by JA Huss
I turn and head back the way from which I just came. Which seems like a goddamn waste of a lot of energy, but I really do want to have to use this weapon only as a last resort. Because very few things in the world call chaos upon you like the sound of automatic rifle fire. If conflict is unavoidable, then one must do what one must. But in my current state, I’d say the odds are not in my favor.
I dart around the corner leading back to my bedroom-cum-holding cell. And just as I do, I hear, “Oi! Liam. Whatsit, bru?”
Shit.
I make it back into the room before the approaching oke spies me, I think, because the pace of his steps doesn’t accelerate and the ease in his voice remains the same when he says, “Liam? That you, man? What’s happening, bru? Everything hundreds? You need something?”
I have to assume that they (whoever “they” are) all have their own posts. In the small bit of meandering I’ve been able to do, I’ve tended to see the same faces in the same places over and over. Very much exactly like sentries on prescribed posts, guarding a fortress. And for the flashiest of flashes, I again wonder… why the fok am I here and how?
But I’ve got no time to indulge the notions, because as I dart back inside my sleeping quarters, I see the laaitie Liam, still on the floor where I left him. Snoring. Actually snoring. Like a goddamn cartoon character. I knocked him out and now he’s making more noise than he was when he was conscious.
Jesus Christ, man. This has got to be the most cocked-up escape attempt in history.
I close the door behind me and run to where young Liam is sawing logs, as they say, on the ground. Just as I reach him, a knock on the door…
“Liam? You in there, man?”
I don’t respond. Just stare at the closed door, as if by willing the oke to go away, he will.
“Liam?”
He doesn’t.
“Mr. van den Berg?”
I start to respond, when suddenly I have what is quite possibly the stupidest idea of my life. I don’t fancy myself a particularly stupid oke, so it’s not as if I have a vast barrel of stupid ideas from which to choose. But even if I were a right ninny and had a bottomless pit of dumb from which to pull, this might be way, way down there below all the other dumb ones as the inanest.
“Mr. van den Berg, sir? May I come in?”
It’s an odd feeling to be held prisoner but still very clearly be regarded as the boss.
I kneel down, sliding the rifle under the bed, and grab Liam up under the arms. I hoist him to his feet, discovering that he is sturdier than he looks. My ribs virtually moan in protest. But I manage to drag him to the side of the bed where I drop him and force his crumpled body underneath as well.
And then life starts happening in slow motion.
I can see the door handle starting to turn. I return my gaze back down toward the snoring Liam. His arm and booted foot protruding out from the side of the bed frame.
The door handle spins all the way round and the door begins to crack open.
I kneel down and force Liam’s appendages underneath and out of sight.
My ribs strain and I moan.
The door is ajar. “Mr. van den Berg? Sir?”
A head is visible in shadow as I spring onto the mattress and pull the covers over me.
Liam continues snoring.
I slide the sheets to the side of my face just enough to see the head of the laaitie make its way into the room. Arno, I believe he’s called.
“Mr. van den Berg?”
Liam snores, loudly. And as he does, I move about under the sheets and make noises suggesting that I’m not going to be easily awakened.
“Mmmm,” I moan. Liam snores. It times surprisingly well.
“Oh, I’m sorry, sir.” Arno, half-whispers. “I was looking for—”
Liam snores very loudly and I toss in the sheets in concert.
Arno stops talking and begins backing out of the room.
Fok me, man. I cannot believe this might have gone over.
And just as I’m about to throw the sheets from me and count my blessings that the absurdity of this recent turn of events seems to have worked out in my favor…
Arno opens the door and reenters the room.
Fok die kak, man. Are you kidding me right now?
I continue peering from under the sheets as he steps into the space.
Liam snores. I rustle.
Arno makes his way toward the bed.
I had really, really hoped to make it through today without killing anyone. I truly had. But if Arno takes two more steps in this direction, he’ll be leaving me with limited options.
And then, at the very last moment before he lands at my bedside, he curves away from the foot, takes up the empty bowl of pap and wors, and makes his way back to the door. He pulls it open, steps into the hall, looks back into the room once last time, and closes it behind him.
Jesus. Christ.
If I read that sequence of events in a book... I would cry bull kak.
I cast the sheets off, make my way to the door, open it a crack to make sure he’s gone, and then close it again. Liam continues his symphony of sleep.
Goddamn it, man. This may well wind up being harder than I thought. And my next thought is… is it even worth it? Even if I do get free from here, what do I think I’ll do? I’ll still have to escape into London, find clothes, charter a plane, and then set about figuring out where Christine and Danny are. If they are.
And it occurs to me that that’s entirely the wrong order. The wrong sequence. The first thing I should be attempting to do is to determine if Danny and Christine are. Out there. At all. If they aren’t, then…
I should just determine if they are.
I dart back over to the bed, reach underneath, and start rummaging through the pockets of Rip van Liam. I find his mobile and retrieve it.
Several years ago, Christine, Danny, and I set up root numbers. Numbers that the three of us could memorize and that I would see to it were forwarded to whatever mobile devices we happened to be using. In perpetuity. That’s how I was able to reach Danny back on the plane from Cape Town. However many… weeks? Months?… ago that was. I took a gamble that it would still be active. And it was. And now, I have to take that gamble again.
I could reach out to Christine, I suppose. But when last I left them, Danny and I were on far better and less being-shot-at terms. I start to dial, but then think better of it.
I don’t know what kind of service Liam and the assembled crew here are using. Commercial, private, secure, unsecure, monitored… I have no idea. Calling is far too risky a proposition.
I choose to text.
Danny. Bru. It’s Alec. Really. I’m sure it’s hard to believe, but it’s me. Here’s how you can tell: It may be time to improvise. If you’re alive and able to receive this, do let me know.
I hit ‘send,’ and then I wait. And wait. And wait. Liam’s snoring feels as though it’s getting louder. I have no idea how long he’ll be out, but if the snoring thing doesn’t abate soon, I may have to suffocate him.
Just as I’m considering planting a pillow on Liam’s face, he is miraculously spared by the ding of a text.
Alec?
Yeah, bru. It’s me.
Jesus
Indeed
You’re really alive
It would seem. I’m going to try to work myself free and come to you, yeah? Tell me where you are.
A few moments go by. Tiny bubbles appear on the screen. I have no idea what’s going to come my way. He could be anywhere. Honestly, if he told me he was on holiday on the surface of the sun, I wouldn’t be shocked. Nothing would surprise me at this point.
Well… almost nothing.
Finally, after almost half a minute, his response pings through.
We’re here
CHAPTER NINETEEN - DANNY
It was a proper plan. I will give the Watson crew that much. But there were two things wrong with it from the start.
One—we had no clue w
here Alec actually is. It was weeks ago that Christine was here spying, so there’s no evidence that he’s still here, or still alive, or any of that crucial intel most people gather before they attempt a crazy break-out-your-friend scheme.
But now we know.
Because I got a text.
What a crazy turn of events.
Three hours ago, when we put this whole thing together, it was all faith. Turns out Theo is sort of the interim hacker for the crew at the moment because when they go out and do a job someone has to stay with the tiny person.
That tiny-person sitter can’t be Eliza—she’s a critical part of the crew’s success rate. If she’s not the sexy distraction then she’s the lead sneak because even though the whole family can fling themselves on and off buildings like howler monkeys on crack, Eliza is the nimblest and can fit in spaces her over-muscled brothers can’t.
So Theo is the tiny-person-sitter-slash-crew-hacker for the time being.
Theo was setting himself up in the home base with Eliza, pulling up the security system for the estate, and Christine stood in a corner watching. Rage written all over her face as Eliza demonstrated just how familiar she was with Alec’s English home.
I thought for sure Christine was going to kill her before we left the house, but she checked herself, and just stood silent in the corner.
And two—the plan was to have two phases, and both of them were based mostly on improvisation. Which is not how this crew normally works.
Normally they plan for months, not hours.
It was intended to go like this:
Part One—Brenden and Charlie cause a distraction at the front gate, as delivery men. Which is so cliché and will never work for more than half a minute at most. Which is becoming really obvious, as at this moment we are in front of said gate. Brenden and Charlie are in the front seats of a refrigerated meat truck—the only delivery truck the crew could procure on such short notice—Charlie in the driver’s side holding a clipboard, Brenden in the passenger side. They are doing their stupid brother routine. AKA arguing like dumb, muscled blokes with only half a brain between them.
It’s funny. The insults are perfectly timed, there’s a little physical comedy like slapping each other on the side of the head, and of course, it’s all done in that thick Cockney accent, complete with rhyming slang, that’s both hard to take serious and deadly serious at the same time.
“Oi, mate! Eyes on the frog and toad, boy! You almost clipped the bloke!” says Brenden.
“Who you fink you’re talking to? I’ll put my foot up your bottle and glass!” responds Charlie, taking a swipe at Brenden.
“Don’t get nasty with me, me old son. I’ll bop you right on that fireman’s hose o’ yours,” Brenden shoots back, slapping back at Charlie.
“Oh, will you now?”
“Adam and Eve, mate. Adam and Eve.”
And now they’re in an honest-to-goodness, goddamn slap fight.
I have to be honest, I get a kick out this shit. I really do. Even if I have no fucking idea what the hell they’re saying.
“Hey! It’s fine, man,” says the guard they’re talking to, in his thick Afrikaans accent, which—at least—confirms that we’re in the right place. “Calm down and say again. What do you have in the truck?” He says the last part very slowly and with a fair amount of suspicion.
I’m hunkered down in the back seat—which isn’t an actual back seat, just a small space for shoving leaflets and trash, apparently. And I wouldn’t actually call it hunkered down. Wedged is the word that fits. There is no way I can help these two dummies should things go wrong and I’m not gonna lie, I’m a little bit claustrophobic at the moment because the mercenary at the gate is waving an AK around like an idiot.
And then the text comes in.
I have my phone on silent, but I’m holding it in my hand because Christine and I have a call going so she can hear what’s happening and the three of them—she, Eliza, and Russell—can get over the fence on the west side of the property, run across the lawn, and then scale up the side of the house and get on the roof.
All this has to happen before the asshole with the gun at the gate decides to spray us with bullets.
And—to make things even more complicated—we have to get him in communication with however many other mercenaries there are on the property in order to make the distraction big enough to give the three of them time to do all that.
We’re about twenty seconds into all this when my phone notifies me of an incoming text from my root number—the phone number that Alec, Christine, and I set up years ago just in case things get so fucked up, we have no other way to communicate.
Only two people have that number. And one of them is on the open phone line, so it’s not her.
Jesus Christ.
And just as that happens, I hear Christine whisper into my earbud, “We’re going up now. Are we good?”
But the twins are deep in their current distraction routine—
“It’s right here on the manifest, mate! Thirteen hundred pounds of prime rib to be delivered today. Just give us your Hancock and we’s off!”
—and there’s no way to relay this new piece of information to them, or Christine, without giving myself away and getting our heads blown off.
The merc at the gate pulls up the walkie clipped to his shirt and says, “Does anyone know anything about a truck of prime rib that was to be delivered today?” He puts his hand to his own earpiece and listens. “I don’t know, man, two giant fokken chops who say they’re here for us.”
“What’d that geezer call us?” shouts Brenden.
“Oy! Watch who you’s calling a ‘chop,’ my china,” says Charlie, pointing his finger in the guy’s face and half-mocking his accent with that last phrase. (Which is one that at least I know.)
And that’s when the asshole at the gate gets fed up and grabs Charlie by the coat collar and tries to drag him out of the truck via the open window.
CHAPTER TWENTY - CHRISTINE
We’re as prepared as we can be for a plan this big brought to life in under three hours. Theo is manning the now-hacked security system, talking to us via earpieces, and the whole time I can hear mini-Alec, back at her perfect country estate, talking about how Danny is gonna hopscotch with her when he gets home from work and what time is that gonna be? Seventy-one thirty?
Seventy is her thing. Everything that has to do with numbers with this child comes in seventies. They are gonna jump rope seventy-two times. And eat seventy-nine biscuits as they drink seventy-four pots of tea. And that little hopscotch grid on that dark-slate path all had various numbers between seventy and seventy-nine. Some repeated more than once.
This makes Russell chuckle, but I’m just annoyed. And I hate that I’m annoyed because it is cute, but for fuck’s sake. I’m on a goddamn mission to save one of the men I love—even if I did try to kill him, which makes it all the more important, if you ask me—and I do not need a reminder in my fucking ear that he has a child with another woman, OK? I just don’t.
Meanwhile, we’re in the woods on other side of an electrified gate, waiting on Theo to confirm that he’s got the voltage turned off, when up ahead, we hear the mercenary closest to us radioing the gate guard to “just shoot the fokkers and hide their bodies.”
It’s not looking good. Because A, the fence is still hot, and B, it doesn’t appear that this asshole is gonna go help out his friend.
And that’s when luck intervenes. Because the asshole starts asking his front-gate friend things like, “What? What’s going on? What the fok is happening?” and takes off at a hard run toward the front of the property.
Several guards are now running across the property toward the gate. And for sure, this plan is shit and it’s never gonna work, but at least things are now going our way.
And that’s when Theo says, “Go!”
So there’s no time to think, or wonder if Danny will be alive when this is all over, let alone Alec, because Theo can only
turn the fence off for nine seconds without triggering another alarm. So we jump up, grab the fence, and hurl ourselves over. Dropping to our feet and running across the lawn in the same instant.
Theo says, “And we’re back online. No one got fried, I hope.”
And mini-Alec says, “Seventy-six thirty? Uncle Theo? Or seventy-four thirty?”
But there’s no time to be annoyed about that just now, because we’ve reached the side of the house and Russell makes one of those stirrup things with his hands, Eliza puts her foot in it, and he flings her upward. She latches on to a window ledge and is already climbing her way up when I put my foot in Russell’s stirrup hands and get flung up as well.
I’m good at this parkour shit, but these Watson siblings—this is their main routine. So, two seconds later I’m still climbing up, grabbing on to things that don’t qualify as handholds, when both Eliza and Russell pull themselves up and over the edge of the roof.
Russell reaches down, grabs my forearm, and drags me up the rest of the way while Eliza looks at me like I’m an amateur.
I decide right then and there I’m going to kill her one day.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE - ALEC
Fuck do you mean you’re here? Here where? I text.
From underneath the bed, young Liam gasps in a snort and moans a bit. I really don’t know how much longer he’ll stay out. I consider going ahead and suffocating him just for good measure, but I’m still clinging to the fading hope that today will be one of those rare days where no one gets murdered.
When no text comes back my way, I try again. HERE WHERE MAN?
And now, from someplace that appears to be the front of the estate, I hear a horn. Not a trumpet. A horn. A car horn. And shouting. Liam snores and moans. And there appears to be some commotion inside as well, as I can hear boots running toward the main entry hall.
I dart over to the door and pull it open a crack. Sure enough, down the way a bit, I see some of the laaities who’ve been placed here to keep me held captive, making for the front of the manor.
