A Rip in the Veil (11 page)

“Run!”

She didn’t need a second telling. Soldiers – even she could see that. He rushed them through the undergrowth, and Alex had to wade through bracken and heather. From behind came the unmistakeable sounds of pursuit, loud voices telling them to stop.

Gorse tore at her arms, her hands, the tender skin on her unhealed foot broke open, and still she ran, struggling to keep even pace with him. Which was bloody difficult, given the length of his legs. But not even Matthew Graham could outrun a horse, and how the hell would they get out of this one? The ground shook with the approaching horses, a dull throbbing that vibrated up her feet and legs to close like a fist of ice round an unidentifiable point in her belly.

A swift assessment of the terrain, and Matthew turned them sharply to the right. What, up there? He shoved her towards the scree slope, and she stumbled and fell flat on her face on the slippery, shifting rock face. She was up again, scrabbling on all fours. When a shot went off she squeaked, ducking for an instant before increasing her efforts up the steep incline.

Agh! She hopped for a couple of steps, anything to keep weight off her foot. She had a stitch up her right side, she could taste iron in her mouth and her breath was coming in short gasps. Breathe normally! One, two, one, two. There, much better. Her foot – it was killing her, but she was too frightened to even consider stopping, dodging like a hare between boulders and shrubs.

A long stretch of grass, a horse that came at them from the side, and Alex redoubled her efforts. Arms up, arms down. Feet, move your feet. Extend your stride, pretend you’re Michael Johnson or someone. Michael Johnson? He only did four hundred metres, the wimp, this was uphill and much longer. But she tried, pumping legs up and down. Useless; the ground dragged at her feet.

The horse came closer and closer, and when she threw a look over her shoulder, she could see reflections dancing off a long blade. Bloody hell; she was going end up sliced to bits. She hiccupped, moved her arms faster – or tried to. The man cheered as he shrank the gap between them.

“It’s her, it’s her! See? She’s wearing those breeches!” Oh shit; not him again.

She tried to count them; two behind them, one on the far right, and then this enervating Smith character. Yet another shot, and Matthew yelped, limping for a couple of steps before regaining pace.

“They got you?” A wheeze no more, but she had to know. He shook his head, but there was trickle of blood flowing down his calf. A ricochet of sorts; her brain grappled with this, happier to be solving this particular dilemma than the one of how to evade all these damned soldiers.

Matthew pulled her along, plunging down one slope, up the other. It made Alex dizzy. She lost her footing, her hand slipped from his grip, a few decimetres became metres, and the horse was upon her. She tried to run, tripped and landed hard on hands and knees.

Alex made an incoherent sound; it would kill her, those huge hooves would crush her back, her head, her everything. I’m going to die! No, I don’t want to, please, no, no, no,
Pappa
, help me,
Pappa
! No Magnus, but Matthew, leaping back towards her.

The sword flashed, Matthew twisted out of range, rose to strike the horse across its head with his roll. The animal reared and Matthew pounced, grabbing the soldier by his booted leg and pulling him off. The man landed with a dull thud, flopped and went still.

“Get up! Move,” Matthew gasped, heaving Alex back onto her feet.

Yet another incline, more stones, more gorse, and Alex’s teeth ached with the effort, her lungs protested at every panicked breath, and still she could hear the soldiers behind them. She rushed up the last few metres, treading hard on Matthew’s heels.

“Shit!” Alex came to a swaying halt, arms thrown wide to stop herself from falling down the sheer drop that yawned at her feet. She swallowed and looked at the small body of water, an uninviting black far below; what was this, ten metres?

“I hate heights,” she said, and then irrationally began to laugh. He took her hand, motioning back to where the soldiers were urging the horses up yet another shifting scree slope.

“We have to jump.”

“I know.” Without further thought she closed her eyes and leapt straight out. She landed with a splash, thrilled to discover she was still alive, her limbs intact.

“Can you swim?” Matthew’s head popped up beside hers.

“A bit late in the day to ask!” A shot whizzed by and from above came angry shouts. Another shot, this one uncomfortably close and Alex squawked, her mouth filling with water.

“Dive, swim for the willow.” And just like that he was gone.

The willow? She was in a state of panic and he expected her to recognise a bloody tree? Well, wasn’t she the lucky one to have a botanist for a father. She submerged herself and swam for the further shore.

“Matthew?” She surfaced under the trailing branches, gulped down air. “Matthew?” Oh God, oh God. They’d shot him and he was by now floating dead in the middle of the pool, and then what was she to do?

“Here, Alex, I’m here.” He boosted her up the tree, urging her to climb higher. “We stay here until it’s dark,” he whispered once they were safely astride a branch that hung out over the water, his body like a protective layer round her. Alex nodded and unclenched her hand from around her little wooden doll.

“They must be here somewhere!” There was an irritated tone to the voice Alex recognised as Smith’s. Persevering bastard.

“Where do you think they’re hiding, under the gorse?” Smith’s companion asked.

“No, but perhaps up a tree.”

“A tree?”

Alex bit her hand to stop herself from whimpering. And if they came looking, then what? Behind her Matthew had stopped breathing. Well, she hoped not, but it felt that way. His mouth came down to her ear.

“Your feet. Pull up your feet.” So she did, and he whispered that she should stand, press herself against the trunk. With the agility of a monkey he clambered over to another branch, rose and flattened himself against the gnarly bark. Alex wanted to giggle – alternatively pee. Her toes, her calves, her thighs – all of her cramped with the effort of holding herself upright and still. She didn’t dare to look down. She didn’t dare to move her head, keeping her cheek and ear squished against the tree. She could hear her own pulse, loud but surprisingly steady. From below came sounds. Someone was shaking the lower branches, banging at the trunk. There was a loud curse.

“Now what?”

“I slipped. This tree grows more in the water than out of it.”

“Afraid of water, Smith?”

“I can’t swim, can I?” Smith did some more branch shaking. “Not here.”

It was probably no more than five minutes before Matthew decided they could sit back down. It felt like half a century. Besides, there was no way she could sit down. Her limbs had gone rigid, shivers of tension rippling through the muscles of legs and arms. She’d sunk her fingers so hard into the bark the joints hurt. If she moved she’d overbalance and plunge to her death. She peeked down, swayed. Well; perhaps not death, but close – unless she landed in the water.

“I’ve got you, aye?” A large hand grabbed hold of her arm. Slowly, centimetre by centimetre she slid down the trunk. Something tore at her cheek. With a little sob she resumed her previous sitting position. The branch swayed when he moved over to sit behind her.

*

By the time they made it down from the tree, they were stiff with cold.

“Do you think it’s safe?” she breathed.

“Aye, it’s hours since we heard anything last.” He straightened up and looked with disgust at his sodden roll. “We’ll walk, we need to get warm anyway.”

Alex just nodded, fell into step with him. “They nearly caught us.”

“But they didn’t, did they?”

“What…” she broke off, took a steadying breath. “And if they’d caught us, what would they have done?”

Matthew looked away. “I’m not sure about you, but me they would have clapped in irons – or hanged.”

“Ah.” She didn’t feel like talking much after that.

“How’s your foot?” he said a bit later.

“Okay,” she lied. Every step was agony, and she was quite sure she’d cut herself on the scree, but she had no intention of slowing them down. Matthew pursed his mouth, but left it at that.

All through the night they walked, Alex setting one foot before the other despite the constant, throbbing pain. She had to work hard not to limp, and it was with relief she sank down to sit once they stopped. He set water to boil and knelt before her to wash her feet. Just as she’d suspected, there was a deep cut on her instep, and he spent extra time on it, ignoring her little sounds of protests.

“Thanks,” she said once he was done.

“My pleasure.” For an instant the back of his hand rested against her cheek.

*

It took a long time for Alex to relax sufficiently to even consider sleep. All in all, this birthday had been excessively exciting. She closed her hand around her little doll and wondered if John was thinking as much of her as she was thinking of him.

Chapter 9

“John?” Diane shook him. “It’s almost six. Aren’t you supposed to pick up Isaac?”

He tore his eyes away from the blank computer screen and hitched his shoulders.

“He’s with Magnus.” A pathetic attempt to distract Magnus from the fact that today was Alex’s birthday. He picked up his Rubrik cube and sat turning the faces. “Do you believe him?” he asked, keeping his eyes on his toy. It was the constant question in his brain these days, from the moment he woke to the second he fell asleep.

“Who? Mr bloody Hector Olivares? Of course I don’t! Do you?”

“I don’t know, but he definitely seemed to believe himself, don’t you think?”

Diane exhaled and shook her head. “Maybe, but what worries me is that you don’t dismiss it as being totally impossible. Time nodes don’t exist, of course they don’t.”

John swivelled on his chair and looked at her.

“How would you know?” In fact, he’d come to the conclusion over the last fortnight that he did believe Hector’s time node theory, however borderline crazy.

“Come off it. You can’t seriously believe anything he said was true. He’s a sick man with an overactive imagination.”

“He’s a man who just lost his partner,” John corrected harshly.

Diane looked away. “Sorry.” She reached over and took hold of his arm. “She’s gone, John. We don’t know how, but she’s gone.”

John swallowed, ashamed of even thinking this, let alone voicing it. “She isn’t coming back, is she?”

Diane sighed. “No, I don’t think she is.”

John was on the verge of asking her if she thought Alex was dead, but desisted. He didn’t want to know what she thought – he had no idea what he himself thought. Now and then – now and then? Who was he kidding? More or less constantly – he pondered the possibility that this disappearance might somehow be linked to those months when she’d been gone last time, and at times it filled him with surging hope, because if she came back once she could come back twice, right?

Mostly it made him hope there was no link, because he never wanted to see Alex as extinguished as she’d been the autumn of 1999. Pregnant and silent, almost inhumanly silent – during the days, that is, because at night she dreamed and screamed. Jesus; it had been a trial, for them both. A trial that grew exponentially worse with the advent of baby Isaac, fathered during those lost months by a man Alex refused to talk about, except to say his name was Ángel Muñoz.

Those were the only two words she’d ever uttered about her experiences, and only because Magnus had insisted the boy had a right to know – someday. Isaac; all he had left of her now.

“If…” Diane’s voice jerked him back to the here and now. “…if Alex is gone, what happens to Isaac?” What was she, a mind reader?

“To Isaac? Why should anything happen to him?”

“Well, he’s not yours is he?”

For a moment John considered slapping her. Not his? Of course Isaac was his, had been from that dark December day when he’d been born. A hell of a lot more his than Alex’s – at least to begin with, because Alex had refused to feed him, touch him, have anything to do with him those first few months. Post-partum depression, the doctors had said, but John wasn’t that sure. Even now, with Isaac pushing three, there were moments when John would find Alex watching her son with speculation, an odd glint in her eyes. He frowned at Diane.

“Of course he’s mine. I’m the only father he’s ever had.”

“But as per the letter of the law —”

“What letter of the law?” He could hear it, the panic in his voice, “I’m his dad – no one else. No one, you hear?” He slammed the door on his way out.

John was still seething as he walked his way across the Princes Street Gardens, making for Fredrick Street and the shortest route to Magnus’ house up by the Botanical Gardens. He was behaving irrationally, and a small voice inside of him was telling him that he should phone Diane and apologise, because none of this was her fault. He stopped by a bench, sat down, and all energy drained away from him so fast it left him spinning inside. Alex, he groaned, rubbed his hand across his face, and began to cry.

The odd passerby gave him concerned looks, one elderly lady pressed a paper napkin into his hand, but mostly people hastened by the man who sat crying his heart out in the August dusk.

John cried until his eyes hurt, wiped his nose, cried some more, and finally felt the sobs subside. He jumped when his phone rang, bringing him hurtling back to the here and now and the fact that it was eight o’clock, and he’d totally forgotten Isaac.

“John?” Magnus’ voice sounded hollow, and John pressed the phone harder to his ear.

“What?” He closed his eyes as he imagined scenarios where Isaac had also disappeared. “Is Isaac okay? Is he there?”

“Yes,” Magnus said, still in that strange voice. “He’s fast asleep.” He breathed heavily, a soft sound whooshing down the line. “Will you please come?” John had never heard Magnus sound like that, so he promised he’d be there in twenty minutes, rang off and set off at a run for the closest taxi stand.