Too shocked by this sudden show of deadly violence, Helen could only stare from Charlie to Letitia, then back again. Up till now she’d believed – foolishly – that Letitia would let them go, instead of facing up to the inevitable, that she was going to die.
Mr Singh was the first to react. ‘Fuck!’ he croaked. Covering his mouth with his hand, he fumbled his way up the stairs and could be heard retching outside.
Even Letitia looked a little queasy, her lips quivering beneath the fresh coat of lipstick. ‘You brought this on yourself. If only you’d let it be.’
Enraged, Helen launched herself at the chauffeur, catching him in the stomach. She managed to unbalance him, then he regained his footing and tossed her aside like a rag doll. He pulled a length of nylon cord out of his jacket pocket and swung it over her head. Instinctively she brought her hands up, and they caught under the cord. Gasping and gagging for breath, she felt it digging into her palms, the pain immense.
Letitia’s eyes met hers for a moment. ‘For what it’s worth, I’m sorry,’ she said, and turned away.
The chauffeur loosened the cord, and Helen fell forward on her elbows, sending shooting pains up her arms. Red spots danced before her eyes as she gulped for air in short, sharp bursts.
The relief was short-lived.
Letitia’s goon brought the cord around her throat again, this time without her hands acting as a buffer and almost lifted her bodily in the air with the force of it.
Her fingernails clawed at the cord, her feet scrambled for a foothold on the concrete floor, and her eyes squeaked and popped in their sockets. Her heart hammered wildly against her chest, beating out a last panic-stricken message.
I don’t want to die.
Jason parked his minivan along a side road and whipped out his phone. The GPS tracker still showed Helen to be at his father’s warehouse. Holding his phone, he headed down the small business park, conscious of how the squeak from his trainers echoed in the still night air, bouncing back from the hard surfaces. The business park was lit by a few street lamps and with enough distance between them to create shadowy pockets of darkness.
He’d helped out here one summer when he was in his teens, and his father’s unit was exactly where he remembered it, at the end of a lane with a razor-wire topped fence behind. A perfect trap, he thought, and walked a little faster.
Two cars were parked at the end of the lane. One of them had a dent in the front left bumper. It wasn’t one of his father’s cars, he noticed immediately, although it was a similar shape and size. Easy to understand Helen’s mistake. A sense of relief spread in his chest, followed by anger that the swine who ran Fay over was probably inside the building right now.
His heart raced. If Helen and Charlie were inside the lock-up unit, they would be trapped. Whitehouse had told him to stay outside, which made sense – they were trained police officers, they had armed response units at their disposal and all that – but he couldn’t just wait here and do nothing.
Instead he crept around the back and tried the door. It was locked, and no light spilled out from the windows high up on the wall.
Odd, he thought. The tracker definitely stopped in this area. So where were they?
As he debated with himself whether he should wait for Whitehouse or try to break in, a blood-curdling scream ripped through the air. But the sound didn’t come from inside his father’s lock-up. Confused, he ran back to the lane and noticed the light coming from the unit opposite. All hesitation gone, he bolted around to the back of the other building, startling a man on his knees in the weeds.
‘Don’t …’ the guy croaked, but Jason hardly heard him. Instead he slammed through a door with broken glass, tore past an empty back office, and in seconds took in the scene below. Charlie in a pool of blood, and Helen clawing at a ligature around her neck, a beefy guy with a manic grin on his face.
The blood rushed to his ears in a great whoosh, adrenaline surged through him, and with a roar he leapt over the banister and torpedoed the man from the side. The goon toppled sideways into a stack of boxes, and in a haze of rage Jason threw himself down of top of him, attacking him with fists, knees and teeth.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Helen crawl out of the way, clutching her throat, then a fist connected with his cheekbone, and his whole head rang from the impact.
As he recovered, the goon made to punch him in the stomach, but he parried left and received a glancing blow in his side instead. Having put all his weight behind it, the other man lost his balance, and Jason launched himself at him again knocking him into a shelf of kitchen equipment. Crockery scattered and broke, and plastic flowers from an upended box on the top shelf rained down over them.