Kindred Intentions (15 page)

Holding the steering wheel with a hand, he
leant forward in front of her and opened her door. “Go!” he shouted, pushing
her. Then he pulled on the handbrake. The rear wheels blocked. That wasn’t
enough to stop the vehicle, which swerved and started running sideways, but
slowed it a bit. “I said go!”

She felt herself pushed harder and was forced
to go along with the movement, holding the rucksack tight to her chest. It was
like flying, but when she touched the ground, pain seized her. She tried to
curl up, as the world rolled before her. She felt her head hitting something
hard. While she kept moving without control, she caught a glimpse of the car
that was reaching the edge of the gully. For a moment it looked like it could
continue its travel as if the ground was still beneath it.

Then Amelia didn’t see anything anymore.

7

She had insisted on taking her child with her
that morning. For weeks Gavin had been trying to convince her to leave him at
home; he kept repeating that she would have to detach from him sooner or later,
that her attitude was becoming almost morbid.

Amelia had harboured a grudge, had interpreted
those words as an attempt to call her crazy. Was he maybe insinuating that she
was on the edge of a breakdown? There was nothing abnormal in her desire to
take care of her son as much as possible. She could. She was an associate in a
firm equipped with a nursery, so she could leave him there while she worked,
and as soon as the occasion arose, she could show him that Mummy was there,
that she wasn’t one of those super-busy mothers who forgot about the existence
of their children, leaving them with the first nanny that came by. Like her
colleagues, like her mother, with the difference that the latter hadn’t been a
working woman. She was just
busy
and any commitment seemed more
important than her daughter. No, she wouldn’t be like them.

“I don’t have a morbid attachment,” she had
inveighed against him. “I don’t spend all the time with him. I’m certainly not
with him, when I’m working.”

“But he is still to stay in the same place as
you are!” Her husband had always showed patience with her, but at that point it
seemed he couldn’t help it anymore. “You can leave him here. I’m working from
home the whole morning and I’ll call Claire in the afternoon. He can stay with
her until you’re back.”

“You have to get on with your work, you can’t
keep an eye on him.” She had been holding him and then Joseph had started crying.
“Here now, do you see what you’ve done?”

“Me? You are frightening him with your
shouting.”

She hadn’t wanted to hear more and had left,
slamming the door.

Only now that a paramedic was almost tearing
her child from her arms, Amelia understood. She understood that Gavin had been
right to worry about her. She had become too apprehensive a mother, frightened
by everything, spending every single moment thinking about her son. She wasn’t
doing well at work either. Many times her boss had suggested that she had a
holiday, but she’d insisted that she didn’t need it, and so he’d kept her away
from the courtrooms. He’d been right, too. She was not doing well at all. And
things with Gavin had been worsening a little more every day. Their sex life
had disappeared. She was always too tired, worried, stressed. Joseph was the
centre of her existence; he didn’t leave room for anything else.

“She shouldn’t have moved him from the child
seat,” she heard one of the paramedics say to the other.

They were talking about her. She had been
wrong also in that case. When she’d heard him crying, desperate, she had tried
to console him. She didn’t even know who had called the ambulance. She had
remained there, rocking her son and crying with him. Then he had passed out and
she had cried even louder, thinking that, if he had died, nothing would have a
meaning for her any longer, because there was nothing in the world except
Joseph.

She was about to rise, to respond to the
accusation of the paramedic who hadn’t realised she was listening to him, then
she saw him again. The man driving the car that had hit hers. Until now she had
blamed herself for not slowing down at the junction, even though the traffic
light was green, but now there was someone else to blame, so that she could
shake off a bit of that burden oppressing her.

Everything disappeared around her. There was
only the man, and the space separating her from him. He was talking to the
police officers. The truth was that he had run a red light. It had only just
lit up and he had accelerated instead of slowing down to come to a halt. He was
the culprit. Only him.

Amelia stood up and started walking in his
direction, at first slowly, then more quickly. In the end she was running.

The man raised his gaze a moment before she
was on him.

“Murderer!” she yelled, hitting and scratching
him with all of her strength. Joseph hadn’t died yet, but she knew he would not
survive. She felt a part of her dying. That man hadn’t just killed her son,
he’d killed her.

She felt herself being grabbed by her
shoulders. The two policemen had intervened, while the man was trying to defend
himself from her fury.

“I’ll kill you, damn you! I’ll kill you!”

At last the two officers succeeded in removing
her from him, but Amelia kept shouting and kicking. She wanted to go on, until
she was dead from desperation. But a moment later any strength of hers
disappeared. She stopped and stared at him, making a promise to herself.

The sound of a voice, drowning out the grief
on which her thoughts were lying, brought her back to reality little by little.
Her arm was stretched out on the ground. Some ants were having a stroll on her
skin, causing a slight tickling. Her ears were ringing. Beyond one hand was a
bush. The other one was holding something tight against her body.

Where was she? What had happened?

She blinked a few more times. She could see
earth and rotten leaves, some abrasions on her arm. There was a metal taste in
her mouth.

A loud blow made her start.

“No, I can’t understand whether they’re
trapped,” a distant voice said. “The car is tipped over. It’s catching on fire.
The noise you’ve just heard was the explosion of a tyre.” He shut up for a
moment, as if he was listening to someone, but she couldn’t hear anybody else
speaking. “How can I go down there to check?”

Amelia drew her legs up against her body.
Between them and her chest was something. A rucksack.

“I don’t give a shit about Goldberg!” the
voice exclaimed. “Nothing went like he’d said it would, nothing!”

So Goldberg really was involved in that man hunt.
Although she was feeling confused, she could comprehend this information and
its meaning, unlike all the rest. But she still had difficulty in connecting
the dots.

She tried to raise her head, but as she did,
everything started to turn around. The pain was now located on her nape. She
let the rucksack go and placed a hand on the back of her neck. When she
withdrew it, she saw it was covered in blood. Pushing with both arms, she sat
up. A sudden nausea overwhelmed her. She was disoriented, but something was
telling her to make no noise.

She stared beyond the bush and saw a darkly
dressed figure standing out against the light of the rising sun. It was on the
edge of a precipice. On both sides of his feet there were signs of tyres about
to get lost in the void.

Mike!

The undefined images of the jump and the
impact with the ground returned to her mind in a flash. She had to restrain
herself from yelling his name. Her heart in a turmoil, she looked back and at
the surrounding area, trying to keep herself hidden. He had to have jumped. Oh
God, yes, he couldn’t have ended up down there with the car. He’d pushed her to
jump and she had hesitated. Perhaps she’d hesitated too long. The comforting
sensation of having found an anchor, a hope, was frozen by the sense of loss.
She wanted to shout, call him, but that man was there and, if he’d seen her, he
would’ve tried to kill her.

The gun, yes; he had his back turned to her,
he didn’t know she was there. She could surprise him. She touched herself, but
couldn’t feel anything. She put a hand in the pocket of her sweater, as if the
weapon could be lost in there. It was empty. It had fallen. Where could it be?
She tried to check again beyond the bush, but the terrain was too irregular. Too
many little plants. It could be anywhere.

Her attention was drawn to the object resting
on her legs. It was heavy. The rucksack. She’d wanted to look inside it, when
she’d been with Mike. Oh God, Mike, where was he? She tried to hold back her
tears. She could not cry right now. Perhaps he wasn’t dead, perhaps he was
there somewhere, but why didn’t he come out? She wished that it was still dark
so she could delude herself that he was a few steps from her, like a cat,
watching her in secret. She could almost feel his presence behind her. He would
put a hand on her mouth any moment now, to prevent her from shouting. She
started counting the seconds. One, two, three, four, five … she turned. There
was nobody.

Her sight misted over. The thought of giving
up and let them kill her crossed her mind for a split second. No! It didn’t
have to end this way; those bastards would not win. They had to die, even if
she had to finish that job herself.

Her hands trembling, she started opening the
zipper of the rucksack, avoiding any loud noise.

The sound of another explosion emerged from
the drop. With all her strength, she shooed the image of Mike’s body burning
from her head.

She completed the opening of the rucksack.
There were many things inside it. A well folded T-shirt, the rigid case of a
tablet, some energy bars, a small water bottle, a package of wet wipes. She
inserted her hand looking for something, a weapon. She recognised the shape of
the satellite phone. Provided that it was still in one piece, she still didn’t
know the code, so she couldn’t use it. Then her fingers stopped on a hard
object resting in the bottom. With the help of her other hand, she took it out.
It was a rectangular box, a black one. From its size and weight, Amelia
understood what it might contain. Or at least she hoped it was a gun. In a
frenzy, she ran her fingertips along the edge to find the opening mechanism,
but they touched a combination lock.

Damn it, Mike! Those damn codes again.

Frustrated, she threw the box into the
rucksack again.

All at once she realised that the man had
stopped speaking. She felt her breath failing her. She’d forgotten about him;
she’d been making too much racket. If he’d found her, she couldn’t have
defended herself in any way, unless she was going to try to beat him with the
tablet. She started touching the external pockets of the rucksack. She stopped
when she felt something oblong on the right one. She opened the strap slowly
and then reached inside with her fingers. A flick knife. She snapped it open.
She flinched when the blade came out.

She held the handle tightly, whilst she
pricked up her ears to hear the man’s steps. The wind was strengthening and
whistling as it passed through the fronds of the bushes. She swallowed hard and
risked another glance, moving almost in slow motion, until the line of her gaze
went beyond the edge of the obstacle in front of her.

Nobody.

There was no trace of the man in the place
he’d been standing earlier. He had moved away.

She backed off. She checked everything around
her. Her other choice was to look out from the other side. Crawling slowly on
her knees, she shifted to the opposite side of her shelter and again with her
heart in her throat she peeked out.

Nobody, again.

She turned. The woods were becoming thicker
behind her. Perhaps she could escape and hide herself. She closed the knife and
put it in a pocket, then looked at the rucksack. The temptation to leave it
there was strong, but it was all that she had. She put it on her shoulders.

From her kneeling position she changed to a
crouched one, trying to ignore the pain in her legs. She had a dizzy spell and
had to leave on the ground with a hand for a moment. She inhaled the humid air
deeply, and started to rise. When she was able to look beyond the bush, she
couldn’t see anybody again.

Where had he got to?

She’d been distracted while rummaging in the
rucksack, thinking about Mike, and she hadn’t listened to the man’s movements.

Fuck it! She started running towards the
taller plants, praying that nobody could see her.

She kept doing it without looking back, until she
felt safe enough. What was she supposed to do now? Go on, try to reach a road,
but she wasn’t certain her direction was the right one. Oh God, she wasn’t in
the middle of a desert. It was
England
. Sooner or later she would find a road, some people, a farm,
whatever. It was sunrise and she had many hours of light in front of her. She
should go, that was all.

Yeah, should. But she couldn’t convince
herself to do so. She needed to know what had happened to Mike. And if he was
still alive, she couldn’t take his things away. His spare weapon, for instance.
Or his tablet. Who knew how many secrets were hidden inside it. Even if she was
more than certain they were protected by yet another password. He wouldn’t have
gone without them. If he had survived, he would’ve looked for her to get it
back.

She had another dizzy spell. She placed a hand
on a tree trunk to avoid falling. She wasn’t doing well at all. She could have
a concussion. She had to find help as soon as possible. A part of her wanted to
stay, take advantage of the fact the two killers didn’t know she was alive. Spy
on them as they went to check the car. This way she would know what had
happened to Mike. And then kill them. With what?

She shook her head, but that gesture caused
more nausea.

She had to go back to
London
, report everything, and nail Goldberg, whatever was behind that
story. She was about to laugh. She had no evidence.