I let my mind wander. It seemed to gravitate automatically to Angus' beautiful stark face. I remembered the way he looked at me when we first met, and the way he'd smiled at me yesterday. God, was it only yesterday? And the way he'd held me when I'd felt overwhelmed by the newness of everything he was telling me, and the way he'd kissed me until Mark interrupted us. Poor Mark. My train of thought derailed. Mark must have seen these morons grabbing me and shoving me in that white van with no number plate. He was probably worried sick about me. And my mother. My mother would be frantic now. I imagined her thin fragile face creased with desperate, devastating anxiety. How I hated these men and that freak show called Oscar for putting her through this. They would pay. I would make them pay.
There was a disturbance by the trapdoor, and it creaked open reluctantly. Oscar walked carefully down the stairs and went and stood next to Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
"Jack phoned. He'll be here in about an hour." He placed a dented metal flask on the floor. "I've brought her some tea. She's going to need all her strength for what Jack's got planned for her." He drew back his lips in what he probably thought was a smile, showing his teeth. The two idiots chuckled loudly. Oscar glanced at me once more before heading back up the stone steps. The trapdoor creaked shut behind him.
"It's a shame Jack never lets us watch." The man with the gruff voice spoke, a taunting, spiteful edge to his voice, his eyes running over my body.
"Yeah, I think this one's going to fight back." He opened the flask and made a big performance out of spitting into it. He closed it and nudged it through the bars with his foot.
I wasn't going to drink that tea, anyway. I needed every little molecule of iron that my body had. But I was definitely going to kill these men. I hugged the image of their broken, empty bodies, while I tried to fight off the panic that was welling up inside me.
Jack was coming. Whatever that meant.
Angus
I saw the lights as I approached the building. There had been a six foot wall a few hundred yards back, but I'd vaulted easily over it, the iron tablets I'd taken earlier starting to kick in. I ran crouched over with the rifle gripped in my left hand. I paused about a hundred yards from the building and veered off to the right, running easily, dodging the occasional tree. I ran a loose perimeter, watching and listening for any guards or other signs of life. Nothing. A few minutes later I had chosen my base in a copse of trees, slightly higher than the surrounding grounds, where I would be able to ambush them. I stood dead still for a moment and built a mental picture of the terrain in my head. The main building, the one that looked like an old fashioned hospital, sat like a fat tick in the middle of a small hollow, four lit windows visible against the night, two upstairs, two downstairs, front door between them. It was flanked by an old stone barn on the right, and a smaller bungalow on the left. The bungalow was empty. The stone barn was not. There was no light showing through the windows of the barn, but I could smell them. Two men and Rebecca. I tried not to think of what was happening in there, although it was probably nothing right now. I could detect no fear or pain in Rebecca's mind. There was anger, though. Good girl. I concentrated on setting my rifle up on its tripod and centring the sights on the front door of that main building. I was going to massacre these bastards.