he needn’t have worried. She was unconscious. Blood was still pouring out of the cut on her forehead and out of another one on her arm where his second shot must have hit her.
He picked her up and turned towards the house. The firing there had stopped. He trudged forward.
‘Stop where you are!’ a man yelled into a loudhailer.
He stopped. ‘I’m with Chas.’
‘Don’t move.’
‘She’s bleeding to death.’
Two men approached and one took her off him. The other said, ‘Get down on the ground.’
He obeyed, not liking the look in their eyes.
Chas came running up. ‘He’s on our side. Let him up.’
‘You sure?’
‘Certain. He just killed a man who was about to shoot her.’ He gave Jivan a hand up.
‘She was their hostage. I knew we couldn’t trust them to spare her life.’
‘Well, he’s dead and so is one of the other men. He died in the crash. The third one is trapped in the car.’
‘The house is a goner,’ the other man said. ‘Pity. It was a useful place. Let’s go and see if Mary and her charge are all right.’
As they approached the brightly lit area at the rear of the house, Jivan saw Jessica standing beside an older woman. Her face was covered in smuts and she was muddy and dishevelled, but she didn’t seem to be injured, thank goodness.
‘Jessica!’ he yelled.
She swung round. ‘Jivan? Oh, you’re safe! Thank goodness.’
He began to run towards her and she cast aside the bat and ran straight into his arms.
Mary stood with arms folded and a fond smile on her dirty face. ‘I love it when they get soppy,’ she said to Chas as he joined her.
He turned to look at them and gave her a friendly nudge. ‘He certainly does care about her, never stopped pestering me for news of her. He’s a crack shot, too. It was he who killed the fellow holding the other woman hostage.’
‘She is feisty too, hit our captive over the head when he tried to escape. Knocked him out cold with this.’ She bent to pick up the rounders bat.
‘A damned rounders bat!’
‘Yes. I used to be good at rounders when I was at school.’ Mary took a hit at an imaginary ball.
Jivan held Jessica close and smothered her face with kisses. ‘Thank goodness you’re safe. I was terrified I’d lost you.’
She held his face still between her hands and kissed him back thoroughly. ‘This time I’m not going to let you push me away.’
‘I wouldn’t have let you go away from Mandurah if it wasn’t for being warned about this lot.’ He gestured around them. ‘I thought you’d be safer away from me with your family.’
‘We might both have been safer if we’d stayed in Australia. Well, safe from everyone except the press.’
Someone coughed nearby and they turned to see Mary and Chas smiling at them.
‘The ambulances will be here soon. We’d like to get you two checked out.’
‘I’d rather go and have a long shower,’ Jessica said.
‘We’ll let them check you and the baby,’ Jivan said firmly.
‘She’s all right,’ Jessica said at once.
‘She?’
‘I have a feeling it’s a girl.’
‘With your eyes and hair, I hope.’
‘There they go again,’ Mary muttered to Chas. ‘They’ve got it bad. Sweet, isn’t it?’
The first ambulance arrived just then and took the unconscious Louisa away, sirens screaming.
‘I hope she makes it,’ Jivan said softly, and shuddered.
Jessica studied him. ‘What’s wrong?’
He bent his head. ‘I killed a man tonight. Shot him. That makes me feel sick.’
‘Did you have any choice?’
‘Not if Louisa was going to have any chance of surviving.’
A fire engine turned up just then, but it was too late to stop the fire from consuming the whole house.
‘It was an unhappy place, that house,’ Jessica said. ‘I hated the feel of it.’
Only after the paramedics in a second ambulance had checked out Jessica and Jivan were they allowed to go home.
Before they left there was a phone call from the first ambulance.
The paramedics came across to Jivan. ‘I’m sorry. They thought you should know. Ms Parry didn’t make it. She’d lost too much blood and she wasn’t in very good health. Undernourished they call it in developing countries. Anorexia when it’s done on purpose.’
He stared at them in shock. ‘Louisa’s dead?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
Jessica put her arm round him, thanked the two paramedics and walked a short distance away with Jivan. ‘You did everything you could.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘You know so.’
He nodded. ‘It’s just … sad that her life ended like that.’
She stood in his arms, not saying anything but feeling he was finding it comforting to hold her.
A short time later more operatives arrived and he pulled himself together.
Chas came across to collect them. ‘Where to?’
‘My parents’ house,’ Jessica said without hesitation. ‘About time you met them, Jivan.’
‘Will they want to meet me?’
‘They’re dying to.’ She put her arm round his waist. ‘They’ve always got room to love one more. And Jivan …’
‘Yes?’
‘I want to meet your father and mother, too.’
‘My mother is easy. She’s bound to come to England when she hears about all this.’
‘And your father isn’t easy? Find out. After all, he contacted you, didn’t he?’
‘Are you going to boss me around?’ he demanded, but couldn’t keep up the pretence of anger for more than a few seconds.
‘Yes, I am. But only for your own good. You have to learn to trust people and you can start with us Lords. You’re going to be part of the family for the rest of your life, after all.’
‘What a wonderful thought.’
Epilogue
The wedding was arranged for a month later, to allow Jivan a quick visit to India to see his father. Jessica insisted on that but refused to go with him.
‘This is between you and him,’ she said firmly. ‘But I’m not marrying you till it’s sorted out.’
He came back to England with a more peaceful expression in his eyes, Jessica thought, when she met him at the airport, but he didn’t say anything till they were alone that night in the refurbished bedroom that had been hers as a child.
‘OK. What exactly happened, Jivan?’
‘I had several long talks with my father, who is, incidentally, a lot better than they’d expected. He’ll need an operation, but they think he’ll be good for a few more years.’
> ‘Great. And …?’
‘My father did write to me after he went back to India permanently. Several times. And sent presents. I never received them. When he tried to phone, he was told I didn’t want to speak to him.’
‘Ah. Your mother’s doing, do you think?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s sad.’
‘I don’t think I can forgive her for it. I was too young to be that unhappy and she didn’t attempt to comfort me. Just stuck me in a boarding school. I don’t want her messing up my child’s life.’
For a moment his face looked sad, so Jessica kissed him until he smiled at her.
‘Oh, you make my world so much brighter,’ he said huskily, tears in his eyes.
‘Good. Go on.’
‘I’m to take you to visit my father as soon as possible. This won’t be his first grandchild but—’
She put a hand over his mouth. ‘Granddaughter. I was right.’
‘They found out what sort it is already?’
‘Yes. I have a blurry image of what looks like an alien being.’ She pulled it out of her handbag and gave it to him.
He looked at it and raised it to his lips to kiss the image. Then he hugged Jessica all over again.
‘Meeting you was the best thing that ever happened to me.’
‘I feel the same way about you.’
