Keep Calm (24 page)

She scanned the crowd for Étienne. She couldn't text him because her father had destroyed her phone. There would be hell to pay for running away like she did, she knew that. She couldn't think of that right now. She needed to find her Étienne. She needed to hear him say what he had last texted her, that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. She had to see him say it, watch his lips move as he did. She needed to touch his face, stroke his hair, and hold him close as she responded in kind. She would figure a way to make it up to her mother and father later. Right now, Étienne was all that mattered.

Trudy searched every face, looked up and down, walked in and around the various benches, through the reuniting families, past bored travelers with their e-readers, others with noses buried in newspapers or chatting away on mobile phones. Each face that wasn't Étienne's was harder and harder to endure. She thought for sure that he would be there, waiting for her the minute she got off, as eager to make the connection as she was.

She moved slowly, sadly, toward the end of the train, closer to the concourse and the crowd of people listening to the big band, when she saw Elise, Étienne's mother. Her heart almost burst. Why was she there? Had something happened to her sweetheart? Had her parents contacted her? Was she just going to be put back on the train and sent back to the airport, home to Chicago, never to see him again? She walked over to the woman, who was on her mobile, excitedly telling someone she had found Trudy. She hung up and addressed her in a similar comic version of the broken English that her son spoke.

“Trudy, thank God you are here. I was very upset to have not found you. Come quickly. We must leave.”

She didn't wait for a response; she took Trudy by the arm and headed out toward the front of the station. Trudy stopped. The woman turned to her, annoyed as Trudy peppered her with questions.

“Where's Étienne? Why isn't he here? Why are you here? Where is he?” She was crushed that her love didn't show, that he had sent his mother.

“He is at the hotel. He is very excited to see you, but we must go now, Trudy. Right now.” Once again she took the teen's arm and led her down to the concourse. Trudy stopped again, her eyes liquid with the pain of a dream that had been doused by cold reality.

“He couldn't come himself? Why didn't he come?”

Why are you here?
is what she wanted to say
. After all I went through to be here, he sent his mother?

The woman was through playing. She turned with a harsh glint to her eyes.

“We go now. It is enough talking. We go now. You must listen to me. We are all in trouble if you don't.” She was harried, this woman, spooked. Her words had a strain to them. She was flailing around at the end of her wits. She snatched Trudy up and pulled her along.

Very suddenly someone grabbed Trudy from behind—a tall man with a dark head of hair and a friendly face. He clutched her firmly, stopping both the French woman and Trudy in their tracks.

“Hello, Trudy. I'm a friend of your mum's. You'll be going with me, Princess.”

He had a thick British accent and a deep, comforting voice. She had no idea who he was, but he sure seemed to know her.

“I've just spoken to Mum. She wants me to ring her straight up, so you two can speak.”

The French woman pulled Trudy away, her voice cracking in desperation, “No, you come with me, Trudy. Right now.” She pulled her by her collar, ramming them through the crowd of people, but the British man, the one claiming to be a friend of her mom's, wasn't giving in.

“No, sorry, love, but this girl's going with me tonight. Back to her mum and dad.”

He brushed Elise off Trudy, pulled Trudy close, and stood in between the young girl and the French woman. Once again the crowd of departing and arriving passengers washed over and around them, cascaded past, oblivious to the struggle taking place over Trudy. Elise came at her again; the tall British man pushed the tiny French woman away with a long, strong arm just about as thick as her whole body. Elise fell backward and tumbled against a pillar. The man took it as a chance to move on, and he did. He put his arm around a very confused Trudy.

“I recognize you from Facebook, in case you're wondering how I knew it was you. Your mum and I are Facebook friends. Of course we go back a hell of a lot further than Facebook, that's for damn sure.” They had just about made their way out to the front of the station, past the brass band, when Trudy was aware that Elise was back. She didn't see the knife, not at first.

“This girl goes with me!” She got up close to Richard and flung herself at him. He made a face, a grimace. She pulled back. Now Trudy saw the knife, covered in blood. She saw the side of the big man's shirt pool with dark liquid. She saw him hobble back on the balls of his feet, unsure what had hit him. A few people started to recognize the drama unfolding. Someone yelled, but they were so close to the brass band, now playing a tune from
Mary Poppins
, that not many people heard the scream.

Trudy was grabbed again. She was dizzy with fright. She wanted to throw up. Elise used the confusion to whisk her away. She held the small girl tightly now, the knife hidden in her pocket, purposefully hurting Trudy's arm, twisting it. She had been sternly told not to make a scene and now she had done even worse. She had stabbed a man. It wouldn't be long before the flames of panic would ignite the station. She needed to flee, needed desperately to get Trudy out of there.

As they got free of the crowd, Trudy had had enough. She pushed Elise off her with a violent lunge. She had seen the bloody knife even if everyone else somehow hadn't. She screamed at the top of her lungs and shoved Elise again. The French woman went flying into the back of one of the brass players seated in the folding chairs. Several of the band members stopped playing, Elise got up quickly, ran toward Trudy, and grabbed her by the hair, her eyes crazy now. The knife was out of her pocket again, suddenly making her way toward Trudy, attempting to jab it into her side.

Out of nowhere Elise was torn off her and thrown a good five feet into the middle of the band members. The show was now over. People were pushing and yelling, screaming and running away in the early stages of terror. It was the man, the tall man who claimed to be a friend of her mother's. He grabbed Elise and threw her forward with an angry intensity, slamming her headfirst into a pillar. She hit the post with a velocity that stopped her cold. She fell backward and dropped to the ground like a bag of rocks.

The British man turned, saw Trudy, ran over, picked her up in his arms, and tore through the crowded station as if he were a stallion breaking free from a barn. Trudy didn't know why Elise had flipped out like she had, but for some reason she felt safe with this man; she somehow knew he wasn't going to harm her. His shirt was covered in blood but he kept going, smiling at Trudy, telling her to be calm, that everything was going to be okay. He was even trying to make her laugh.

“I was actually enjoying those old folks in the band, too. Shame they had to cut it short.”

The entire station was ablaze now with hysteria. Trudy looked back over the man's shoulder and saw that Elise was up again, with the knife, slashing at several people who were trying to help her out. Two policemen had run over and were carefully trying to calm the madwoman down. The man whose arms she was in used the excitement to run through the crowd and outside toward Paddington station's taxi entrance. Once outside, he set her down and quickly moved them along, never looking back, never missing a stride, until the two men in suits stopped them both cold.

They were younger, thick like him, in nondescript business suits. One of them, a man with a thin mustache, punched the man claiming to be her mum's friend in the face, and when he did, her stallion's knees gave out and he fell to the ground. The other one of them, a smaller man, grabbed Trudy and tried to whisk her into a waiting car. The stallion quickly got to his feet. The mustached man pulled a gun. Trudy screamed but she needn't have worried. Somehow the stallion wrestled the gun away and just as swiftly turned it around and began to beat the mustached man on the head with the gun's butt until the man finally collapsed to the ground in pain. Before he could land, the stallion had come over to the littler man and pulled him off Trudy with twice the force he had used on Étienne's mother. The little man put a gun to Trudy's head and threatened to fire it, but even that didn't stop her stallion. He grabbed Trudy away and wrestled with the little man, slamming his head into the side of the car over and over, until the small man finally passed out.

A crowd had developed. The stallion was winded. He tried his best to steady himself. He saw Trudy and saw the mustached man getting back up to his feet. The stallion came over in a flash and kicked him hard in the head before he could rise: the man dropped flat to the cement.

The mysterious man—the stallion, her mother's friend—turned once again to Trudy. He nodded, was strained from a lack of oxygen, but somehow managed to pick her up over his shoulder and run. They crossed quickly to another street, hit the main road, and then darted off into an alleyway of small mews homes just a block or so up.

He pulled a key from his pocket, opened the door to one of the small homes on the back street, made sure no one had followed them, and then, once convinced they hadn't, quickly took Trudy inside and closed the door.

*   *   *

IT WAS THE
oddest place she had ever seen—video games in the dining room, a workout set in the living room, several cats perched on a modern sofa in the middle of the hallway. She actually liked the way the place smelled. It had an acidic fog of a scent, like hair products, which made sense seeing that there was a hair salon chair in the kitchen. The strange man was over at the sink, catching his breath and checking the wound on his stomach. She slowly came over. He glanced back and winked at her as he looked over the gash on his midsection.

“It's gonna be fine.” After another beat, once he had gotten his breathing right and made sure the wound wasn't going to kill him, he stuck out his free, freshly washed hand for a shake. He gave Trudy a big friendly, toothy, almost goofy smile.

“It's my great pleasure to meet you, Miss Trudy. My name is Richard Lyle.”

*   *   *

ADAM AND KATE
were glued to the radio as they drove, heading back toward London, waiting to hear from Richard. They were listening to BBC reports of the bombing, desperate for some knowledge of what they had been thrown into. Billy sat quietly in the back, scared, oblivious, and unsure of what was happening, he retreated into the only place that was safe for him to go, deep into one of the many worlds of his Playstation.

The news was still sketchy. A bomb had gone off and the prime minister was in the hospital, gravely injured. The chancellor, Georgia Turnbull, was set to speak to the press soon. That's all anyone knew at this point. It wasn't much.
That would change quickly
, Adam thought.
They would be looking for an American. There would be talk of a madman, an unstable ex-cop, and then the press would have his name, Adam Tatum. It would happen soon
.

They drove in a dreary silence that was instantly interrupted when a Mercedes in the next lane over violently rammed into the driver's side of their car. Their rental slammed two lanes across the highway, toward oncoming traffic. It was Heaton's men. They had tracked them from the airport.

The bald guy was driving. He rammed them again. Billy cried out from the backseat, suddenly out of his video game bubble. The Mercedes battered them again, flying ferociously into their side, pushing Adam farther into the opposite lane. With cars and trucks barreling straight on at seventy miles an hour, Adam threw the wheel left and hit the gas, scurried across the oncoming wall of wheeled missiles and the brutal symphony of horns and squealing brakes, careening toward the opposite side of the road.

They reached the dirt shoulder by inches. It was useless to stop. The momentum carried them off the road, airborne now, flying into a field, touching down violently, instantly shooting forward. They torpedoed wildly across a young crop, tearing through the poor farmer's neat rows at eighty miles an hour, never on all four wheels more than two seconds at a time.

“Adam, you need to slow down,” Kate begged, her hand dug deep into the armrest. He ignored her, kept pressing on. He knew only one thing and that was that he had to get as far away from those two psychopaths as possible.

“Daddy, please, slow down. Please, please, slow down.” His little boy was crying. There was nothing he could do. He didn't even want to take the energy to answer. He had both of his hands and all of his concentration on the wheel as the car whipped and jumped, rumbled and roared at a dizzying speed. They finally came up to a small fence alongside of a road and he plowed through, smashing the fence, never lifting up so much as a fraction on the gas pedal.

He climbed through a ditch and hit the back road, traveled south, turned right after a quick quarter mile and sped forward for a good ten minutes until he came to the top of a hill. The road behind him was empty. He turned into the parking lot of what appeared to be a shuttered shipping warehouse, drove behind the building, and snuck into the back lot so that he could watch the road they had just come from, down to the misty valley.

Finally, feeling relatively safe, he turned the engine off, gave the car a break and leaned back and tried to breathe again. They sat in a languid, loaded silence. Adam had no idea what to say. At least now Kate would understand the danger he had been going on about. She couldn't form a thought either. She was too terrified. Billy as well. He sat there in the back, wondering if this was real, waiting for his parents to speak or to wake him from his dream.

Kate's cell phone roused them from their collective daze.