Kindred Intentions (17 page)

Then they ceased. She slowed down, but didn’t
stop. She could hear distant voices, rustling under the shadow of the trees.
Moving amongst the trunks, she tried to focus on some figures, but she wasn’t
certain they were human. The low sunlight penetrated through the fronds,
confusing the outlines.

Bang
.

Amelia started and was paralysed. It had been
close.

“I’ve always known you were a hard one,
Michael.”

The voice was coming from her right. She
recognised it straight away. It was the man who had interrogated her in the
cottage.

“I’ve been trained by the best,” Mike replied
with some sarcasm.

Orienting herself with the voices, Amelia
advanced slowly, putting down one foot after the other, making sure she didn’t
place them on something which could produce a noise.

The other man laughed. “Flattering me won’t
save you this time.”

“I must admit it, Jeff. I made a big mistake
with you. I let down my guard, I trusted you.”

Now she could glimpse something, the dark
silhouette of a man with a rifle held by a shoulder strap. She felt her breath
failing her as she made out a gun in his hand, aimed at Mike, who was raising
his arms in surrender. She shifted her gaze to the ground, where his gun and the
inevitable rucksack were resting. He must have retrieved it. But he was in
trouble now. Yet he was addressing that Jeff guy with a mocking smile.

“Never trust a spy, least of all a former
spy.”

“Yeah, how stupid of me. I thought I could
make one big strike, so that I could retire from the business and enjoy the
rest of my life on a tropical island.” Mike laughed. “And instead, my
friend
has pulled me into this story knowing well that I would be eliminated in the
end.”

He was still appearing calm. Perhaps he had a
plan, even if she couldn’t imagine what it could be. Or he didn’t care at all.
It seemed that he didn’t know any fear. She’d seen him worried for her, but not
for himself. He had nothing to lose. Amelia knew that sensation, because it was
the same one she was feeling right now. It was the same one that had pushed her
to abandon the idea of saving herself and go back. The same one that shouted in
her head, begging her to do something.

“I’m sorry, Michael. If I don’t do it now,
someone else will, sooner or later. And then they would do the same to me. So
…”

Amelia stopped thinking and, summoning up her
remaining strength, she hurled herself at Jeff. “No!” She swooped at his back.

His arm shifted in the very moment he was
pulling the trigger. The shot got lost among the branches.

She was clinging to him, his rifle pressed
against her chest, and she was fastening her arms around his neck. Jeff started
struggling, trying to shake her off. She put a hand on his face, plunging her
nails into his flesh. The man shouted and backed off. Amelia’s back hit the
trunk of a tree. Her already tortured ribs transferred the pain to the rest of
her body and unwillingly she released her grip.

It happened in a moment. Jeff turned and
grabbed her, putting her in front of him. What she saw afterwards was Mike,
brandishing his gun, while she felt the cold metal of the barrel of another
weapon against her temple.

“You must be sure to aim well, Michael.”

Mike wasn’t wearing the same calm expression
of earlier anymore. It wasn’t his own life in danger now. Jeff was shielding
himself with Amelia’s body.

“If you fail, you could hit her.”

She’d worsened the situation. She wanted to
tell him she was sorry, but it wasn’t really so. She raised her hand slowly,
until she reached the pocket. She touched it. It was still there.

“She doesn’t have any role in this story, let
her go. It’s just between you and me.”

Amelia pulled out the flick knife and opened
it. And with a rapid gesture she drove it into the man’s thigh.

Jeff wailed in pain, as he let her go.

No, it wouldn’t be enough. A mix of
sensations: terror, hatred, a desire for revenge burst in her chest. Any
rational thought was suspended. Guided by a primordial instinct, Amelia picked
up a boulder at her feet and, making her arms swing, shoved it at the head of
her assailant.

He shouted louder. His weapon fell to the
ground.

But she hit him again on his face, yelling.

Jeff thrust his arms forward to defend
himself. He backed off, limping, whilst his blood poured unceasingly from his
thigh.

Amelia advanced and hit him again.

The back of his foot touched a root emerging
from the ground. Jeff tripped over it, slipped, and collapsed.

She didn’t stop. She bent over him, placed a
knee on his chest, and raised the boulder again. “Go fuck yourself, Jeff,” she
heard her voice say. She hit him once more, and then again, over and over
again.

“Amelia!”

He had stopped struggling, he wasn’t moving
anymore, but
she
couldn’t stop. Something blocked her arms, her hands.
She raised her gaze and met Mike’s.

“Enough,” he said, in a calm tone.

She watched him, panting. What was happening?

“You can stop now. He’s dead.”

As if she’d been awoken from a dream, Amelia
came to her senses. She saw the boulder and her bloody hands. Then her eyes
landed on Jeff’s smashed face. She started trembling. The big stone slipped
from her fingers.

What had she done? Was she the one who’d done
that?

She felt herself being dragged and then found herself
standing in front of Mike.

“It’s over,” he said.

She realised she was weeping because the image
of him appeared clouded. “What …” Her attempt to express the whirlwind of
thoughts upsetting her mind died.

She let Mike pull her towards him. “It’s all
over. Nobody will hurt you anymore,” he whispered, stroking her head.

She had killed that man. No, she’d massacred
him. It was like she had poured out an ancient repressed rage on him, which had
been living in her heart, feeding off the emotions since the day of Joseph’s
death. It had grown bigger and bigger, without her realising it. And all of a
sudden it had exploded. She hadn’t been able to stop it and hadn’t even wanted
to. And now that her sense had re-emerged from her thoughts, the horror of what
she’d done was starting to fade out, leaving room for relief.

She looked at her hands, smeared with blood,
gathered on Mike’s chest. She moved her head back, hypnotised by that sight. “I
… don’t know …” What didn’t she know? The reason why she’d kept hitting that
man, when he wasn’t able to harm her anymore? Or maybe the reason why now she didn’t
feel responsible for her own actions?

He enclosed her wrists with his fingers. “It’s
all right.” He lowered his head to meet her gaze. “I’ll take you home now.”

That sentence terrified her. “No!” She was
shaking her head. “I can’t go back anymore.” It would mean pretending she was
the same person she’d been before. She wasn’t. She didn’t even know who she was
anymore.

“Sure you can.”

“I don’t want to.” She was imploring him
again, although she knew she wouldn’t make him change his mind, even if this
time she’d been the one who saved his life.

“You have no choice. This is the end for you;
for me, this is just the beginning. I must leave the country fast.” He paused
to sigh. It seemed that he was thinking about something, formulating a
strategy. “But you must do me a favour.”

He wanted to leave her alone, abandon her,
after all she had done, and now he wanted a favour, too? She tried to move away
from him, but Mike was still holding her wrists.

“You must give me a few hours. I’ll take you
to the closest hospital, but you must avoid saying what happened, not straight
away. You can pretend you’re in shock, confused.”

“I’m fine!” she shouted at him.

“Listen to me.” His tone wasn’t gentle
anymore, he’d switched to intimidation. “I must sort out a few things and I
don’t need the police looking for me, too.”

Amelia stopped to watch him closely. “I’ll do
that on one condition.”

“No, you’ll do that, no conditions. That’s
all.”

“Stop trying to frighten me. It doesn’t work
anymore. You aren’t in a position to order me around.”

Mike let her go. “Let’s hear this condition.”

“Promise that I’ll hear from you again.”

“No, no, it’s an awful idea. I—”

“Once the dust settles,” she interrupted him.
“I’m not saying immediately.”

He hesitated.

“Perhaps in a while all this won’t matter to
me or to you. But if it should still matter to you, come and look for me. I
only ask this of you.”

“I don’t like to lie to you.”

Amelia stared at him, trembling. Right now she
would’ve preferred a lie. “Why?!” she shouted, as she hit his chest with both
hands clenched in a fist.

His face contracted, Mike stepped back.

But she advanced and hit him a second time.
“Why do you consider me just a fucking burden? I’m not a dead loss. I can take
care of myself. What is so terrific about loneliness?” Another step forward
from her and one backward from him. “Has it ever occurred to you that I could
be useful to you? That two is stronger than one?” She stretched her arm out,
pointing to Jeff’s corpse. “If it weren’t for me, you’d be dead now!”

“If it weren’t for you …” Mike cut her off,
enraged, overlapping his voice on hers. Then he paused. He was breathing
deeply, as if he was trying to calm down. “If I hadn’t allowed you to distract
me,” he continued, in a more controlled tone. “If you hadn’t attracted Jeff’s
men to the lodge, leaving the light on during your pathetic escape attempt.” He
gestured, pointing down, to stress that detail. “If I hadn’t wasted my time
retrieving you and preventing them from killing you, Yasir would be alive now.”
He sighed. “He was a brother to me.”

His words, loaded with sorrow, pierced her
like many sharpened stiletto daggers. She could barely look at his face, down
which a small, slow tear was rolling without him doing anything to hide it. She
wished she was able to console him, but Mike was right. How could she expect
him to take with him a woman he’d just met, when because of her, the only
person he considered family had died?

Shame pushed her to resume looking at her
hands. “I’m covered in blood.” She forced herself to change the subject. There
was nothing more she could say in response. Nothing that made sense. “I can’t
go back this way, it’ll be difficult to explain this.”

She was already creating a new story in her
head. She couldn’t tell the entire truth. If in the beginning she’d been a
victim, now things had changed. She’d joined the dots and, except for a few
details, she had enough information to solve the case. The problem was that she
hadn’t learnt one part of that information during that long day; it was
something she wasn’t supposed to know at all. And that made her situation a bit
more complicated.

“There’s one thing I must do, before taking
you to the city again.” Mike had picked up his rucksack again and was looking
for something in it. He appeared to have regained a certain tranquillity. “Yasir
should have taken care of it …” He left the sentence half-finished, as he
pulled out a pack of wet wipes. He offered it to her.

She took out some wipes and started rubbing
her hands. The readiness with which she was removing the blood of the man she’d
just brutally murdered was having a strange effect on her. It was like nothing
that had happened in the last twenty hours was real. Any morals were suspended,
there wouldn’t be any consequences. But things wouldn’t go that way. They were
leaving behind a trail of corpses, evidence, DNA. She would have to explain
what had happened in a credible way.

No, she couldn’t go back home, she couldn’t go
back to the police. And Mike wasn’t available to help her right now, but
whatever he had to do, before leaving her, it meant more time at her disposal.
More time to make his anger cool down, more time to convince him. Or to find
another solution.

She checked her clothes. The tracksuit she was
wearing was dark. The blood stains weren’t so evident. She would have to get
rid of it anyway, but for now it wouldn’t be noticed.

“I must also meet a person for some documents.
I can’t use Mike Connor’s name anymore. It’s too risky. And Jeff already knew
my other aliases. I can’t hope he had kept this information to himself. I need
something completely new and I need it quickly.”

Jeff had to be an interesting element in his
story. Another former CIA agent?

There was a whole world behind the man in
front of her and she would’ve liked to have known every detail. The fact that
he was informing her of his next steps made a glimmer of hope blossom in her.

But Mike was still speaking. “There’s a place
… where we can clean ourselves up, eat something.” Eat something? She was
sensing an evasive tone in his voice, as if he was hiding his real intentions.
What was the point? “Let’s go.”