A quick glance behind showed blood streaming down her face, but that didn’t slow her down. She was the bloody Terminator in tight jeans and a black leather jacket. And me? Normally when I practised parkour, I felt like a character in a computer game—which is to say kind of invincible but always on the verge of using up a life—but now? I moved with all the grace of a Teletubby.
By the time I realised she was jumping after me, I’d lost precious seconds, and she’d halved the distance between us. Worse, by turning to look back, I missed the gnarled old tree root sticking out of the leaves in front of me, hooked my foot under it, and went flying. I felt as well as heard the knee tear out of my jeans—my only pair of jeans—taking a good chunk of skin with it. But panic overrode the pain, and I kept running.
So did she. Her footsteps sounded louder than the rush of blood in my ears as I headed for a tumbledown barn fifty yards from the house. When did it last get used for animals? Not recently, that was for sure. The giant doors hung askew on the hinges, gaping and dark like a shortcut to the underworld. Or a trap. Instead of running inside, I headed to the right, only to be faced with an impenetrable barrier of brambles. Left with no choice, I switched direction to the back of the barn, where a rickety wooden staircase led up to a hayloft. Was she following? Yes. Good. If I could just get ahead of her, I could run through the barn, jump down to the ground floor, and leg it out of the front doors while she hopefully impaled herself on a piece of rusty farm machinery. Maybe she deserved it, maybe she didn’t—all I knew was that I’d never been chased through a farmyard by a freak-slash-supermodel before, and if I didn’t lose her soon, I’d have more than a cut knee to worry about.
I feared the half-rotten steps might give way beneath me as I bolted up them, but I made it through the small door at the top with the bitch hot on my heels. The cavernous space was filled with a delightful stench of dead rat—a smell I was all too familiar with from some of the places I’d lived back in London.
Why me?
It wasn’t as if I went out looking for trouble, despite what my former foster parents might have said. Trouble just had an uncanny knack of finding yours truly. Like the time I crawled into a warehouse to sleep and accidentally found myself in the middle of a drugs bust, or that night when starry-eyed me joined an up-and-coming pop star for drinks and came to getting raped in the back of his limo. With that in mind, on a scale of zero to the pinnacle of my fucked-up life, today’s episode rated as a mere blip.
A blip getting closer with every step.
I kicked over a pile of wood, booby-trapping the way to a narrow ladder before I shinned down it. Fuck, ouch, that hurt my damn toe. The open doors gaped ahead of me, giving me hope, and I sucked in a ragged breath as I stumbled forward. Let me out. With a bunch of spiders and a lunatic as my witnesses, I was never gonna nick a car again. I stretched for the line where darkness became daylight, and just as I made it outside, the clatter of metal reached my ears, followed by the sweet sound of cursing. Maybe somebody up there was smiling down on me today after all?
That was the last thought I had before a pair of arms closed around me—a man’s this time—forcing me down, down, down to the ground. The newcomer was careful not to make the same mistake as the blonde bitch with regard to requiring facial reconstruction because he knelt on my back, pinning me against the damp earth so I couldn’t move.
I turned my head to the side, wincing at the pain in my neck, and even though I couldn’t look up more than a few inches, I felt her glaring down at me. She shifted, and a shadow fell across my face. I waited for her to say something, but it was the man who spoke.
“I should be mad, but it’s not every day I get to watch Action Woman versus GI Jodie.” His American accent was a surprise, but the tightness in his voice wasn’t.
“Who are you?” I asked, but it came out as a mumble because my face was still smushed into what might have once been a lawn but was now mostly mud.
“She broke my fucking nose,” the woman snapped.
“Shit. We should—”
His grip loosened slightly, and I tried to wriggle free, but I soon regretted it when the woman bent to twist my arm behind my back. I bit my tongue to stop a yelp from escaping. No way was I giving that bitch the satisfaction of knowing she’d hurt me. Who the hell was she? And more importantly, how was I going to get away?
“Keep her still. I’ll be back in a sec.”
Drops of blood splattered onto the ground beside my face as she straightened, and a wretched fear began to claw its way through my guts. The last time I’d been trapped like this, a man had torn me to pieces, both physically and mentally. The panic welled up, threatening to overflow, and I made one last-ditch effort to throw my captor off, but this time he was ready. He held me in place until the woman came back with a pair of handcuffs and snapped them around my wrists.
Wait, handcuffs? Were they cops? For a moment, the crushing weight lifted, and the prospect of being arrested had never felt so good. How much trouble would I be in for stealing a car? It wasn’t as if I’d damaged it, so maybe I’d get off with community service if I apologised? Judges liked offenders to show remorse, or so I’d heard.
Then I realised no one had read me my rights, and when the woman began duct-taping my legs together, the overwhelming sense of dread came rushing back. Even if I could scream, nobody would hear me. Nobody conscious, anyway. Where was Lenny? What about his friends?
Part of me wanted him to rush in to save me like a white knight, but deep down, I knew he was incapable. He could barely walk straight on a good day, and this pair didn’t mess around. Better for him to stay hidden, then raise the alarm. If he even realised I was in trouble, that was.
“Wh-what do you want?” I managed to choke out. My mouth was full of gritty mud, and my stomach threatened to heave.
“We’ll ask the questions,” the woman said. “Let’s start with your employer. Who do you work for?”
Should I tell them? My job at Harlequin’s wasn’t exactly a secret—my arse was on their website home page—but why did they want to know? My boss had the odd dodgy dealing, but he’d given me a job when nobody else would, and I didn’t want to cause him any problems.
“Fuck you,” I mumbled.
I half expected a kick in the ribs, but what came was silence. Silence broken only by the quiet purr of an engine followed by the crunch of gravel. Another visitor?
“Who the hell is that?” the man muttered. “Are we expecting anyone?”
“Nope. I’ll wait here with our friend while you find out who it is.”
“Me?”
“Dude, I look like I’ve been playing in a slaughterhouse. Take my knife and your charming personality and get rid of them.”
“I brought my own knife.”
“Then what are you waiting for?”
The woman hauled me upright, careful to keep to the side of me this time. She’d taped my knees rather than my ankles, and she propelled me forward as I took little shuffle-hop-steps towards the barn. Now I got a better look at her. I’d done a good job on her nose if I said so myself, between the wonky, swollen bridge and the blood splattered across her face and clothes. She would have been pretty otherwise. Beautiful, even. And also…she was vaguely familiar. Ah, fuck. She was the woman I’d seen getting out of the sports car at Tesco. Up close, the air of toughness was all too evident, hardness combined with sharp edges, and being honest, I couldn’t see myself getting the jump on her again. I was surprised I’d managed it once.