Kindred Intentions (6 page)

“There’s nothing to laugh about.” She wanted
to appear hurt, but the truth was that she was about to laugh. Perhaps because
of the narrow escape. His tranquillity was giving her a perception of the
situation, which clashed with what she could see around her. She felt safe.
They had been literally pushed over a precipice, but okay, on second thoughts,
it was fun. “Nothing like this has ever happened to me before.” For a fleeting
second she recalled the accident with Joseph, when she had actually risked her
life, but she pushed back the memory. “You are the one jinxing me!”

Mike laughed out loud, then he stopped and
looked her in the eye. “Okay, as you wish, but now I really must get you out
from there.” He placed a hand on her shoulder.

That contact affected her in a strange way.
But was it the moment to have those kind of thoughts? Hey, she had to focus.
“What should I do?”

“Move your legs to the door. I’ll hold you.”

She nodded and followed his instructions. Then
she felt the two sides of her belt slipping along her chest and she fell to her
side, on Mike, who grabbed her around her waist with his free arm, while he let
the belt cutter fall onto the windshield. His nose was just an inch away from
her right cheek. She could feel his breath. It wasn’t a particularly
comfortable situation, but she would’ve lied if she’d said it was unpleasant.
She felt him moving with his body behind her and leaning his chin against her
shoulder. Then his arm loosened his grip. Now Amelia was literally lying on
him, on her back. She felt his hands pushing her forward. She clung to the door
and in a moment she found herself standing out of the car. The incline of the
terrain was lower than that of the car, whose rear was kept lifted high in the
air by a big broken branch.

“Would you mind giving me a hand, hm?”

“Oh.” She’d been distracted for a moment. Mike
was still precariously inside the car. “Here I am.” Holding onto the door, she
extended her right arm and grabbed his hand. She pulled him to her and in the
end she succeeded in getting him out of the car. Then she remained there, still
watching him, panting. She turned to the direction they had fallen from and
then to him again. “What now?”

“We go,” he said, heading to the rear of the
car.

“How …” she babbled, looking up again. “How do
we go up?”

Mike climbed on the branch and started
rummaging inside the boot. Ah, that was why he’d opened it. “We can’t go up.”
He’d pronounced those words with a calm tone, without even looking at her.
“They are surely coming down to make sure we are dead.”

Amelia felt an adrenaline discharge overwhelm
her. The confidence of a few minutes earlier had vanished. It wasn’t over at
all. “Wha …” Again that annoying babbling. “What?” What a silly question.

“We must do something about your feet.”

She lowered her eyes. She was now so
accustomed to being barefoot that she had completely forgotten about it.

“What’s your size?”

“What?” Actually she hadn’t listened to what
he’d asked.

“Amelia, wake up!” His scolding was tinged
with a note of mocking. “Your feet, what’s your foot size?”

How she hated the question. “Hm … seven …”

“Seven?!”

“Sometimes six and half …” she murmured,
embarrassed.

“Fairy’s feet, eh?” Mike was laughing again.

“Yes, I know, I should have been a swimmer, at
least they would be of use for something.” If nothing else, she could always
find her size during sale times, because almost nobody else bought it. She had
got some good deals thanks to that feature of hers. On the other hand, her size
didn’t exist at all for certain styles.

“Well, in this case it’s a good thing.” The
man took out a pair of training shoes from the boot. “If you fasten them tight,
you’d be able to walk on them decently enough.” He handed them to her.

Amelia moved closer to him and took them from
his hands. She studied them for a moment. She turned them. They were eight and
a half, a man’s size. Resigned, she sat on the ground to put them on. She tried
to clean her feet as much as she could. She wished she had something to do it
properly and immediately a towel materialised before her. Actually Mike had
thrown it to her, but the effect was more or less the same.

A minute later, she was on her feet again.
Wearing a pair of shoes, even if they were a bit large, made her feel a bit
more, say, civilised. A good sensation, in other words. Mike had put a black
rucksack on his shoulders and was throwing something to her. She took it on the
fly. It was a jacket, a black one.

“With that white blouse you stand out amongst
the plants.”

For a moment she thought it had to do with the
sweat that had made it almost transparent. There was nobody who could notice
her bra in the middle of a wood. Then she called herself silly and
narcissistic, and she donned the jacket. Covering herself a bit better before a
bloke she had just met was a good idea anyway.

While she pulled up the zipper, a rustling
drew her attention upwards again.

Mike placed an index finger on his lips. “Ssshhh
…” He reached her. “Let’s get away from here.”

A sudden thunder made her start. “Fuck.” Only
now she realised that the semi-darkness wasn’t only due to the trees. Then a
drop landed on her face, followed by another one, and another one more.
“Splendid, only the rain was missing.”

“Come on,” he encouraged her, dragging her by
the arm, as he already started walking towards the valley. “The sound of the
rain will cover our footsteps.”

“Are you used to being chased in the middle of
the woods?” It was evident that she was with a person trained to
particular
situations. Compared to this, what she had learned at the academy was risible,
to say the least.

“Ssshhh …” was his answer.

Amelia rolled her eyes and followed him
without adding a word. The rain was becoming heavier and the terrain, covered
by rotten leaves, grew more and more slippery, even with the shoes on. And he
was walking too fast.

A shot echoed in the air, followed in rapid
succession by the splintering of tree bark far away on their right. Mike
started running and forced Amelia to do the same, pushing her legs to move much
faster than they were accustomed to do. After the initial dash, she lost her
pace and placed her foot on a stone. His fingers ran along her arm, then his
grip failed.

And the world started rolling.

She stopped further down, where the terrain
rose up, creating a short slope in the opposite direction. It wasn’t a soft
landing. She heard footsteps approaching, saw Mike’s eyes. His hand was patting
her face.

“Are you in one piece?” he asked in a low
voice.

“I hope so.” Amelia rose in a sitting
position.

He had crouched down beside her. “They don’t
really know where we are.” He looked around. He reminded her of a cat snapping
at the slightest noise. “They are using a rifle and can’t have good visibility.
We are camouflaged among the trees.”

A rifle? Yes, right, a moment had passed
between the shot and when the bullet had reached the tree, so they were far
away. Only a rifle could have such a long range. Not that the information
cheered her up. They could hit them, without even getting any closer. Like a
hunter with their game.

“They must have seen the car door open with
the gun sight,” Mike continued. “It was just a blind shot or perhaps they had
detected a movement due to an animal.”

“No, really, how do you know all this stuff?”
She realised that it wasn’t exactly the moment to have a conversation, but she
couldn’t help it. “Are you maybe a former soldier?”

Mike cracked a smile. “Warm. Now let’s go.” He
grabbed her hands and made her stand.

“Where to?” Escaping was good, in fact
anything could be better than getting a bullet in her back, but did they have a
plan? She watched Mike. His face was relaxed. It was evident he had been in
worse situations than this. How come he had ended up working as investigator
for law firms? “Sooner or later they will get to us.”

“Not necessarily.” He took her by the hand and
resumed moving, this time respecting her rhythm. “I know this area well,
certainly better than them.”

“Do you?”

He ignored her interruption. “We’ll get into
the thickest brush. The sky is dark and the rain will help us leave them
behind.” He paused to point at a boulder on which she was about to place her
foot.

Amelia skipped it. And, truth be told, she
appreciated his attention. That man was becoming more interesting with each
passing minute.

“There’s a hunting lodge not far from here.
We’ll take refuge there and then we’ll see about what to do.”

“How far?”

“No more than twelve miles.”

“What?!”

“Ssshhh!”

“What?” she repeated under her breath. “It’ll
be night before we get there.”

“Better,” he replied, without showing any
concern over her protests. Now he’d lost some of his rating in her interest
chart, even if he was still well over the average. “At that point it’ll be more
difficult for them to locate it. If we went there now, we’d become a target.”

Amelia emitted a cry of amazement, while the
most intriguing of suppositions lit up in her mind. “A spy.” She pointed at him
with her free hand, as if she had busted him. “You’re a former MI6 agent!” It
wasn’t a question.

A half smile dawned on Mike’s face, but he
didn’t reply. He merely picked up his pace, which she interpreted as a yes.

“Cool! I’m with 007. This means I won’t die
today!”

“Walk,” he said, sneering.

4

It did not stop raining. From time to time its
intensity decreased and gave the impression that it was about to stop, but then
it resumed, now even heavier. The sky beyond the top of the trees was
brightened by sudden flashes, closely followed by thunder so loud that Amelia
felt the static electricity on her skin. Going around in the middle of the wood
during a lightning storm was anything but advisable. Even if the terrain had
become less steep, water rivulets flowed all around them and remaining standing
upright amongst slippery stones was a real challenge. To avoid falling, now she
was firmly clinging to Mike’s arm, who matched her pace with apparent patience.
Her clothes and hair were soaked and she was starting to feel a bit cold, in
spite of the constant motion. And not just feeling that.

“How far?”

“Maybe five miles.”

Amelia snorted. “I can’t possibly make it.”

“Sure you can.” As she turned to him Amelia
saw that he was smiling. It looked like he was having fun, as if it was the
most normal of outings to the country.

“At least they’ve stopped shooting at us.”

His smile disappeared. “They won’t give up so
easily, but for now I believe we’re safe.”

“I’m starving … and thirsty.”

Mike stopped. She looked at him, perplexed. He
freed himself from her grip and removed his rucksack from his shoulders. “Let’s
take a break.” He sat on a layer of dead leaves under a big tree.

Amelia was undecided. She was doing her best
to ignore the rain, but stopping meant extending that ordeal. Then she saw he
was pulling something out from his rucksack. A little water bottle. As she recognised
it, she dashed herself to the ground beside him and snatched it out of his
hands.

Mike started laughing, while she unscrewed its
cap and gulped its contents. “You could have told me before.”

She stopped to take a breath. “You could have
told me before that you had water.” Then her gaze focused on his hand, which
was offering her something.

“It’s an energy bar; it should keep your blood
sugar level topped up, until we reach our destination.”

Amelia snapped and clawed it, as if it was
able to escape, but then she found herself in difficulty, given that she was
holding the bottle with her other hand.

Mike made a funny face. He took the bottle and
the cap trapped by her fingers holding the energy bar, and closed it.

Finally she could tear the wrapper off and
bite into her prey. It wasn’t bad. It tasted like chocolate. She finished it
off in a wink. It was so small that it didn’t give her any sensation of
satiety.

“You’ll be better in a while,” he said, almost
reading her thoughts.

She decide to trust him, not that she had any
other choice. “Aren’t you eating?” He hadn’t even drunk anything.

“I’m good for now.” Mike put the bottle back
in his rucksack and closed it, then he rose. “We’d better go. Once we get
there, I’ll be able to offer you something more filling to eat.”

That stirred Amelia’s interest and she leapt
to her feet. They still had a long way to walk. They’d better get moving. She
reached him and they started walking side by side. The rain had abated again
and, with a strange sense of modesty, she didn’t feel like clinging to him
again that way.

For all these hours she had been reflecting on
the incredible situation she was in. She had imagined the most fanciful
scenarios to try to comprehend why someone had such a rage against her. Just
because she had seen the killer in the face? But then, what had happened in the
cottage? There were many details eluding her, and in fact the entire case of
the killings wasn’t clear to her at all, but it was her fault, too. She hadn’t
studied it enough.

And then there was Mike. If he really was a
former spy, what had he to do with all that? Had he really ended up in the
middle of that mess just by coincidence? His presence at the job interview had
already been an abnormal circumstance. The police had ensured that she was the
only one supposed to show up, a matter arranged with the cooperation of the
Human Resources manager. So it hadn’t been the latter who invited him. He had
got the interview by other means. She scrutinised him in secret. What if he
wasn’t a former spy at all, but a spy on active duty? What if the law firms
involved in the murders had something to do with some terror organisation?
Perhaps, also, his purpose was to infiltrate. But usually, to her knowledge,
MI6 spies were active abroad, not in the homeland. Perhaps he belonged to MI5,
which dealt with homeland security.

“But once we are there, what do we do?” It was
a reasonable question.

“We wait for someone to come and get us.”

“Who will come and get us?”

“Some friends.”

“More spies?” She tried a direct approach.

Again that smile from him. “Sorry, I can’t
tell you, otherwise I’d have to kill you.” It was the second time in the span
of a few hours that she’d been threatened like that. In this case, however, the
menacing sentence didn’t match with the expression on the face of the one who
had pronounced it.

“Ah, okay, never mind.” She would’ve liked to
ask him how his
friends
knew they had to come and get them, but he
wouldn’t explain anything to her anyway. She suspected he was having fun in
letting her fantasise. “You said there’s something to eat over there?”

“Only non-perishable food, I don’t go there
often. Anyway, yes.” He paused to check his watch and then gazed at the sky.
“There’s also warm water.”

“Warm water …” She’d let those words escape in
a dreamy tone. She could take a shower, maybe there was something else to wear.
She had to throw away what remained of her suit. The sooner she did it, the
faster she would forget her pain at having destroyed such a beautiful outfit.
Then something even more desirable than a shower occurred to her. “Is there a
phone, too?”

“Yes.” As he spoke, Mike kept looking in front
of him distractedly, leading their strides. From time to time he pulled or
pushed her sideways, or gestured with his arm, so that she could avoid an
obstacle. And she had learnt to follow those hints automatically. So much for
always hating to go hiking. “But …” he added, like he was correcting himself.
“There’s no signal in that area.”

Okay, his last remark had left her even more
disoriented. “And what use is a phone with no signal?”

“It works if you move three miles westwards.”
It sounded easy.

But Amelia was still confused. “Convenient.”

“Well, usually I don’t go there by foot and
that phone is just a spare one. Normally, if I needed it, it’d be no big
trouble to drive three miles by car.”

No, that explanation was still absurd, but she
decided to overlook it. Spy business. She didn’t want any part of it. “Okay,”
she said, hardly convinced.

“This story with Goldberg and the murders is
bigger than what you at the police can handle. You should have kept out of it.”
He had addressed her with a frown.

So she was right. Mike was involved in some
investigation. He hadn’t ended up there by chance. Maybe in the end she wasn’t
the one they wanted to kill. In that case, they really had let her go, even if
the mysterious dynamics of what had happened in the cottage kept unsettling her
thoughts.

“Murders occurring in the City are the
business of the City of
London Police
, we couldn’t stay out.” She liked to refer to the police in the
first person plural, it made her feel part of something important, gave her a
sense of authority.

“I know that.” He offered her a serious gaze.
“I was referring to you, only you.”

Amelia felt embarrassment together with a hint
of indignation. “Hey, I’m a trained officer. If they give me orders, I obey,
and I can perfectly handle any situation.”

“Yes, I’ve seen you know your way around.”
Mike nodded, ill-concealing his amusement. “Except when you were about to earn
a bullet in your head, because you decided to chase a killer on your own.”

She was caught by regret for her recklessness.
In that case she hadn’t followed orders at all and had been about to be killed.
And she would’ve succeeded, if he hadn’t intervened.

“Anyway this isn’t the point,” he continued,
without lingering on that subject that humiliated her a bit. “Let’s say …” He
hesitated. “It would’ve been a shame if you’d ended up killed because of this
circumstance. It would’ve been a
waste
.” And he cracked a smile at her.

Was he flirting? Not that she disliked the
idea, actually! But perhaps he was just trying to distract her so that she
wouldn’t ask more inappropriate questions or think too much about his
involvement in that mess. And he was definitely succeeding.

A loud noise over their heads. They turned
their gazes upwards by instinct. But it hadn’t been thunder that caused it.

“Is it your friends?” Amelia asked, at the
very moment that Mike dragged her under a tree, away from the sight of the
helicopter.

It wasn’t his friends.

“I said they wouldn’t give up.”

Mike was leaning against the trunk and holding
her from behind, holding her around the waist with both arms. The cold she’d
felt until a second earlier vanished as if by magic.

“Don’t move, be quiet.” He was whispering with
his mouth near her ear.

Why should she move? She was feeling so good
there.

The noise became louder. The helicopter was
exactly over them. Amelia held her breath. She couldn’t say whether it was
because of her fear of being glimpsed from above or from excitement caused by
prolonged contact with him. The aircraft was so close that the trees were
shaken by the air swept by the blades, as if it was a strong wind. At times she
could catch sight of it through the foliage, then it disappeared again. The hatch
was open and a dark silhouette stuck out from the inside. They were so close
that she could see what they were holding. It was a rifle, a precision one with
a gun sight. If they had located them, they could kill them with little effort
from that distance. Their bodies would rot there in the woods for who knew how
long, until a hiker chanced upon them, finding only two human skeletons.

Amelia was shaken by a shiver, as she released
her breath.

Mike crossed an arm over her body, placing a
hand on her shoulder and holding her tighter. “Don’t worry.”

All of a sudden the rain increased. A proper
wall of water formed before them. Looking up was impossible, because their eyes
were flooded by that intense pouring. There was an umpteenth flash, followed by
a roll of thunder. The crackling caused by a million drops impacting the leaves
and branches almost surpassed the din coming from the helicopter’s rotor. It
became more confused. The air vortex could do nothing against the deluge that
seemed able to absorb it. The aircraft’s noise became less intense, until it
faded away beyond their position.

Emitting a sigh, Amelia allowed herself to
relax.

But he didn’t let her go immediately. “I don’t
like this story.” He was still whispering, even if there was no reason.

“What story?”

“They are heading to the hunting lodge. If
they find it before it gets dark, they could set a trap for us.” He was
speaking normally now. He cleared his throat. “There aren’t any visible
buildings for a range of fifteen miles, to my knowledge.”

“Just what we needed.”

Mike loosened his grip on her and made her
turn. He was just a bit taller than her. He looked her in the eye. “We’ll have
to be careful, when we get closer to the lodge.”

She nodded, trying to focus on being careful,
but in vain. The water flowed on their faces as if they were under a shower;
and there it was, the fantasy of being under a real shower with him, peeking
out at the edge of her thoughts. She felt herself blushing.

“Let’s go,” he said at last, releasing her.

Hours later, the remainder of the twilight was
dimmed by the clouds still covering the sky. They had walked so much that
Amelia’s legs were now on automatic pilot. It seemed to her that the distance
covered was much longer than twelve miles, but she couldn’t say it with any
certainty. What did she know about hiking in the woods? Three times a week,
before going to work, she used to run for five miles, but on the hard and
almost always flat surface of a park’s path, or along the river. Moving on a
bumpy terrain, under pouring rain, often circumventing obstacles, was much more
difficult and strenuous.

“We’re almost there,” Mike said, in a tone
that sounded encouraging. He looked anything but tired. Perhaps he used to run
every day.

Amelia withdrew her thoughts from the bizarre
image of the man doing cross country in the middle of the city, jumping over
little walls and challenging cars, and returned her attention to the three
words he’d just pronounced. How did he know they were almost there? Everywhere
looked all the same, all the more now that it was getting dark and, as much as
she tried to check where she placed her feet, that task was becoming more and
more arduous. “Don’t you have a torch or something like that in your magical
rucksack?”