by Lewis, R. J.
“Thank you, Graeme, but being burned doesn’t mean you’ll never find the right person again.” When he gave me a questioning look, I shyly admitted, “Hawke told me about your marriage.”
“Ah,” he grumbled, “of course he did. It’s water under the bridge now. I’m well over it. Sometimes you have to realize people aren’t who they say they are, and no matter how deeply you love them, the truth won’t change. It’s hard to accept, but I did make amends with it.”
“So why did you end up working for Borden?”
“Because everything I believed in was a lie. My wife had laughed behind my back and jumped into bed with my best friend. My world fell apart after that. I think what hurt the most was nobody cared. Not my friends, not my family, not the people I worked with at the station. And with Borden…well, it was an opportunity to tell everyone to go to hell and do something for myself. He pays remarkably well and he has always looked after his employees. It wasn’t a hard choice to make.”
I nodded in understanding. Borden went on that his men were just paid employees, but like Graeme, their loyalty was obvious. Borden was harsh, but he was fair too, and I suddenly missed him. I pulled out my phone again and made another attempt to call him.
“Nothing?” Graeme asked.
“No,” I answered, tucking the phone back into my pocket. “He must be really busy tonight –”
“What the hell?” Graeme suddenly punched on the brakes, and we jerked forward. The car came to an abrupt stop, and I followed his gaze to the car in front of us. It was stopped too, and both men were climbing out.
“What’s going on?” I said.
“I don’t know.” Graeme looked in the rear view mirror. The men behind us had stopped too, raising their hands in the air questionably. “Stay here,” he told me. “I’m going to see what’s going on.”
He stepped out of the vehicle and I watched him stride to the men. One met with him and gestured to the back of the car, talking fast. Graeme went to the rear of the car and kneeled down on the ground, inspecting the road and tires. I sat up straight in my seat, trying to get a better look at what was going on. The second Graeme’s hand touched the back of the wheel, his face went tight and he immediately stood up, talking loud enough for me to hear through the closed window.
“We’re turning back. This is a trap! Turn back! AMBUSH!”
Just as he shouted the last word, loud bangs erupted. My heart jumped at the sound of gunshots. Graeme took off back to the car, pulling out his gun from his waistband, screaming at the men to take cover. The other two men followed, producing guns as well, taking cover behind the first car. They scanned around us, looking toward the forest, before one shouted, “Over there!”
I screamed as bullets shot into the front of the car I was in. I ducked down, covering my head with my arms. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“They’re shooting the engines!” one of the men screamed.
I didn’t know what to do. I was too scared to get out, too scared to sit up, too scared to look at the men. Their screams suddenly erupted.
“Emma!” I heard Graeme.
My passenger side door opened and arms grabbed at me. I looked up into Graeme’s startled eyes.
“Get out, Emma! The car is useless now! You need to run!”
“Run where?”
“Emma, just run!”
He physically removed my coiled body from the car just as bullets ripped around us. He dropped me down to the ground beside the wheel of the car, shielding me. The bullets rained over us, some of them so close, it felt like a bomb had exploded in my ears. I cried out, terrified of them hitting us.
“Run,” he told me once the bullets moved to a different direction.
I heard the other men yell. Graeme’s hands grabbed at my shoulders and he shook me. “Emma,” he growled out. Scared, I looked at him. “Run into the forest. I need to fight these men off as long as possible before they try and get to you.”
Get to me? Why would they want to get to me?
“This is my fault?”
“Run,” he roared again, angered by my stillness.
Pushing my body up on wobbly legs, I ran straight into the forest. I looked over my shoulder and at Graeme, and everything inside of me halted. He was kneeled down, grabbing at his chest. I saw the blood and cried out.
He’d been shot.
Fifteen
Emma
I ran into the forest as the gunshots continued behind me. I heard Graeme shouting, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying. I turned around and dropped to the ground, staring at him as he fired his gun over the top of the car before ducking back down. He was still clutching his chest with one hand, and even in the dark, I could see the blood pouring out of him, pooling his shirt.
“Keep running, Emma!” he screamed at the top of his lungs, his voice desperate and pained. “RUN!”
I didn’t run, though. I couldn’t leave him behind. I wanted to help him. He was bleeding and they were still shooting, whoever they were. I couldn’t see any of them, or where they were coming from. The other men lay dead in a pool of their own blood, their guns feet away from their bodies. If I could just get to a gun…
A bullet whipped past my head, and I dived flat to the ground, my chest pressed against the earth. My heart thundered like never before, and I sucked in breaths, trying to get myself to calm down. I felt paralysed, completely stricken with fear. More gunshots whizzed by, and then I heard Graeme cry out. It took everything in me to lift my head up to get a look at him, and when I still couldn’t see him, I forced myself up even higher, until I was on my knees.
My hand shot to my mouth as I saw him drop to the ground, another bullet burned through his chest. He barely looked like he was breathing, but his mouth still moved, over and over again repeating the word “run”. I sobbed against my hand, my body breaking out in tremors as I realized he was dying – as I realized, when he stopped moving moments later, he was dead. I felt something deep within me break, and I clutched my chest with my other hand, feeling the tears burn my face at the loss I felt. Graeme. Graeme. It couldn’t be real. He was pretending. He had to be.
The guns stopped firing immediately after that. Nothing but silence followed. I didn’t know what to do. My body begged to be still while my brain shrieked to keep moving and to get as far away from them as possible. I looked around, trying to find a hiding spot, but the sound of voices broke through my thoughts. I watched a couple men emerge from the forest on the other side of the road and I dropped back to the ground, staring through the opening between the trees at them. They stopped by Graeme’s body, and one kicked at his lifeless form, chuckling.
“Find the bitch,” he said, bending down to pick up Graeme’s gun. Pocketing it, he looked up in my direction. My heart lurched for a moment before I realized he couldn’t see me in the dark. “She’ll be around here. She won’t have gone far.”
I backed away, every inch of me shaking, and turned around. My body felt stiff as I stood up and forced myself to run. My feet crunched along the hard frozen ground. I could hear every footstep I took like it was exploding in my ears, and I cried in the open air. They would find me in a matter of minutes. I didn’t know what to do, and I didn’t have time to figure it out. Either they would find me, or I would be running endlessly into the forest, getting more and more lost. It was freezing, and if they weren’t going to kill me, the cold would.
Minutes later, I stopped by a large tree and pressed my back against it. My hands moved up and down my arms, forcing friction against the goose-bumps. I needed warmth. I was in nothing but a t-shirt and jeans.
The sound of a branch snapping behind me forced me to still. I held my breath, pressing my back against the tree. I stood tall and didn’t move, listening intently on the sounds around me. Another snap sounded and I squeezed my eyes shut. My teeth were chattering and I was on the verge of throwing up. The anxiety and fear were too much on my small body. At this rate, I would pass out long before they found me.
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Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
Out of reflex, my hand shot to the top of my shirt. I dug into my bra and searched for my switchblade. I didn’t find it. I fisted my hand, digging my fingers into the flesh, and banged my head against the tree. I didn’t take one in my haste to leave the apartment.
How Emma? HOW could you forget?
I was back to being too scared to move. I felt empty and completely alone. Nobody would help me. After priding myself on never being that damsel in distress, I was now praying for some form of help. Slowly, I pulled my phone out of my pocket. I took a few deep breaths, uncertain of whether to touch the buttons. If the men were around, they might see the glow of my phone, and I’d be done for. I waited for what felt like an eternity. Maybe they wouldn’t search this way. Maybe they passed and the sounds I heard were them moving away. I was so goddamn cold, and all I could think about was warmth and finding help. After a while, I heard nothing but the wind against the leaves and my heart beating inside my ears. There was that feeling of stillness, of aloneness, and it unsettled me. Everything frightened me: the tall trees, the swaying branches, the wind that howled every now and then as it whipped against my face, stinging my eyes and freezing my tears.
Just do it. Do it. Do it. Make the call before you freeze to death.
I pressed the button on my phone and quickly dialled 911. The light of the screen blurred my vision, and I rapidly blinked, adjusting to it as I navigated to the number screen. With shaky fingers, I pressed the phone to my ear and not a ring passed before the operator sounded distantly, “911, what is your emergency?”
A sudden snap sounded, and it a sent a dagger-like feeling to my heart. It was close. Too close. Something darker than the night flashed to my side, and I screamed as a hand darted out to my arm. I wriggled away just in time, and the phone dropped in my panic as I took off again, running hard and fast.
“Here!” screamed a male voice behind me. “She’s over here!”
My body buzzed with adrenaline as I moved in all directions. Branches whipped past my body, stinging my skin as I shoved through heavy bush. I heard footsteps gaining behind me, and I didn’t turn to look. I kept moving, stumbling over fallen wood and rock. A hand wrapped around my arm and my heart leaped to my throat. A scream sounded out again as the man’s other arm closed in around my waist. He picked me up from the ground and I cried out, angrily twisting my body in his grip. I would never stop fighting. I would never let him win. He grunted and shoved my head into a nearby tree. I fell to the ground, my head aching. I felt a hard kick to my side, and I twisted my body into a ball with my arms over my head.
“You’re going to make this difficult?” the man said.
He kicked me again with his steel-capped boot, and it landed against my spine. The most excruciating pain tore through me. I immediately went on my knees to get away when his hand wrapped around my hair. Before I could think, he pounded my head again into the unbearably hard tree. I saw stars and my head spun. My body went sloppy after that, sagging in his grip as he continued to kick me until I was practically lifeless. With a loud grunt, he picked up my limp body and flung me over his shoulder.
I felt like I was going to throw up. I might have even. I didn’t know. I was too out of it. My head pounded, my body hurt, and my vision continued to spin in rapid circles. I was so cold, my flesh had gone numb from head to toe. I lost consciousness, and as I slipped away, I heard the man triumphantly shout, “I got her!”
Sixteen
Emma
This stabbing pain in my head woke me up. I opened my eyes and saw darkness. Blinking, I looked around, staring at the figures moving around me with purposeful strides. I opened my mouth, grunting and licking at my cold, numb lips.
I was still outside, still in the forest somewhere, still freezing my tits off. Only I wasn’t running. I was on my side, against the cold damp earth. The trees overhead wavered with the wind, and for several moments I just stared at the black insipid sky, waiting for it to swallow me whole. Part of me hoped I’d just die already. That the cold would consume me and the last thing I would remember before fading away was the uninspired sky, a blatant reflection of my uninspired life before meeting Borden.
Slowly, my body stirred, and it was a difficult task to do considering every inch of me felt stiff as a board. I realized very shortly that my arms and legs wouldn’t move at all, and I panicked for a fleeting second until I knew what was wrong. My arms were bound behind my back, and my legs were bound by the ankles. The rope was tight, too tight to wriggle out of if I tried – and I fucking tried with everything inside me.
“Mulligan said it’s all going down tonight, which means getting this thing done, which means doing your fucking job and digging that goddamn hole! I don’t want to hear you bitching about it. I don’t want to hear how the ground is hard. You’re not a bunch of pussies. Just fucking do it already so we could get out of this shithole and get paid.”
The voice belonged to the same man that ordered the others to find me on that road. I turned my face to him and watched him carefully. He was large and bald, wearing black clothes like all the others. There were five of them all up, I counted. I couldn’t make out their features. I couldn’t see a damn distinguishable thing – not that it mattered or anything. Anonymity wasn’t important if the person was going to their death.
If they knew I was awake, they didn’t care. I was practically part of the scenery. They just walked around me like I was the most non-threatening thing to ever walk this earth. They were right. I felt it. Logically, there was no way out. They would do whatever they wanted to me, and I could either cry about it like I did as I belatedly ran away from the gunfire, or I could go down trying to at least fight, however pathetic that fight might be.
“Borden is going to kill every last one of you,” I weakly said. I sounded quiet, but I knew they heard me the second the last word fell out of my mouth.
They ignored me, and I felt this strange hysteria bubble within me. I laughed, and it sounded crazy. What came out of my mouth next was even crazier.
“He’s going to hunt you down like he hunted those brothers down. You know what he did to them, right? He tortured them and cut them up. He said they begged for their lives to end, and he didn’t give them a shred of mercy. He just tore them apart, piece by piece, until they were a pile of white bones in a pit of fire.”
I’d made most of that up, but what the hell did it matter? All it took was one to fear the wrath of Borden because, at the end of the day, my death would make him unstoppable. He would hunt them all down and probably do far worse than I could ever imagine. Even the deepest and darkest parts of hell would cringe at his capabilities. If I died, Borden would burn alive every soul that stood in his way.
This time, heads turned to look at me. The four of the men stopped what they were doing, which I couldn’t see. If I’d unnerved them, I didn’t know, but they looked to the bald man obviously in control. He glanced my way, and I waited for him to come bounding to me to deliver more kicks to my nearly broken spine. Instead, he scoffed and said, “Ignore her. She’s literally going to her funeral. She’ll say anything to scare you.”
The men resumed what they were doing, and I continued to fight the rope around my arms. The posture I was forced into made my shoulders ache, and with my hands behind my back my spine curved unnaturally. I remained on my side, grasping at the sticks on the ground, hoping one might be sharp enough to cut through the rope. It was an impossible hope, but I clung to my last shred of it with everything inside of me. I would not die. I couldn’t die. I didn’t live this long to get put out by a bunch of money hungry men who were digging a fucking hole to stick me in.
No, I couldn’t go out this way. I had too much left to live. There were too many oxygen thieves in this world. Goddammit, I deserved a chance to make something out of myself! To nurture my relationship with Borden. To change him before he became a true monster. To prove to Granny there was more to him than meets the eye.
They grumbled something about being done, and then the bald man came for me. I rolled away from him, flailing whatever part of my body I could. I must have looked like a caterpillar, slithering away, jerking my body upwards, going absolutely nowhere anytime soon. I heard their laughter, and as I made another roll, a heavy foot crashed down on my back, pinning me breathlessly to the cold earth. I dropped my head to the ground, my lips brushing against damp soil, breathing through the pain in my bruised back.
“You’re not going anywhere,” the bald man said, the smile alive in his voice.
