Kindred Intentions (9 page)

No, no, no.

With trembling hands Amelia unfastened the
safety belt of the child seat and took her son in her arms. His head was
hanging to one side. His chest was expanding and contracting irregularly. She
held him tightly, rocking her own body back and forth and humming his favourite
lullaby.

Then something drew her attention through the
windscreen. A man had got out of the other car involved in the accident; he was
staring at her, horrified, holding his head in his hands.

Amelia opened her eyes and found herself in
the bedroom of the hunting lodge. The light coming from the bedside lamp barely
illuminated the place. She could still feel the anguish of that dream, deep
inside herself, still tormenting her. Would she ever be able to make it stop?

She turned in search of consolation, but she
was alone. Since Mike had found her on the road, she’d been able to not think
about her son, not even once. She had almost forgotten about him and now that
memory had returned with a vengeance, as if it had realised that her new friend
was gone.

“Mike?” she called, with a drowsy voice. She
couldn’t hear any noise coming from the bathroom. She had an awful headache,
like she was suffering a hangover. Not much time must have passed. Perhaps he
had left her sleeping and had exited the room to avoid disturbing her. And he
couldn’t hear her now.

She tried to put herself in a sitting
position, even if she’d rather turn to the other side and resume sleeping, but
she knew she couldn’t, not with that tightness in her chest. She didn’t want to
be lonely. She would feel better with him.

She rose and reached the door. As she opened
it, she noticed that the main room of the hunting lodge was immersed in the
same semi-darkness. She looked for him, from the sofa to the kitchen corner,
then behind the fireplace, but he wasn’t there. For a split second she was
assailed by the fear that she’d been abandoned. How silly. This was his home
or, rather, his refuge, or whatever it was. If he’d gone out, he would come
back. Perhaps he was carrying out an inspection around the building, to make
sure that nobody was in the area.

Her entire body hair stood on end and Amelia
held her own chest with her arms. She saw the clothes she had borrowed now
abandoned on the floor. Putting something on wasn’t a bad idea.

She moved closer and bent down to take them,
when she heard a faint hubbub on her left. As she turned, she noticed that the
door on the adjacent wall, the one leading to the
mysterious
room, was
ajar. That was where he’d ended up.

She put on the trousers and the T-shirt. The
shoes, which she hadn’t worn yet, were where she had left them, beside the
sofa. She didn’t fancy putting them on, even now. However, she took the sweater
and walked to the door. She couldn’t just enter, she was still a guest. She
raised a hand to knock.

“I left the car near the tunnel, but there’s
some movement out there. I heard some motorbikes,” an unknown voice said. The
sound filtered through a gap between the shutter and the jamb.

Amelia stopped to listen. Someone had come to
take them from there. She was a bit disappointed about it, but what she had
just heard made her even more worried. The last thing she wanted was to be
chased again by a killer squad. Why the hell didn’t they leave them alone?

“They won’t let it go.” This time Mike had
spoken. Amelia smiled as she recognised his voice. “I’m …” The sound got lost,
becoming a muttering.

Won over by curiosity, she moved closer and
pushed at the door slightly. She wanted to learn more about that story, but if
she knocked, that conversation would be interrupted.

“I’m sorry to state the obvious,” the newcomer
continued. Putting an eye to the gap, Amelia could glimpse his features. He was
dark-haired, with an olive-coloured complexion. “But I’d told you to let go. We
had earned enough from this contract. And instead, no, you’ve been greedy. You
wanted double. Now that Isabel is dead you’ve come close, given that we split
her share. You’ll be happy.” The man’s face contracted in a surge of annoyance.

Isabel? Were they perhaps talking about Isabel
Jordan, Goldberg’s assistant?

The image of the woman emerged from her
memories, as she, without showing the slightest fear, confronted with a weapon
the man who would kill her.

“Give me a break, Yasir,” Mike’s voice attacked
him. “I fucked up, I know. But considering how it went, she was doomed anyway.
Nothing would’ve avoided that.”

A myriad hypotheses crowded Amelia’s mind.
Save for some complex infiltration as an undercover agent, for which a little
part of her still hoped, the idea that Mike belonged to MI5 was fading out with
each passing second. Now seeing that Middle Eastern man together with him, and
listening to them talking of killed partners and contracts, and of greed, she
was starting to think that he was one of Goldberg’s clients. And knowing the
kind of clients that law firm had, it wasn’t good news at all. His friend’s
face shouted ‘terrorism’, but Amelia knew it was too banal an association. They
were speaking of money they would earn from a contract. An illicit financial
transaction—because of which a person was already dead? And now they were
trying to kill him, too?

“So, to add more bullshit to all this, you
loaded that woman into your car.”

Up until now she had thought that Mike’s
involvement in the shooting of that morning had been casual, that the target
was Goldberg or one of his senior partners and that the killer was the same one
who was terminating half of the lawyers in the City. What if it wasn’t so?
First, it wasn’t a lone killer. There were more people out there. It could even
be an army, as far as she knew.

“I couldn’t leave her in the middle of a road.
I thought I would get rid of her within a half-hour.”

Yeah, that was what she’d thought too, but in
hindsight, she wasn’t sorry at all that they had spent the entire day together.
Even if now she had the worst suspicions about the possible illegal activities
of Mike, she found herself pushing them aside. She, a police officer, who
should have enforced the law, was already ignoring her
ideals
for a
man—actually, for a fuck—and maybe the hope that the experience would be
repeated. That somehow amused her.

But some important piece of the puzzle was
still missing, and that lack wouldn’t bring her peace. Who had freed her? If
they had freed her, why had they tried to kill her again? Only because she’d
seen a man’s face? They could have killed her immediately, unceremoniously. Yet
they had questioned her. What had really happened next? How many players were
involved in that match?

Her thoughts were confused. As Mike himself
had said hours earlier, this was too complex a situation. Her colleagues hadn’t
the slightest idea of what was happening and she had ended up right in the
middle of it.

“Oh, I know what you were thinking!”

As she heard herself being called into
question by the discussion between the two men, Amelia focused again on their
words. To figure that one out, she had to try to gather as much information as
possible. No, actually, it seemed to her that the guy was making strong
allusions about her and Mike. And he was right, in the end. That was the reason
that pushed her to listen. What was
her man
waiting for? He should be
defending her!

“I hadn’t realised they were following me.”

They were following him? He’d said the car had
come out from a country road after he had stopped to pick her up. And she had
taken him at his word. She’d been too happy to have found a known face to doubt
anything about him. So naive.

“It isn’t like you, Mike. It isn’t like you.”
The scolding tone of Yasir was stressed by him shaking his head.

“It’s too late for recriminations now.”

“It’s late for many things,” the Middle
Eastern man urged him. “We must close the estate agency and get away.”

Estate agency. Amelia felt the strength in her
legs fading away. It was a coincidence. It had to be a coincidence.

“I know.”

“And you must get rid of that woman,” Yasir
said, pointing at the wall with an arm.

There was a long silence. Amelia started
hyperventilating. Her whole body contracted in waiting. No, please, no.

“I know,” Mike’s uncertain voice replied.

Oh, fuck.

She stepped back. She’d heard enough. She had
to get away from there. She turned. First, the shoes. And then out, away, as
far as possible. Without making the slightest sound, she reached the shoes and
started to put them on. The otherwise simple operation of donning a pair of
shoes was becoming the most difficult thing in the world. She didn’t have time
to panic, fuck. She crouched down, dropping the sweater, to avoid losing her
balance. If she went out there, what would become of her? Whilst her fingers
laced up the shoes, she raised her head in search of something useful. Anything.

And then she saw it. A satellite phone on the
edge of the fireplace. So that was how Mike had called his friend. He’d hidden
it from her so that she couldn’t get in touch with the police headquarters. He
had deceived her.

After tightening the last lace, she picked up
her sweater, then reach out to the device and grabbed it. At that very moment
the voices became louder; the crack of light coming from the secret room was
widening.

She cast a glance at the main door. She
wouldn’t make it to the exit without being seen.

Without wasting any time in thought, she
stepped back, avoiding making any noise. She opened the bedroom door and gently
closed it. Her hand searched for a key inserted in the lock, but in vain. There
was none.

Mike would immediately notice the absence of
the phone, he would understand that she knew, and would come in any time now.

She ran to the window. She put the device on
the windowsill and donned her sweater in a frightful hurry. She tried to turn
the handle to open the window, but couldn’t move it an inch. Why? Fuck!

With her heart rumbling in her thoughts, she
turned again to the door. Then to the bathroom. Yes. She grabbed the phone,
climbed over the unmade bed to save time, and rushed to the bathroom. She
closed the door and turned the key.

She allowed herself to breathe, leaning
against the wall. She raised her hand holding the appliance and activated the
screen, which turned on. In the foreground, over a gloomy background, writing
stood out: ‘No Satellite Found’.

“Amelia,” Mike called her from the other side
of the door. It was his usual gentle tone, but she could’ve sworn she could
perceive a malicious inflection in the way he’d addressed her.

“I’m in the toilet,” she replied aloud, trying
to sound casual.

She moved closer to the window. It was a
satellite phone. She had to go out so it could lock on a satellite signal. She
put it in the sweater’s pocket and grabbed the handle, but that one wouldn’t
move either.

“You won’t be able to operate that phone.”
Mike’s voice was warm and calm. “Open the door.”

She was stupid, but not that stupid. She
placed a hand on the shutter, but she stopped. She would have to turn off the
light. If someone was out there, they would see her. Yeah, they would see the
light and detect the lodge. Those men had come here to kill Mike, they weren’t
looking for her. She could draw them here to prevent him following her.

“Just a moment,” she shouted, pretending she
hadn’t heard his menacing tone.

She opened the shutter. She wrapped her hand
with a towel and looked at the window, hesitant.

“Amelia, you have nothing to fear, but don’t
force me to break down this door. Get out.”

Amelia punched the pane, which shattered into
smithereens.

Mike started kicking the door.

With some more strong pats of her hand, she
cleaned the window frame of the sharp remainders, then she climbed onto the
stool and squeezed herself through it. She fell face down outside the house.
Fortunately the terrain was soft.

The kicks in the bathroom ceased. He was
certainly running out to stop her.

She had to leave and look for a quiet place to
make that call.

She started running in the dark.

5

Taking advantage of the glare coming from the
window, Amelia ran as long as her breath allowed her, then she slowed down. Now
she was walking slowly amongst the trees, orienting herself with her right arm
stretched out. Any light had disappeared again. She had no idea where she was
and couldn’t see a thing around her. She should have felt reassured by that
latter awareness, but instead it scared her even more.

Her legs brushed against a low bush. With a
hand she felt that it reached her waist. She knelt behind it, still panting.
Her other hand was holding the satellite phone again. She hoped it hadn’t got
broken during the fall or from hitting a branch. Touching its edge, she
searched for the button to reactivate the display. When she sensed a little
bulge, she pressed on it and a screen lit up before her eyes. The same
background as earlier appeared; it showed the time, the name of a phone
provider she didn’t know and an icon on the top corner indicating she had
caught a signal.

She allowed herself to smile. Perhaps the
nightmare was about to end. She just had to understand how to dial a number,
and maybe which number to dial. Given that it was connected to a satellite and
not to a national network, she couldn’t take for granted at all that she would
be able to use 112. She struggled to think, even though thinking right now,
with all her accumulated tiredness had become very difficult. Which number did
she know by heart? Those damned contraptions with their contact lists had made
her lose the habit of keeping any information in mind. Then a sequence of
digits re-emerged. Gavin’s number. She had forced herself to learn it, when
they had been married, for emergency situations. She wished he hadn’t changed
it after more than five years.

Okay, thanks to him she would get in touch
with the City of
London Police
or at least with the Metropolitan Police. They would track down her position
and save her. Provided that he didn’t keep the mobile phone off, as was logical
to expect at that time. It was already after three.

She touched the icon to open the virtual
keypad, but together with that, a box with a cursor appeared on the top,
followed by ‘Type Your Security Code’.

Fuck, no. But didn’t you type the PIN code
only when starting the phone? Evidently it was something different.

She snorted. Mike had said she wouldn’t be
able to use the phone. That was what he meant. She would’ve liked to shout, and
throw away the useless object, but she restrained herself. She was still out there,
nobody knew her position, not even those willing to hurt her. She still had a chance
to escape. Yasir had talked about a car left near a tunnel. Which tunnel? It
had to be in the vicinity of the hunting lodge.

She stood up slowly. Her eyes had been
accustomed to the darkness and only now did she notice that the cloudy sky
reflected the light, allowing her to see something of the surrounding
environment. But she could only make out the trees. Perhaps, if she tried to
walk around the lodge, keeping her distance, she would find that tunnel. And
the car. She decided to ignore the possibility that its key wasn’t inside it.
After all, why take it away? Who would steal a car in this place in the middle
of nowhere? Ah, right—she would.

She emitted a frustrated moan. It was worth
trying anyway. The light from the display would maybe still be useful, somehow.

She leant to step forward, when she felt
herself grabbed from behind. A hand covered her mouth, and she was dragged to
the ground again.

“Don’t you dare make a sound or I swear I’ll
kill you,” Mike whispered, pressing his fingers against her face.

She had deluded herself she had left him
behind, and instead he had always been a few steps from her. A moan escaped
her.

“I said shut up!” He tugged her.

 Amelia started trembling. Everything had
fallen apart again. The ephemeral sense of freedom of earlier made her feel
even more powerless now. She would never come out alive from this mess. She was
just postponing the inevitable.

“Ssshhh …” He reduced his grip on her; she
could feel his breath on her skin. He was panting, too.

Then she heard something else. Some rustling
in the distance at her left, the sizzling of a radio, some buzzing. And then
incomprehensible voices. The sounds got lost among the fronds and came to her
like the sound of grumbling.

She was slightly bent sideways and her back
was hurting. With a hand she leveraged on the ground to straighten herself up
and avoid falling. Mike didn’t stop her movement, but rather he loosened his
grip in order to allow her to be more comfortable. That simple gesture gave her
hope. By now she was clinging to any stupid detail.

All of a sudden a creaking behind them made
her wince. He didn’t seem frightened, but reacted instead by increasing his
grip on her body. She had a free arm now. Amelia’s mind tried to imagine moving
it, perhaps nudging him in his ribs. Maybe he would release her mouth, giving
her the chance to shout, ask for help. With a little luck she would escape from
him and run, leaving him at the mercy of the men hunting him. They weren’t
interested in her, right?

But she didn’t do anything. If she didn’t
succeed in her intent, he would kill her. Instead, if she did, he would be
killed. She was surprised as it occurred to her that neither of the two
solutions especially enticed her.

The creaking was moving fast. It went past
them. And then it faded away.

She remained motionless and in silence for
several seconds. But now that the imminent danger had disappeared, Amelia was
trembling again. She couldn’t help it.

She heard a sigh and felt his chest, tight
against her back, contracting. “Tell me, what should I do with you?” Mike
raised his hand from her mouth and placed it on her brow, then he bent her head
backward. His eyes were now scrutinising hers in the semi-darkness. “If they
had found you, instead of me, they would’ve planted a bullet in your little
head without hesitation.”

Would he have hesitated, instead? “Please,
don’t hurt me … from now on I’ll do whatever you say,” Amelia murmured. She
didn’t like to show herself so submissive, but she was shaking and certainly
not because it was cold, not in that lukewarm summer night. Maybe she could
have convinced him that it wasn’t necessary to get rid of her, that she didn’t
represent a hindrance at all.

Mike kept staring at her in silence, as if he
was deciding whether he could believe her or not. She could grasp his rage from
the tense profile of his jaw, but at the same time she kept catching sight of
the kind man he had been until earlier. Or maybe she wanted to see him that
way. He swallowed hard. “It’s better that we go back now.” He rose, dragging
her to her feet. He released his grip from behind and made her turn, then he
grabbed her arm. “Move slowly, no noise. Understood?”

“Yes …” She stressed the word by nodding. She
would survive, at least for the moment.

Docile, she followed him, walking on the same
footprints she had done to come there, but more slowly. Entire minutes passed
during which she tried to calm down and regain control of her body.

When they reached the hunting lodge and he
opened the door, the inside was pitch black. Mike pushed her inside in a rude
way and she stumbled, collapsing on the floor. She heard the door closing, then
a faint light from one of the little spotlights lit up. As she put herself in a
sitting position by using her arms, she saw Yasir watching her. He had a kind
of black visor on his brow. It had to be an infrared vision device. The door of
the secret room behind him was wide open, revealing an austere environment,
with a table on which was another visor, a closed window fitted with shutters
and the edge of a rack, from which large calibre weapons peeked out.

“What the fuck were you thinking when you left
the light on in the bathroom?” Mike shouted at her, regaining her attention.
“Are you trying to kill us?” He poked his own right temple. “What the fuck is
your brain telling you?” He pointed outside with an arm. “Do you think those
people out there are kidding? They will snuff out whomever they find on their
path.” The edges of his mouth rose in a malevolent smile. “They won’t even
bother to fuck you, before they do it.” Then he became serious again.

Humiliation was all Amelia felt. It was
something beyond pain, discomfort, rage. She was feeling lost. She placed a
hand on her face to stop her weeping.

Yasir, instead, appeared amused. “I told you
it was a bad idea to bring her here.”

“Don’t you fuck with me, too!” Mike pointed at
him, but was still looking at her. “Keeping on repeating it, isn’t of any help
to me,” he added in a low voice.

The other man rolled his eyes and raised his
hands in surrender. “Okay …”

“I’ve heard them, they were very close.”
Finally he turned to the Middle Eastern man.

“I know. They are wearing clothes that
partially shield the heat from their bodies. It isn’t easy to follow their
movement.” Yasir touched his visor. “They are like ghosts. They disappear and
reappear as blurred images. But there are at least five of them inside the perimeter,
the problem is that I’ve seen more outside.”

“If we want to go, we must let them move
closer.”

“Yeah, but in the meantime the first men will
attack us.”

“So we’ll defend ourselves.” Mike returned his
eyes to her; she hadn’t moved from the floor. “We are three. We can keep five
of them occupied for a while.”

Amelia was staring right back at him,
struggling not to whimper. If she could be useful, he would keep her alive.

“What the fuck are you saying? You can’t trust
her!” Now it was Yasir who was shouting.

“Why not? She’s a police officer, she can use
weapons. And she’s clever enough to understand that, if she wants to get out
from this situation alive, she must do what we tell her. Am I right, Amelia?”
Mike didn’t wait for an answer from her. He gestured to his friend with his
head. “Give her a gun.”

The latter watched him, hesitant, shook his
head in disapproval, but then capitulated and headed for the other room.

Mike approached Amelia and offered her a hand.
“The phone, please.”

She touched her sweater. She had put it in a
pocket during the way back to the lodge. The big antenna peeked out. She took
and handed it to him.

He bent down and seized her wrist so as to
force her to stand up. He drew her to him. The lines of his face were more relaxed,
he seemed calmer now, almost like the old Mike. He took the mobile phone with
the other hand and inserted it in the back pocket of his trousers. “It’ll be over
soon.” His voice had softened. He was looking her in the eye. “And then you’ll
be able to return to your policewoman life. You won’t see me anymore.”

She wanted to believe him. But realising that
she wouldn’t die, at least not by his hand, for some reason didn’t comfort her.
Before listening to that conversation between him and Yasir she had started to
get her hopes up. She knew that what had happened between them was the result
of that particular situation and that he would leave her life anyway. Yet now
that he’d said that to her loud and clear, although he was revealing a
different person from the romantic image of secret agent she had built in her
fantasies, his words made feel her deluded, abandoned, sad.

A tear rolled down her cheek. Mike raised his
other hand and placed it on her face, collecting the drop with his thumb. A
slight smile took form on his mouth. “You really pissed me off.” He inserted
his fingers in her hair. Then he released her wrist and hugged her. “I’m
sorry.”

Confused by that unexpected change, Amelia
remained motionless. She wanted with all her heart to believe she hadn’t ended
up in the hands of a psychopath. Then she half-closed her eyelids and leant her
head on his shoulder, raising her arms to hold him, too.

A fake cough revealed that Yasir had come back
to the room.

Mike released her and lingered, looking at her
face, as if he wanted to make sure she was fine. He arranged her hair behind
her ears with a caring gesture, then he turned to his friend, who offered him a
gun. He took it and put it in Amelia’s hands.

The Middle Eastern man brought one too, fitted
into the belt of his trousers.

She resolved to stop looking at Mike and
instead she checked the weapon, as she had done so a thousand times before. She
unlocked the magazine and extracted it. All the bullets were there. She
inserted it again with an automatic gesture, then she clasped her weapon,
resolute. She extended her arm beside her body, so as to aim it at the floor.
She was feeling much better. She was still in the company with two criminals,
but they had entrusted her with a charged weapon and neither of them was
pointing one at her.

Yasir took out his own gun and gave it to
Mike. Then he returned to the other room and threw the visor from the table
towards him.

“Give me another one,” the latter said as he
seized it on the fly, then handed the device to Amelia.

Those manoeuvres left her perplexed. He had
come to look for her completely unarmed. He had taken an enormous risk. Why?
Was it because of haste? She had expected more cold-headedness and care from
him. What had made him so imprudent? The dread that she let them be discovered
or that she could be killed? A little part of her dared to hope the reason was
the latter. How silly she was. Perhaps he had just lost his temper. After all
she didn’t know him at all, she had seen him tranquil until a few hours
earlier, but then he’d changed all at once, had become another person, almost
unrecognisable.