31 Days of Autumn (31 page)

The screen went black.

I shoved my chair back as I shot to my feet,
barely even registering the crash as it hit the floor. I felt numb. Totally
overloaded with emotions. There were so many things I wanted to say to her. How
much I loved her, that I’d never let our children forget her, not least that
I’d never find someone else. Who could ever replace my Ellie? No one could ever
fill her shoes.

No one ever would.

‘We’re home, Sir.’ Andy’s voice broke the
stretch of silence. After returning to the morgue, I’d had to face Jenny’s
devastated parents. Worse was watching a distraught Dean trying to slip his
engagement ring onto Jenny’s stiff finger, it had broken me. I hadn’t said a
word since. I slid out of the car, following Lucas as he opened my front door.
My legs felt like I’d done a marathon. Every step up to the first floor was an
effort, like I had lead weights attached to my ankles. I ignored everyone who
was standing in the lounge, watching me with sympathetic looks on their faces.
I couldn’t deal with them now. I was done with being strong, Ellie was my
strength and I could feel her slipping away from me. I turned and started
climbing the stairs again, heading up to my bedroom. I found myself lying on
top of the bed, hugging Ellie’s pillow, even though the scent of her had
already faded. Why was I so numb? Why couldn’t I tune into the utter
devastation that had laid waste to my rapidly wilting heart?

‘Brooke, leave him, he needs some space,’ Lucas’s
voice called from outside.

‘No,’ she bit back. ‘If Ellie could call right
now, she’d tell me not to leave him on his own. He’s not good on his own, Lucas.
He’s
never
been good on his own. He shuts down. I’m going in there and
if you try and touch me, or throw me over your shoulder like he’d do, I’ll
scream the house down.’

‘You’re so fucking stubborn, Brooke Hanson.’

‘If I wasn’t, they might have never got
together again. Trust me, Lucas. He needs me, I’m the closest to Ellie he’s
going to get right now,’ she urged. There was silence, then I heard the door
open and her feet padding across the carpet. I closed my eyes as she climbed
onto the bed behind me and put her arm around my waist, curling around my body.
‘Don’t you dare bottle it up or shut down, Davenport. You know what Ellie would
think of that. She’s opened your heart, made you feel again, and she wouldn’t
want you to close it now. Let it out, pretend I’m her and it’s all over, let
yourself deal with all the shit that has just been thrown at you. If you need
to cry, cry. I promise I’ll never bring it up with you or anyone again if
you’re embarrassed, but you can’t keep holding it all in.’

I nodded. She was right. Ellie wouldn’t want me
to be strong, she’d want me to feel, to suffer, to grieve, to have a chance to
move forwards without the guilt weighing me down. I felt tears starting to roll
down my face. I still tried to fight them, but Ellie had spent so long getting
me to deal with my emotions, to deny them now felt disrespectful. I started
sobbing, proper gut-wrenching sobs like Oliver did when I injected that tracker
into him. What good had that done? So far it had all been for nothing. My body
jerked as I let four days’ worth of frustration, guilt, and despair out.

I cried for Jenny.

I cried for her family and Dean.

I cried for James and his loved ones.

I cried for Oliver, for his brother and sister
that might never see him again.

I cried for Ellie, for the woman who’d given me
a reason to get up every morning and look forward to life. She was the love of
my life. She’d be the love of my afterlife.

Lastly I cried for me, for the life that I’d
thought I was going to have with her, that might never happen. I had no idea
that I had so many tears inside me.

Damien
Daniels

I paced the bedroom that Alfa had confined me
to. Everything was out of fucking control. It was supposed to be a simple
kidnap. I’d get paid, pay off the team, release Jenny, James, and Ellie, then
I’d disappear with Oliver and start afresh. I’d puked all over myself when Alfa
made me go down to the bunker and help Charlie wrap up the girl’s body in the blood-soaked
plastic. I’d never seen a dead body before. Ellie was curled up sobbing, her
head in James’s lap as he just stared blankly at the wall opposite. Oliver was
crying as well, cradled in Ellie’s arms. What the fuck had I got mixed up in
here?

The team had all laughed when they’d seen the
state of me as I’d helped drag Jenny’s body up the stairs and out to the van.
I’d tried to ignore them and use the daylight to check out my surroundings.
There was still a chance I could get out of this intact with that twenty
million Davenport had already paid. I could call in our location, they’d have a
team here within hours. I could claim I’d been threatened, coerced into helping
them. Better still, I could use the inevitable gun fight to make a run for it.
I just needed access to my phone or laptop, but the paranoid bastard had
confiscated them. He only let me log on to check the bank account balance while
he stood close by, timing me with a gun to my head. Right now I was fucked. I
had every reason to believe that once I transferred their share of the money,
I’d be wrapped in a blood-soaked sheet, just like Jenny.

Tuesday 15
^th
September

Ellie

‘Ellie … Ellie … wake up.’ James’s whispering voice
had me yawn and slowly open my eyes. I could hardly see. I’d cried so hard over
losing Jenny that my eyelids were almost swollen shut, not to mention the pain
in my leg where I’d been shot. James had examined it and told me that whoever
did it obviously had field medical experience as he’d done a good job. The
bullet hadn’t hit any major arteries, but I’d passed out when they pinned me to
the dining table, cut that large hole in my jeans, and extracted it. When I
came to, I was back in the bunker on my mattress with Oliver sleeping, his head
on my stomach. Right now, he was asleep by my side, sucking his thumb. ‘Are you
ok?’ James called as quietly as possible.

‘Define ok?’ I whispered in return, not wanting
to wake Oliver. ‘We’re being held by a load of lunatics, my best friend is
dead, shot right in front of me, we’re cold and hungry, my little boy is
terrified, and I’ve been shot. I’ve seriously had better days!’

‘I meant your leg, it must be hurting with no
painkillers.’

‘Given what happened to poor Jenny, my leg pain
is pretty insignificant.’

‘We need to get out of here.’

‘I agree, but how? It’s solid concrete with a
thick metal door. They’re watching us on the damn camera and even if we made it
outside, from what I saw yesterday out of one of the windows as they filmed me,
we’re in the middle of a dense forest, God knows where.’

‘If we can block the visual on the camera, I
can free myself from my hand restraints and take down whoever is accompanying
me to the bathroom.’ James said. Bathroom? That was putting a spin on the dirty
toilet and cracked sink, with its tap that barely even dripped, in the corner.

‘How will you get out of your restraints? They
have to cut the ones off your feet with a knife.’

‘I’ve broken my thumb, I could slip my hand out
right now, but they might be watching.’

‘You’ve done what?’ I gasped.

‘It was necessary. Any hope I had that we might
be released unharmed is fading after what they did to Jenny. Escaping is our
only chance,’ he urged. ‘They didn’t take my watch off me, so I know what time
it is. If we do it at nightfall, it will make it harder for them to track us.’

‘But how would we see? Surely daylight would be
best.’

‘You need to trust me, Ellie. I was trained for
night-time manoeuvres. What harm can it do? We’re likely to die if we stay
here. Better to have a fighting chance than be sitting ducks.’

‘Shit,’ I moaned, dropping my head back onto
the mattress and covering my eyes. The logical part of my brain knew that he
was right. The sooner we got out of here, the better, but James against those
men, I wasn’t one hundred percent confident that he could take them.

‘Ellie. They use tranquiliser guns when they’re
bringing us food and water. If I could immobilise one long enough, you could
shoot him. I’d be ready to take the next one as he came in to check on his
friend. He wouldn’t be expecting an ambush.’

‘They could kill you, James, and I can’t lose
anyone else, please don’t make me lose anyone else.’ I swallowed hard,
determined not to cry anymore. It wouldn’t bring Jenny back, it wasn’t helping
anyone, and seeing me upset just upset Oliver even more.

‘You’ll lose me if we don’t do this, Ellie, I’m
sure of it. I’d rather go down fighting. I was prepared to die yesterday to
protect you and Master Oliver and they took that from me. They took  … they
took Jenny from us. I need payback. I want to kill the
bastard
who shot
her.’

I lay on my bed, running my choices through my
mind again and again. I had so few, why was I finding it so hard to make a
decision?
Because the last time you did, your best friend died, Ellie
, a
voice in my head whispered. I’d shielded Oliver’s eyes from the actual shooting
and hadn’t uncovered them until poor Jenny’s body had been removed. I’d had to
lie to him and say that they’d let her go, that she was back home looking after
Jonas and Eva. He was too young to have to face death or to try and understand
it. I gritted my teeth with renewed determination. My son was my priority and
he needed me to protect him from all of this. That meant getting him out of
this situation by any means necessary.

‘How do we do this then?’ I asked, struggling
upright to face James.

‘Ok, this is how it’s going to go,’ he nodded.

I struggled up onto my feet as we heard
footsteps clunking down towards the inner bunker door. Jesus, it hurt to put
weight on my leg, but I had no choice. James was relying on me. He was putting
his life on the line, again, the least I could do was endure a little pain. He
nodded at me as the door opened and Bravo entered, then closed it behind him,
the locks being applied from the outside again. My heart sank. Of all of the
captors, Bravo seemed the nicest. He’d always treated us respectfully, making
sure that Oliver got peanut butter sandwiches as they were his favourite. He
set the small tray of sandwiches and bottles of water on the floor, then looked
over at me.

‘You have fresh blood on your jeans.’

‘I know, it won’t stop bleeding,’ I nodded.
Letting James pick off the adhesive glue they’d used to patch me up had been
really painful, as had his efforts to force the wound to bleed as we sat with
our backs to the camera.

‘I need to check your leg, apply fresh dressings.’

‘I wouldn’t have thought that you’d care if I
died from an infection,’ I scowled.

‘I’m just following orders. I need you to take
off your jeans and stand by the sink.’

‘I’m not taking my jeans off in front of you,’
I shot back. ‘You’re not touching me.’

‘I have my orders to make sure your wound was
ok.’

‘Fine, but I want James to do it, I know him. I
don’t want a stranger looking at me in my knickers, thank you very much.’

‘I have medical training, I can do it even with
my wrists bound. Where’s the harm?’ James called. ‘No point upsetting Mrs.
Davenport and having her put up a fight for no reason. I doubt Alfa will be
impressed if you go back and say you need help to pin her down.’ Bravo’s eyes
shot from me to James and back again and he lifted his hand and ran it over his
mouth. He reached for his tranquiliser gun from his leg holster and waved it at
me.

‘Don’t make me put either of you down. You’ve
seen how short the boss’s temper is, there’s no saying what he’ll do if you try
anything.’

‘Like we’d be that stupid,’ I replied with a
roll of my eyes, thinking that’s just how stupid we actually were. Bravo headed
over and cut the ties on James’s ankles and grabbed his wrists to haul him up,
before stepping behind him with the gun aimed at his back.

‘Both of you, move,’ he ordered. I palmed the
wall as I hobbled over, grimacing through the pain. Bravo stood at an angle to
the screen, his gun trained on James’s back, the first aid box balanced on the
sink. I tried not to imagine Dan’s reaction to know that I was standing, in a
lace thong, with James crouched in front of me at eye level. Worse was the fact
that I was still in the same underwear and clothes I’d been wearing for God knows
how many days. My scalp was itchy from my greasy hair and I’d never been so
desperate to stand in a shower. I’d take a cold shower over feeling like this.
I spotted a small elastic band holding some of the dressing packages together
and grabbed it. I scraped my hair back with my fingers and tied it back,
grateful to have it out of my face. James applied more of the glue, nearly
making me cry as he pinched my skin back together. He’d warned me that messing
with it might result in an infection and would definitely make it scar, but I
was beyond caring. I wanted Oliver safe. Right now, he was curled up fast
asleep in the corner. I hoped that he’d stay like that for what was to come.

James applied a bandage and looked up at me
with a gentle nod. I returned it, nerves suddenly flooding my system as I saw
him grimace and slip his restraints. I silently thanked Oliver for his
sneakiness with my chewing gum as I let it fall from its position tucked up in
the corner of my mouth and carried on chewing it, to make it as soft as
possible. I quickly reached down to pull up my jeans as James stood up.
Everything happened so fast. One minute Bravo was backing away, telling James
and I to return to our makeshift beds at the far side of the bunker, the next
it was like I was an extra in
The Matrix.
James charged backwards,
slamming Bravo against the concrete wall, both of them grunting. I reached up
and smeared the sticky chewing gum over the camera, obscuring the view of
whoever was watching on their tablet screen outside. If he was paying
attention, we only had seconds. I saw James’s elbow fly back and up, cracking
Bravo on the chin, as he grabbed Bravo’s wrist with his free hand, bashing it
against the other wall to force him to drop the gun. James grimaced as Bravo
sank his teeth into James’s shoulder and I ripped the gun from Bravo’s hand.
James moved forward, then rammed backwards again, winding Bravo and crushing
him against the wall as I lifted my shaking hands and pointed the gun at
Bravo’s neck, then hesitated.

‘It’s a tranq gun, Ellie, you’re only putting
him to sleep. You can do it. Hurry,’ James ordered, struggling to keep Bravo
pinned to the corner as we heard the sound of the door being unbolted from
outside.

‘Shit,’ I moaned as I squeezed the trigger,
seriously hoping I wasn’t going to miss and shoot James in the face with it. It
connected with Bravo’s neck, James immediately putting a reverse head butt on
him. The door was opening and Bravo still wasn’t down. Ignoring the pain in my
leg, I spun around, my heart beating like a wild horse cantering across the
sand as I saw the tip of a gun edging through the gap.

‘Mummy,’ Oliver yelled.

‘Close your eyes, right now,’ I screamed
without even looking at him. I did as James had told me, thankful that the door
was too heavy for someone to kick open and have it ricochet off the wall, I
waited until I could see two hands and wrists. Using every last ounce of
strength in me, I threw myself at the hard metal, slamming it against whoever’s
hands it was, trapping them. I heard them roar with pain or frustration and
they dropped the gun. I winced as they bashed against the door from the other
side, smacking my shoulder and knocking me to the ground.

‘The gun, Ellie, grab the gun,’ James bellowed.
I rolled over and snatched it off the floor, crying out in pain as the door was
forced again and smacked me in my stomach. I wanted to double up and cry. I
could hear Oliver sobbing in the corner, but if I gave in now, who knows who
they’d take it out on. I lifted the gun, my hands shaking so badly, trying my
best to aim it at the set of legs that had just appeared in my visual as I lay
on the floor. I fired and cursed as I heard the sound of metal bounce on the
floor. I’d missed.

‘No,’ I cried as the gun was kicked out of my
hand. I couldn’t help it, I was so scared I closed my eyes and curled up into a
ball, waiting for the worst. At the same time as I heard the sound of bones
crunching, I felt a thud and jerked as something heavy landed on my legs.

‘Ellie, are you ok?’ came James’s voice.
‘They’re both down. Talk to me, we might not have much time.’

‘I’m … fine,’ I replied with a shaky voice. I
opened my eyes and realised I had a body partially lying on me. I shoved him
off and he rolled onto his back. I slammed my palm over my mouth to stifle my
scream as I saw lifeless eyes starting up at the ceiling, blood oozing from
where a knife was lodged in his throat. I quickly looked down at his chest to
see the letter “D” on it. James offered me his hand and pulled me up. ‘Is he
really dead?’ I whispered.

‘Yes, good job my knife-throwing skills are
accurate.’

‘What about Bravo?’

‘I snapped his neck. We need to gather what we
can and move,’ he ordered, bending down to strip Delta of his weapons. I was
nearly sick when I saw so much of Delta’s blood on my jeans.

‘O my God, I thought you were just going to
tranq them, not kill them, James.’ I reached for the wall to support myself as
I went dizzy and my body started to tremble.

‘You’d never have gone along with it if I’d
told you the truth. It was them or us,’ James replied, turning to strip the
jumper off Bravo, who was slumped in the corner. ‘Gather the food and water,
I’ll fashion a bag out of this to carry it all in.’

‘Mummy,’ cried Oliver, his little voice full of
anguish.

‘Mummy’s just fine, darling, keep your eyes
closed for a little while and I’ll come and get you, then you’re going home,
ok?’

‘To … see … daddy?’ he sobbed.

‘Yes, darling,’ I called as I skirted Delta’s
dead body and snatched up the three small bottles of water, sandwiches, and
bananas that Bravo had brought down for us. ‘Jonas and Eva are going to be
so
excited to see you.’