Behind the Facade (10 page)

Charlie felt flayed by the man's scrutiny and he
dropped his eyes and began to discreetly move backwards. “I can see this is a
bad time,” he mumbled apologetically. “I'm so sorry to have bothered you. I'll
go.”

However, the big man didn't allow Charlie to
retreat, striding over to him and gripping his shoulders painfully with his
huge hands. His eyes narrowed into pig-like slits as he glared into Charlie's
face. “Why are you really here?” he demanded harshly, almost spitting at him,
eyes glinting with anger and suspicion. “There's something wrong with her isn't
there?”

“No, of course not!”
Charlie refuted, now reckless in his desperation to appease this madman and get
out of there. “I just wanted to see the car! I wanted to see if she was really
a convertible!” If
Mr.
Williamson had been enraged
before, Charlie's outburst was the flame that lit the touch paper.

Colour flared on the man's cheeks and his face now
favoured a red balloon that was about to burst. “What are you saying?” he
screeched. “She's not really a virgin?!” His grip on Charlie tightened
excruciatingly and he bellowed like a wounded baboon. “I knew it was all too
fucking good to be true!” Charlie didn't understand
Mr.
Williamson's words but he squeezed his eyes shut and turned his face away, now
certain that he was going to be struck.

However, a few seconds passed and nothing happened.
Charlie ventured opening his eyes and found that his antagonist's face had
changed from one of acrimony to one of sorrowful resignation. He abruptly
released Charlie, swearing and muttering under his breath. He ignored Charlie's
attempts to question him and commanded, “Wait here!” before turning and leaving
the room.

Charlie gazed after the man in bewilderment,
absently rubbing one of his throbbing shoulders. What did the man mean? What
the hell had he got himself into? He decided that his curiosity had already got
him into enough trouble and he wasn't going to hang around to find out. This
whole idea had patently been a disastrous mistake. He hurried to the front door
and was about to step outside when his already frazzled nerves were torn apart
by a heartrending scream.

He jolted in shock and his primal instincts took
over. He was in his car and turning the key in the ignition before his
conscious mind could even react. He was about to tramp the accelerator and get
out of there when his thoughts interrupted. Who had screamed? What was going on
in there? Could he just up and leave? He bowed his head, his whole body shaking
and his hands gripping the steering wheel so hard it shook a little along with
him. What if someone was hurt or needed help?

He returned cautiously to the house, his senses at
full acuity from the adrenaline coursing through his system but feeling
disconnected from himself. As he re-entered the house it felt like he was
stepping back into some awful waking dream. He found himself back in the room
he had fled. The room was empty, nothing was disturbed and all was quiet. He
scanned the room again, his ears straining for any noise. Could he have
imagined the scream?

He was torn between venturing further into the house
and leaving for good this time, when he heard some strange sounds that seemed
to be coming from the hallway just outside the room. The grunts and
scufflings
became louder. He watched in rigid fascination
as Mr Williamson entered, panting with exertion as he dragged someone behind
him. Charlie’s gaze changed to one of utter dismay as he got a proper look at
who it was. It was a slight young woman. He couldn't tell how old she was. She
was fully developed but there was something about her that shrieked of youth.

She was naked and her long coppery hair hung in
streams over her face. His mind registered that there was something wrong with
her skin but he could not initially comprehend what it was. Was she covered in
birthmarks? Most of her skin was a normal pale pink but scattered here and there
were darker marks, some reddish, some a livid purple. There was a long streak
of red tracking her passage across the floor. He couldn't suppress a small sob
of distress as the realisation hit him like a physical pain; the red trail was
blood and the mottled stains on her body were bruises. If it was she he had
heard cry out, she wasn't making any noise now.

Mr.
Williamson came to a halt in front of Charlie and let go of the girl's arm. As
soon as he released her, she curled up into a foetal ball, clearly an
instinctive defence mechanism. 
Mr.
Williamson
spotted Charlie's appalled countenance and exclaimed bitterly, “You surely
can't expect to get her back in the same condition she arrived in? You have
breached the terms of our contract. You admitted yourself that she is not as
described. Take her away. You think I would keep second hand goods?!”

He turned to the girl and kicked her viciously. Her
reaction earlier showed that she had already become accustomed to this kind of
brutality. “Get up, you worthless bitch!” he spat at her, his ugly face almost
rendered inhuman with venom and disgust.

She slowly uncurled herself and began to falteringly
get to her feet. Charlie was unable to stop himself rushing over to her to
offer some support. His horror deepened when she flinched at his touch, turning
big green eyes upon him, full of despair.

He turned to
Mr.
Williamson, his shock now making him angry. He now had no illusions as to what
kind of business he had stumbled upon. “Car” had obviously all along been a
euphemism for “girl”. He realised that he had to try and stay in character and
just meekly leaving with the girl would probably register as odd.

“What the fuck have you done to her? You've barely
had her five minutes and she looks like you've used her for boxing practice! At
least get her something to cover herself with!” 

Williamson glared resentfully at him but did as
requested and returned with a large blanket. Charlie wrapped it around the
shivering girl, noticing that blood was now dripping on to her feet. He looked
for any open wounds on her body but couldn't see any. Where was the blood
coming from? He spotted scarlet streaks on her inner thighs.

“Is she on her period?”
he asked Williamson.

At this query, the man
merely smiled, the malevolently sly look in his piggy eyes sending a shiver of
revulsion through Charlie.

“No,” he answered.
“Thought I’d get the pleasure of seeing her bleed like a virgin,
even if she isn’t one.”

“What?” Charlie gasped but the man
merely sneered at him and, balling his hands into fists, hissed menacingly,
“You’d better get the hell out of here before I decide to get my money’s worth
out of you too.”

The girl was in no state to move fast
so Charlie lifted her into his arms. Charlie felt his heart wrench, as she
burrowed herself into him. She still made no sound but he couldn’t help
whispering to her, “You’re alright. You’re safe with me, I promise.” He walked
out of the room with her, unable to prevent himself looking back over his
shoulder to give the bastard a last blisteringly disparaging look.

He got back to his car and laid the
girl down gently in the back seat, trying to bunch the blanket up between her
legs to help stop the bleeding. He glanced at her face and his heart turned to
ice in his chest. She was so pale and still he thought she was dead. He was
about to check her vital signs when she moved slightly. She remained
unconscious but her face twisted and she moaned weakly, whether due to current
or remembered pain he couldn’t tell. The sounds she made sent a shudder of
dread through him. He closed the door and tried to gather his shattered wits.
He would drive to the hospital and get some help and then everything would be
alright…he could unload her and this whole awful mess on to someone else.

His car started up alright but, in his
haste to leave, he didn’t depress the clutch properly and the gears crunched
loudly. He glanced anxiously back at the house but no-one appeared. He sped
down the long driveway and back out on to the road. The wind howled like an
abandoned hound, pushing fretfully at the swollen clouds and flinging wet
leaves and debris at Charlie’s little car, as though in an effort to hinder or
chastise him.

He travelled for about a mile and
then, finding a small layby, he pulled over. He dug in his pocket for his
mobile phone and accessed the
SatNav
application, so
agitated that his hands shook in sync with his frenetically beating heart.
Locating the nearest hospital, he programmed directions to it, swearing under
his breath when his trembling hands failed to lodge the phone in its holder
securely and it fell to the floor. 

As he turned and bent to pick up the
phone, his gaze met that of his injured passenger and he flinched back in
shock, both at the fact that she was conscious and at the depth of desperate
supplication in her eyes. “Phone?” he thought he heard her whisper.

“Don’t be afraid,” he assured her.
“I’m taking you to the hospital.”

“No,” she now said quite plainly, her
eyes ablaze in her damaged face.

“Yes,” Charlie contradicted her
firmly. “You are losing a lot of blood. If I don’t get you to hospital you
might die!”

She began to weakly attempt to move
herself into a more upright position.

“Hey, Hey!”
Charlie burst out in panic, “Stay still! You shouldn’t move!”

“Phone.
Please,” she mouthed, trying with difficulty to raise her hand.

“OK. OK!” he conceded, worried about
her continuing to exert herself. “Look, I'll give you the phone and you press
the numbers. Then you need to give it back to me and lie down. I'll do the talking.”

He watched her as she touched the
screen of the phone, her fingers trembling and her face frighteningly pale but
her mouth fixed in a rigidly determined line. He couldn't help feeling a flare
of admiration but it was tempered by another cold wave of dread. He expected
that it was a product of his flayed emotions and his worry that the effort by
this girl would achieve nothing but a worsening of her already fragile
condition.

 She handed the phone back to him
and he looked at the screen. She’d entered what looked like a valid
number.  He couldn't believe that it was possible for her face to lose any
more
colour
but it had.

“What’s your name?” he asked her,
instinctively whispering as though even using too loud a voice might do her an
injury.

Her gaze was feverish, her skin shiny
with sweat.

She licked her lips
effortfully
. “Brenna,” she
rasped,
her voice brittle but clear.

He then watched in horror as her eyes
rolled in her head and she slid back down on the seat, all semblance of life
draining out of her like air from a balloon.

“Shit!” Charlie swore, the phone
almost slipping out of his grasp again. He ignored the phone number on the
screen and hastily brought his navigation page back up.

He should never have allowed his
sympathy for her plea to affect his judgment. He could not afford to waste any
more time. He had to get her to the hospital before it was too late...if it
wasn't already.

Sebastian was thoroughly pleased with himself as he settled back
into the driver’s seat of the Range Rover. He was still smarting from the cuts
and bruises he had sustained during the fight but, overall, he thought things
couldn’t have turned out better. He’d dumped Sean’s unconscious body in the
back of the vehicle, safely trussed up and now the waiting and frustration were
finally over. He had Kate all to himself and what’s more she could do nothing
about it. He had to hold back on letting out a roar of delight and instead
turned to her, plastering a solicitous smile on his face.

The
taser
in his pocket reminded him
of its presence as he sat down, nudging him in the leg. He removed it with a
shrug, casting it on the dashboard. He’d always thought
tasers
were for
nancies
anyway. He’d found much greater
gratification in using the gun. Something was caught on his hand he noticed, as
he made to grip the steering wheel. It was Kate’s locket. He’d forgotten about
it up until this moment. It must have been snagged by the
taser
when he’d withdrawn it from his pocket. He held it up to the light letting it
twirl and laughed.

“I should return this to
you,” he said to Kate, who was sitting slumped and still in the passenger seat
trying to adjust to all she had experienced and the sudden change in her
fortunes.

She didn’t respond so he
dangled it in front of her face.  “Isn’t this yours?” he asked.

Kate saw it and her head
jerked up. “Where did you find it?” she asked excitedly, reaching out for it.

He let the pendant drop into her searching palm where she stared
at it in amazement, stroking its surface in disbelief. It was only when she’d
recovered from her delight that she noticed he was far too close to her, his
hand on her knee and his breath hot on her cheek. He had relinquished the
locket only to lean in towards her whilst her attention was captured. She
looked up in delayed consternation.

“That must mean a lot to
you. Don’t I deserve a thank you, Kate?” Kate frowned and tried to shift away
from him. His face was bearing down on her when the phone in his pocket rang.

“Report!” barked the voice on the other
end. Harry had noticed Sebastian had been at the location for some time now and
was disgruntled that he had not yet telephoned to tell him what was happening.
“You’re meant to be updating me. Where are you? Have you secured my daughter?”

“Sir, I have her,” stated Sebastian.

 Kate looked across at him and,
realising he must be talking to her father, exclaimed “Dad!” and reached for
the phone.

Her father tried hard not to bombard
her with questions but was not used to being in the dark about anything, especially
where his daughter was concerned. Unfortunately, Kate could not cope with any
form of interrogation and before too long she dissolved into tears and sobbed,
“I’m OK. I’m not hurt. Please Dad. I just can’t right now
..
…”

He reassured her they could go through
everything later. The important thing was that she was safe and she was coming
home.

When she passed the phone back to
Sebastian, Sebastian launched into his own account of events, with a view to
demonstrating to the boss how well he had excelled, but Harry cut him off. “I
can hear about that when you get here! Concentrate on bringing her back to me.
Can’t you see she needs to be
home!
”

Sebastian was nonplussed. Denied any
recognition yet again, his mood abruptly soured. As they started their journey
back, Sebastian vented some of his anger on other road users, swearing at any
driver that appeared in his path and taking the first opportunity he could to
overtake, even when there was little room to pass.

Kate had slipped back into silence and uneasy reflection, trying
to make sense of her disordered feelings, and was not even aware of Sebastian’s
erratic driving. The movements of the car evened out, as they reached the
motorway, and Sebastian’s hand strayed back to her knee, having less need to control
the wheel. She certainly noticed this and immediately went rigid.

She glanced sharply across
at Sebastian. His gaze was on the road but she spotted a small sly smile
creasing his face.

“Please could you take your
hand off my knee,” she demanded tightly.

He turned to her, his
smile broadening. He removed his hand only to transfer it to her upper thigh.
“Is that better?” he asked his eyes widening in an exaggerated expression of
artlessness.

 “No!” she asserted,
swiping at his hand. “Take your hands off me!”

She’d reached her limits
when it came to being misused, and wasn’t about to be mauled by her father’s
lackey.

Sebastian glared at her
now. “You’re not showing much gratitude are you?” he grumbled. “After all my
hard work rescuing you, the least you could do is be a little more agreeable.”

His gaze returned to the road but his attention was diverted by
the sound of a low groan coming from the back of the car. He looked at Kate
again and nodded his head in that direction. “I bet boyo back there didn’t have
to ask permission. I bet he gave you a right bloody good seeing to!”

Kate gasped and was too stunned at first to find words in answer
to this. The blood drained from her face but soon returned in full force, lit
by the outrage in her belly. “You can’t speak to me that way! He never touched
me and what makes you think
you
can? Do you think I won’t tell my father
what you’ve just said to me?”

“It’s not going to be just me you know…everyone will assume he’s
fucked you. You’re damaged goods
darlin
’, so don’t
get all hoity
toity
with me.” He seized her hand now
and placed it deliberately on his crotch. “Come on, be a good sport. Show me
what you’ve learnt.”

Kate hastily yanked her
hand away and spat, “Get lost! Just leave me alone!”

She sat tense and shaking,
her arms drawn in and her hands curled into fists. This was just beyond
bearing. She’d thought she was safe but now she wasn’t so sure. Had she exchanged
one demon for another? She hoped Sebastian had at last got the message. He
seemed to have gone back to concentrating on his driving.

She was wrong. Sebastian’s blood was
up and he wasn’t about to be denied. Kate failed to notice him discreetly undoing
his flies. In one rapid movement, he unclipped her seatbelt, grabbed her head,
gripping her hair painfully, and yanked it towards his lap. “Don’t think you
get away with it that easy. I’m due a thank you and that pretty mouth of yours
needs to start giving me one.”

Kate screamed and tried to struggle
out of his grasp but he was far too strong. Just before her face was crushed
into his groin, her eyes fell on the discarded
taser
on the dashboard. Whilst trying with little success to move her head and combat
his downward pull, she also blindly reached for the
taser
.
Her flailing fingers
glanced
it and almost knocked it
on to the floor and out of reach but she somehow managed to catch one edge. She
improved her grip, struggling for breath as her face was unpleasantly rammed
against his obscene erection.

Sebastian was laughing uproariously
and ignorant of the fact Kate had acquired the
taser
,
believing her completely defenceless. He briefly took his eyes from the road
and altered his hold, tugging on her hair and forcing her head up.

“You can do better than that!” he
berated, but before he could say anything more, she’d lodged the
taser
against his neck and shrieked, “You’re right, I can!”

She discharged it without any thought
for the consequences, engulfed as she was by the compelling need to stop him.
Kate was briefly pleased with the results but then appalled. The electric
current that shuddered through him was powerful, the
taser
being a modified illegal version with higher voltage capacity and set to full
charge. He bellowed in pain and fell back, convulsing.

Kate wasted crucial seconds gaping in
shock at the paralysed Sebastian. She reached for the steering wheel in sudden
panic but, by this time, the car had veered towards the concrete wall of an approaching
motorway bridge. They were still doing at least 60mph and, in her alarm, she
overcorrected and was unable to avoid a car travelling even faster and trying
to overtake in the offside lane. The Range Rover clipped the other car and,
with no-one to properly control the steering or use the brakes, it span around
into the face of oncoming traffic. Kate screamed in terror as the cacophonous
sound of honking car horns filled her ears and the car completed its turn to
slam punishingly into the safety barrier. The last thing she saw was the
horrified face of her abductor in the rear view mirror.

Sean opened his eyes. When he had
first come round in the back of the car, the pain in his skull had been
excruciating. He had remembered the fight with Sebastian and the brutal blow to
the head he had given him. He now had the mother of all headaches but at least
he no longer had to fight to maintain consciousness. He gingerly unfolded his
crumpled body and moaned as his injured leg voiced its displeasure. It slowly
subsided to a more muted ache, joining the other competing aches of his abused
body. He quickly checked himself over and, though he was in pretty poor shape,
he was relieved to find that at least he didn’t seem to have picked up any new
injuries. He could hear groans coming from the front of the car but they
sounded decidedly masculine and he was concerned that he could not hear any
sounds at all coming from Kate.

He was still bound and, ironically it
seemed, this state had probably prevented him from being hurt in the impact and
may even have saved his life. The dynamics of the crash, in conjunction with
his own
weight, had caused the anchor point to yield. As he
twisted around to examine it, he saw that the metal ring had stayed attached to
the interior of the car but had sheared away in a jagged line. It didn’t take
long for him to deduce that he could use this fortunate occurrence to his
advantage.

He pulled his tied hands up and away
from the now detached grapnel and then shimmied back again and began to
hurriedly rub the rope binding his hands against the serrated metal. He hissed
in pain on a few occasions, as the improvised saw caught skin instead of hemp
but he got through the rope surprisingly swiftly. Once his hands were released,
it took him a minute to massage the life back into his arms and hands and he
winced at the cramping pains inflicted by his returning circulation.

He untied the rest of his bonds as
fast as his reluctant, objecting body would allow. Luckily, either Sebastian
had left the rear door unlocked or the mechanism had been disengaged in the
crash. As soon as he was out of the car, he staggered round to the passenger
side. At least they had ended up out of traffic and on the hard shoulder but he
was dismayed to see how much damage had been done to the car on that side. The
warped door squealed in protest as he forced it open.

He cringed as he caught sight of
Kate’s sagging, lifeless body. He could barely see the colour of her hair, with
all the blood that was covering her, and she was splayed out awkwardly over the
air bag that had discharged. Sebastian seemed oblivious to Kate; he appeared to
be semi-conscious and had his head in his hands, muttering half articulated
curses to himself. Michael felt an overpowering rage wash over him; it was this
fucker’s fault they had crashed. Admittedly, it had allowed him to escape but
he hoped fervently that it wasn’t at the expense of Kate’s life. He had caught
some of what had gone on before the accident and he knew that Sebastian had
assaulted Kate somehow and she had managed to retaliate.

Much as he would have loved to have
murdered Sebastian now, especially when no-one would have been any the wiser,
he contained his fury and concentrated on getting Kate out of the car. He knew
this might not be a good idea, especially if she had any spinal or internal
injuries, but he was worried that she wasn’t breathing. The consequences of him
moving her would be irrelevant
anyway,
if she died
before the emergency services arrived. That’s if she wasn’t dead already.

If she had been a heavier person he
might have struggled, especially since he was weakened by his own injuries, but
he managed to wrestle her out of the car and on to the ground. She was
completely unresponsive and he immediately began CPR. He had yearned to kiss
her again but this type of kissing wasn’t what he’d had in mind. He knew that
he could not stay with her for long, as he simply could not afford to be around
when the authorities arrived.

Something twisted inside him when he
looked at her bloodied, battered face. She appeared so badly hurt and he
wondered whether there was really any point in trying to resuscitate her. He
stopped the compressions after a minute or so and checked for a pulse, not
expecting to find anything there. When he felt a weak flickering, he kept his
hand there for a good minute he was so doubtful. The emotion that flooded him
was so overwhelming that tears rushed into his eyes. He quickly began mouth to
mouth again. A weak cough and a fluttering of her eyelids, reassured him that
she was reviving.