31 Days of Autumn (34 page)

‘Not bad, old man. But you just used up your
quota of luck for the night,’ he sneered, rolling his injured shoulder. I saw a
flicker of pain in his eyes, though he was doing a good job of hiding it in his
face and posture. His white shirt had an expanding circle of crimson that was
spreading. I’d got him deep, which would only help even out the playing field.
We circled each other, waiting to see who’d throw the first punch. He caught me
with one to the jaw. Damn it, I’d forgotten he was left-handed. I blocked the
next punch and caught him in the ribs, but he stunned me with a head-butt to my
nose. If it wasn’t broken before, it sure as hell was now. Blood sprayed
everywhere as I tried to regain my focus.

‘I can play dirty, too,’ he laughed, pummelling
my unguarded stomach as I tried to protect my face and get my blurred vision
back. God, what I wouldn’t give to have a hard six-pack to buffer those blows.
Mrs. Smith’s cooking had laid those to waste a long time ago. I swung blindly, hitting
a lucky strike, cracking his jaw. I imagined someone knocking on my front door
to tell her that I was gone, and it filled me with renewed purpose. She needed
me, Oliver needed me, and I needed my family. I needed to spend quality time
with them after prioritising my job for years. Everything came back into focus
and I jerked backwards as he laid another serious punch to my stomach, winding
me. I managed to grasp his shoulder and dig my thumb into his wound, grinding
hard. It made him hiss with pain, but he gripped my wrist, twisted it, and moved
with the speed of a cat behind me, bending it up behind my back as he wrapped
one of his arms around my throat. ‘I’m so going to enjoy making you suffer,
even more than I normally enjoy inflicting pain,’ he growled in my ear.

‘Right back at you,’ I replied, lifting my foot
and slamming my heel down on the end of his toes. He didn’t even flinch.

‘Leather lace-ups against reinforced toe-cap
army boots,
dipshit,
’ he chuckled, tightening his hold around my throat.
I pulled my hips forward, then thrust back, forcing him off balance enough to
catapult him over my head and onto the floor, though not without suffering the
searing pain of a dislocated shoulder. I spat blood out of my mouth, it was still
trickling from my nose, and went to stamp on his windpipe, but he rolled to the
side and my foot hit wood instead. My eyes darted around, trying to place where
the two guns were. I wasn’t sure if his had bullets or tranquiliser darts like
mine, but I was forced to refocus on him when I couldn’t find them fast enough.
‘Credit where credit’s due, you’ve got some moves, but that shoulder’s got to
be killing you right now,’ he grinned as he bounced back up onto his feet,
looking like he was ready to start a marathon, whereas I felt that I’d already
done one.

‘It’s hurting about as much as yours.’ I moved
in to take another couple of jabs at him, but he was like a kickboxing ninja,
and I was assaulted with a battery of elbows, fists, knees, and feet on my body,
bruising every last inch of me and making it hard for me to even stay on my
feet, let alone fight back. Before I knew what was happening, he had his hand
around my throat and had slammed me down, pressing me back onto the wooden
dining table. Age, combined with lack of food and water, had my strength and
endurance running on fumes. He was going to beat me if I couldn’t find a way to
outsmart him in the next few minutes.

‘Getting slow, starting to feel the pain? How
about I make you
really
feel it?’ A smile spread across his face as he
held my gaze and his fingers tightened. I roared with agony as I heard a
sickening crack and felt an intense fire scorching every nerve in my body, as
he slammed his heavy boot under my kneecap. I knew without a shadow of a doubt that
he’d just broken my leg. I scrabbled with my free hand, trying to find anything
on the table that I could use before I passed out from pain, as well as lack of
oxygen as he continued to choke me. My fingers curled around his hot cup of
coffee and I flung it up at him, the black liquid splattering his face. ‘Fuck,’
he screamed, immediately releasing me, staggering backwards as he covered his
face with his hands.

I gasped for air and tried to stand up, but I
slid off the table and collapsed in a puddle on the floor. I was screwed unless
I got that gun before he recovered. I could feel the room spinning and pushed
myself upright with my good hand, grimacing to see a bone splinter sticking out
of a gash in my suit trousers. I looked around and through my fuzzy vision saw
what looked like a gun to my right. I lay back down on my side and started to
drag myself towards it. If I didn’t make it in time, it was game over. It was
either too far away, or I was much too slow, but my hand reaching out for it shattered
as he stamped his boot down onto it and ground it into the floor, then kicked
my ribs, forcing me onto my back. I lay there gasping for breath. This was
quite possibly the most broken bones, and pain, that I’d ever experienced. I
could make him out, towering above me, holding his hand over one of his eyes as
he pointed his gun at me and much as I hated to admit defeat, right now the
prospect of him killing me was a welcome relief.

‘You’re going to pay for that coffee burn,’ he
hissed, spitting on me as I lay there totally out of moves and energy. ‘Did you
know that if you shoot a man in just the right place in his abdomen, he’ll
bleed out, slowly and painfully? Personally I prefer cutting someone’s throat,
watching their blood gush like a waterfall, watching the life leaving their
body, that or blowing the back of their head out and seeing their brain
explode, just like I did to Jenny. But for you,
you
don’t deserve fast.’

I braced myself for the shot, saying a final
silent apology to everyone for letting them down. My family, Oliver, Ellie, and
Dan. I jerked as the sound of the bullet rang out and waited for the pain to
register in my stomach, but oddly I didn’t feel any more than I was already in.
I looked back up at Charlie and saw his shoulders jerking as he gasped for
breath. Blood was bubbling and spewing out of his mouth and throat and his gun
clattered as it left his fingers and hit the floor. Seconds later he fell,
planking face first onto the ground next to me. We lay looking at each other. Usually
seeing a man die didn’t bring me any pleasure, but watching the light in his
eyes slowly being extinguished was the most gratifying experience of my life.
I’d no idea what had just happened and frankly, I didn’t care. Jenny had
justice.

‘I’d call that perfect timing, wouldn't you
say, James?’ came Andy’s smug, but seriously welcome, voice. I laughed, then
winced as the pain of my broken ribs reminded me just how lucky I was. I rolled
my head to look over at the open door, where he was holstering his gun.

‘Perfect timing would have been before he broke
my nose, again, dislocated my shoulder, broke my hand, leg, and ribs, and
bruised me all over, but where you excel with everything else, you were always
rubbish at being on time.’ I looked back over to my right when I heard
footsteps coming from the back of the cottage. I smiled when I saw three men
enter that I recognised, one of them being Roberts, from my old squadron. They
all lowered their weapons when they saw Andy.

‘All clear,’ Roberts nodded. ‘One dead male in
the rear bedroom.’

‘James, where are Mrs. Davenport and Oliver?’
Andy demanded.

‘Oliver’s hidden outside, but I had to leave
Mrs. Davenport behind.’

‘Shit,’ Andy muttered, running a hand through
his hair. ‘This guy may not have finished you off, but Mr. Davenport might when
I allow him in and break the news. Roberts, get James patched up before he
bleeds to death, that leg looks nasty. We can hunker down here and plan our
next move based on his intel. James, where did you hide Oliver?’

‘Wood store at the side of the house. What sort
of rubbish team did you scrape together if they missed him hiding in there?’ I
chuckled.

‘Even when you look like you’ve had a
pulverising, always with the jokes,’ Andy replied, shaking his head.

‘Pulverised? Please, I totally had a move
planned to get out of that jam, you interrupted me before I could execute it.’

‘Right,’ nodded Andy with a smile. ‘Watkins,
Hammersmith, I want that body moved right now. We have a four year old coming
in. Drag the rug over the blood, I don’t want him seeing anything worse than
the state James is in,’ he ordered, before activating his ear piece. ‘This is
team leader, you have the all clear, bring them in.’

‘Thanks, Andy.’ I saluted him and he nodded
before heading out of the door. I blew out a painful sigh of relief and closed
my eyes for a moment, knowing I’d just been saved by the skin of my teeth. I
opened them to find Roberts squatting at my side, undoing a medic’s bag. ‘Not
so fast,’ I ordered, starting to crawl across the floor again, panting through
the agony of every small movement I made.

‘Smithy, you have a serious leg break,’ he warned.
‘I need to treat it and splint it immediately.’

‘There’s something I have to do first,’ I
replied, making my way across the floor to the fridge as Charlie’s body was
moved.

Dan

I lay in the grass next to Dean and a couple of
the older guys on the team, within shouting distance of the house up ahead. I
bit my nails as we waited. Oliver’s signal had put him here only an hour ago
when we landed. The thought that I’d get to see him and Ellie any moment had my
palms sweating and my heart beating erratically. I watched some of the team
open one of the rear windows and disappear silently into the cottage as Andy
and the rest went around the front. I flinched when I heard a gunshot, Dean did
too. He buried his face in his hands as he took a few deep, calming breaths. We
lay there for ages and I wondered what was taking so long. Why weren’t they
signalling for us to come in? Just as I thought it, the man called Jones
announced we had the all clear to move in. He cursed as I leapt up and took off
like Usain Bolt out of his starting blocks. I ran like I’d never run before. Every
second I saved meant I’d see my family a second sooner. I’d missed far too many
with them as it was. I skidded around the corner of the cottage, raced up the
decking, and threw myself through the open door, panting.

‘Fucking hell,’ I gasped as I took in the state
of James, who for some reason was lying with the upper part of his body inside
a cream retro fridge.

‘Sir,’ he called, giving me a nod.

‘Jesus, James! Are you going to be ok?’ I
asked, scanning his battered body and wincing as I saw the state of his face
and leg.

‘He will be if the stubborn old goat stops
looking for
bloody
sausages and lets me sort out his dislocated shoulder
and broken bones,’ one of our team snapped.

‘I promised them to Oliver,’ James retorted
with a glare. ‘I don’t want to let him down.’

‘Ollie’s really here? Where is he? Where’s
Ellie,’ I demanded, my eyes darting around the room for signs of them, my
spirits suddenly rising for the first time in days.

‘Daddy!’ I spun around as I heard his cry and
choked back a sob as I saw Andy standing in the doorway with him in his arms.
He was filthy and dwarfed by a huge black jumper, but he held out his arms to
me and started to cry.

‘Ollie.’ I made short work of the distance
separating us, my heart breaking to see the state of him, then soaring to be
within touching distance of one of my most treasured possessions. I grabbed him
off Andy and crushed him to my chest, planting kisses on every inch of him that
was within reach, not even caring how grubby and smelly he was.

‘Daddy,’ he sobbed. ‘I
missed
you.’

‘I missed you, too, more than you’ll ever know.
I love you so much, son,’ I whispered. I didn’t even feel ashamed that some
tears were falling from my eyes and I was surrounded by some of the toughest
men in the world. I had my boy again, that was all that mattered. ‘Where’s
Ellie?’ I asked Andy, desperate to have her in my arms as well. He ran a hand
through his hair as he swallowed hard.

‘I’m sorry, Sir, she’s not here. She chose not
to leave given her leg injury, worried she’d slow James down.’

‘She what?’ I bit, whipping my head around to
look at James as the short-lived happiness I’d just experienced was suddenly
ripped from me. ‘Tell me you didn’t leave her, James.’

‘I’m sorry, Sir. I’d never have made it out
with Master Oliver if I hadn’t.’

‘Is she … is she …’ I closed my eyes, trying to
find the strength to vocalise my fear.

‘She was alive when I left her, Sir. In pain
from a bullet to the thigh, but as stubborn and brave as ever. As their last
remaining hostage, I don’t think they’ll risk harming her. I’m assuming that
you haven’t been able to pay the ransom in full given they hadn’t already
killed us all?’

I shook my head and kissed Oliver again,
stroking his back. I needed to sit down. The thought that Ellie was hurt and
alone, maybe even being tortured, didn’t just make me feel sick, it made me
want to die. I looked up as Dean came in and nodded with a relieved smile as he
saw me clutching Oliver.