31 Days of Autumn (36 page)

‘No, I’m not, and I’m not going to log in
straight away either. I’m going to keep tapping on my keyboard without telling
you when I’m looking at the bank account. I’ll screen print the balance and
show you after I’ve logged out. That way you can’t shoot me, because if you do
and I’m not online, you’ll end up without a single penny.’

‘You fucker,’ he hissed, slamming his palms
down on the table, his evil brown eyes shooting flaming arrows of destruction
at me.

‘Me?!’ I shot back, standing up and repeating
his actions with my hands on the table as we eyeballed each other. It had just
hit me that for the first time since I met him and his band of freaks, there’d
been a shift in power. I was in control now. If he wanted his money, he
couldn’t lay a single bloody finger on me. ‘You were going to fucking kill me!
If you want to walk away with something to show for the pile of shit you rained
down on us all, then you’ll sit the fuck down and do as I tell you!’ We
glowered at each other for a while and I had to resist doing a fist pump in the
air when he slowly lowered himself into the chair opposite. I smirked instead,
then looked behind me to make sure that there were no reflective surfaces or
hidden cameras to record what I was doing. Satisfied, and desperate to relieve
my quaking legs from standing up to him, I sat back down. Two days ago I’d been
desperate to have access to this computer so that I could send an email SOS
out, but now that I could see me walking away from this with at least ten
million, I wasn’t doing any such thing.

I logged on and pressed the mute button,
clicking onto a free porn website. I might as well enjoy myself while I made
him sweat. Every now and then I’d tap a load of keys to keep him on his toes. Even
without seeing his face, or feeling the anger radiating off him, I could see it
in those bloody brown eyes fixated on me. I was going to have nightmares about
those fucking eyes. After about half an hour of waiting, I tapped into my
account. It took every skill I’d learned in countless games of poker not to
give away my disappointment at the twenty million pound balance. Davenport
hadn’t paid and I’d been so sure he would. I’d lied yesterday when I told Alfa
that he’d need another twenty-four hour extension. He’d easily have had the
money together by then, which meant he’d chosen not to pay it. I just couldn’t
believe it. I screen printed the balance and quickly logged off, leaving the
porn running. I hadn’t been without sex for this long in fucking ages. It was a
good job that I’d chosen to kick my coke habit at last or I’d have been in
serious detox right now.

‘Are you fucking kidding me here?’ bit Alfa a
short while later. ‘Has he paid or not?’

‘No, he hasn’t,’ I replied.

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Come and see for yourself.’ He strode over and
I showed him the date and time-stamped screenshot of the balance.

‘The bastard,’ he roared, grabbing my laptop
and smashing it down onto the floor, making me flinch. He stamped on it again
and again, pulverising it to fragments of glass, plastic, and metal.

‘Has anyone ever suggested that you try anger
management classes?’ I asked. I gasped as he grabbed me by the throat and
slammed me, and the chair, backwards onto the floor and crouched over me,
snarling. ‘You can’t kill me,’ I squeaked, but his fingers squeezed even harder,
making my eyes water.

‘No, but I can still make you feel a whole
world
of pain without letting you die.’

‘Ok, ok,’ I coughed, nodding. ‘So what now? I’m
not transferring any money until I think of a way to do it where I’m protected
from you.’

‘If he hasn’t paid, he doesn’t give a shit
about his wife. We’re never going to see another penny, so we’re getting the
hell out of here and you can figure it out on the way. Don’t think for a single
second that I’m going to let you out of my fucking sight.’ He let go of me and
strode towards the sideboard, which had very little kit left on it, as I gasped
for air and rubbed my bruised neck. He returned with a cable tie, roughly
grabbed my hands, and forcefully secured my wrists together.

‘Owwww,’ I protested.

‘Shut it,’ he snapped, yanking me to my feet
and dragging me outside. I squinted in the daylight and stumbled as he threw me
against the van, then shoved me onto the passenger seat. He pulled on my seat
belt, locking it into place, then used another cable tie to attach my hands to
the belt so I had no way of getting out. He slammed the door and disappeared
back into the cottage. I craned my neck to look into the back of the van, but a
thick blanket was covering whatever was there. It looked like a bloody body. I
couldn’t wait to get out of here and back to civilisation. I’d never been cut
out for the country. It was a good five minutes before he returned and opened
his door. I sniffed the air.

‘What’s that smell?’ I asked.

‘I’ve torched the place. If anyone comes
looking, they won’t find any trace of DNA for either of us.’

‘What about the bunker?’

‘No risk of my DNA being in there, I made sure
of it, doesn’t matter about the other two, they can’t trace them to me.’

‘Where’s Ellie?’ I asked as he started the
engine.

‘The bitch is dead,’ he replied without a hint
of emotion.

‘Fuck,’ I groaned, surprising myself at how
badly that news hit me. ‘You didn’t have to bloody kill her. Or the other girl.
You could have let them all go once we had the money. I never wanted
any
of them dead, this is all on you. How do you sleep at night, you … psychopath?’

‘Like a fucking baby,’ he snarled, throwing a
glare my way. ‘Don’t make out like you have a fucking heart, Damien. You
started this. Their blood is on your hands as well. If it makes you sleep
better at night, because you have a teenage crush on her or something, she’s
not dead yet. But she doesn’t have long.’

I swallowed a lump that had formed in my throat
and turned to look out of my window as he started to drive away from the
cottage that already had flames tearing up the curtains. I wondered if ten
million was really worth the guilt that I was feeling right now. I’d never
meant for anyone to get physically hurt, and watching the Davenport family for
so long had oddly made me feel like I’d become a part of it. I looked around,
surprised, when Alfa braked and pulled to a stop, then opened his door.

‘What are you doing?’ I asked.

‘I laid some landmines along the track in case
anyone tried to approach. The noise would have given us time to get away on
foot.’

‘To wander the Welsh frickin’ wilderness? Have
you watched the film
Deliverance?
Who knows what inbreds live out here
in the middle of nowhere. Great idea,’ I replied, rolling my eyes.

‘It’s Wales, you dickhead, not the Australian
outback. About fifteen miles the other way is a pub where I left another van in
case we needed to resort to plan B for an extraction. Honestly, I’d rather have
done that than come back this way, but I wasn’t prepared to hear you whinge as
we walked on foot all the fucking way there. Now shut the fuck up. I don’t want
to hear another word from you from this moment until we get to London. If I do,
I’ll remove your tongue and nine of your bloody fingers, except the index
finger you’ll need to log in and transfer my fucking money.’

I swallowed hard, figuring now wasn’t a great
time to tell him that I actually only had eight fingers and the other two
digits were thumbs. He slammed the door shut and walked about ten yards ahead,
then dropped to his knees and pulled out a screwdriver. About five minutes
later, he stood up again and dusted off his knees, then chucked what looked
like a round flat saucer into the forest on the right. I did as I’d been told
and kept quiet as we slowly made our way, stopping another two times for him to
deactivate the rest of his charges. He was seriously fucking crazy. What if he’d
forgotten where he’d planted one? He’d kill both of us in an instant. He
climbed back in and cricked his neck, then his knuckles, and started the engine
again.

‘That was the last pit stop we’ll be making
before London, so you’d better have an answer by then, as right now I’m
thinking watching you suffer is going to give me far more pleasure than a
measly ten fucking million.’

He put his foot down and I gritted my teeth as I
was jerked from side to side and back and forth as he bounced his way along the
track. I looked behind me at Ellie, wondering if she was still alive, then suddenly
gasped and whipped my head to the right as Alfa yelled “Fuck” and slammed on
the brakes. Everything unfolded in slow motion, like bullet time in
The
Matrix
. His hands left the steering wheel. He reached to undo his seat belt
with one hand and open the driver’s door with the other. The scent of pine
trees filled the van, like someone had made a mistake and removed the whole of
the plastic wrapper off a pine-scented car freshener, instead of sliding it a
little at a time over the course of a few weeks. The nicely heated air in the
van was displaced by the cold pouring in, but it wasn’t half as chilling as the
sight of Alfa abandoning me, throwing himself from the van as it skidded and
shuddered along the dirt track. I closed my eyes as I heard an explosion and
gunshots. I felt weightless as the van left the ground, rising up into the tree
line, the force snapping my head back into the headrest. As we slammed back
down onto the ground, my head was forced forwards, tearing something in the
back of my neck, right around the time I pissed myself and the smell of smoke
filled my nostrils.

Dan

‘How much further?’ I whispered, as Andy and I
continued to weave our way through the trees, just out of sight of the track.

‘Another four hours at the rate you move,’ he
whispered back, without turning to look at me. Considering we’d only stopped to
take a leak a couple of times in the last sixteen hours, and every step I took
had the dread inside me building higher and higher, I was impressed that I’d
kept up at this pace. Andy suddenly held up his fist, his signal to stop moving
immediately. I saw him nodding. Wellings had taken over as the scout, keeping
about a mile ahead of us. He was obviously feeding something back.

‘Who’s closest to the co-ordinates James gave
us? … Chris, can you and Jamieson make it in time? … Fuck, fuck! Try, someone
needs to be there in case she’s in the vehicle and makes it. Goodwin, Burton, I
want you on the track to shoot out their tyres if they make it through.’

‘What? What’s happening?’ I demanded, not
giving a crap anymore about whispering. Andy’s tone had me seriously worried.
He turned around and when I saw how pale his face had gone, I felt my stomach sink.

‘James took a compass off one of the guys he
killed and managed to swipe a landmine from a stash they had in the back of a
Navara. He planted it in case they drove after him, but memorised the
co-ordinates for going back for Ellie. Charlie must have overtaken James before
he laid it, as he made it through safely, but Wellings has heard the sound of a
vehicle approaching at speed.’

‘You’re telling me they’re leaving with Ellie
in a car and have no idea that they’re heading towards a goddamn landmine?’ I
yelled, my stomach twisting in knots.

‘Chris is trying to get to it, to deactivate it
before they reach it.’

‘Fuck,’ I yelled. I bolted to my right, forcing
my way through undergrowth as I tried to reach the track. If I made it there, I
could run faster and try to catch Chris up.

‘Sir, fall back,’ Andy ordered. I ignored him,
as well as the pain in my overly tired legs, and heard him swear as he chased
after me. I skidded down a mossy bank onto the dirt road and kept running, the
sound of Andy’s feet pounding behind as he caught me up. I rounded a bend to
see two of our team on the edges of a straight stretch, their guns aimed,
waiting, Chris and Jamieson running ahead. I suddenly heard it, the sound of a
vehicle coming towards us.

‘Chris, fall back, you’re not going to make
it,’ Andy yelled behind me. The purr of the engine got louder, and suddenly a
black vehicle appeared around the corner. There was a sudden screech of brakes
and Chris dropped to his knees and raised his weapon. The driver’s door was
flung open and a black figure flew out, bouncing on the ground and rolling. I
heard gunfire, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the van as there was a loud
explosion and it lifted off the ground in a cloud of dust and slammed back down
again, smoke billowing from underneath. Seconds later, orange flames starting to
lick the sides.

‘Ellie,’ I roared, pressing forward as the guys
ahead started running towards it, too. Jamieson, who’d been ahead of all of us,
was already at the passenger door, trying to yank it open, but it looked like
it was stuck. I could see someone in the passenger seat, but they didn’t seem
to be moving. ‘Ellie?’ I yelled.