30
Bea
Neither of the masked men had noticed the blood forming in my lap—or else they simply didn’t care. I hadn’t bled so profusely as to make a mess everywhere, but now that I was aware of it, I could still feel it coming. My only small comfort was that I could breathe a lot better now, as they’d ripped the tape off my mouth, but that did nothing to assuage my fears.
I’m losing my baby….our baby.
Praying that if I calmed my nerves it would do my insides some good and keep the baby alive, I decided to close my eyes and pretend to sleep. I didn’t want any more attention from the two men and didn’t even waste any effort considering whether one of them might be compassionate enough to accept that I needed medical attention and do something to help. I knew they wouldn’t help. The calmness with which they went about their tasks implied they were used to this kind of work and thought nothing of it, and I had the distinct impression that they had particularly enjoyed the camera part. It’d probably made for an amusing change to doing all their work unseen; flattering their egos with a little notoriety.
Somehow, perhaps aided by the fear of thinking I was going to lose my baby, my mind managed to drift off to a certain extent, and I found myself dreaming up images of what I really wanted in life. For some reason, though it now seemed impossibly out of reach, I now knew exactly what I wanted from life; could envision precisely what would make me happy.
I pictured a tranquil little house with an ocean view, outside of which I could see myself sitting back with an orange juice in hand, looking back and forth. Sometimes dreamily out at the ocean waves, but mostly with a satisfied smile focused on the sand at the end of the garden, where Damon and our unnamed baby played happily together.
I kept myself calm with the thoughts, though I knew at some point there would come a brutal jerk back into reality. When it finally came, I instantly switched back into the here and now, but what had woken me from my trance wasn’t as I expected. It wasn’t the rough hands of my captors, or the cold, sharp point of a blade, but the sound of a car screeching to a halt outside.
Just knowing there was an outside proved to be a comforting thought, and I sat up straight. Of course anything that was happening externally could be both good and bad but, on turning to see that the masked men had jumped up with even more surprise than me to find out who was approaching, my attention was sustained, and I felt my heart soar just a little. There were conflicting interests in my mind; Damon had come to my rescue once before, and though the odds seemed much greater on this occasion, I couldn’t help but hope he found a way again, at the same time as fearing it might just mean the end of him. The two men watching over me were clearly hardened criminals and weren’t just going to roll over.
It was almost three months since the encounter with Batista had set me on course for having my life torn apart. What I’d forgotten was just how quickly violence happened when hardened criminals clashed. Before I’d even begun to speculate over who else the arrival could be, one of my captors had sought to peek through the door, then instantly keeled over as a shot was fired. I didn’t get any impression of where the bullet had hit but, on seeing the man groaning and holding his leg, I was easily able to tell.
Even then—knowing it must have been Damon, or else some very gung-ho policeman—I expected some kind of tense standoff, as my wannabe savior tried to figure out some way of taking out the other man. Perhaps I would still be held to ransom for hours, with whole police units negotiating my fate, or else more mafia would turn up and take Damon out.
Instead, almost as soon as the second man had lifted me by the arm and pointed a gun at my head, just as I’d expected, Damon appeared at the door, bold and daring. Though I was afraid for him, I knew that anyone witnessing the scene would have wanted to be his ally, rather than his foe. His expression was steely, his eyes filled with vengeful darkness.
“Drop your gun or she’s dead, Wilkerson,” the man holding me yelled—but Damon didn’t flinch.
“I could happily kill you both,” he said, “but because of who your employer is I’d prefer to leave you both alive. That said, neither of you leave this place if any harm comes to the girl.”
“What makes you think you’re calling the shots?”
“Because I’m your boss’s best hitman, that’s why. You know not to take me on.”
“I also know you have no backup. We can stand here until someone else comes and shoots you in the back of the head.”
“I’ve been waiting for that for years, but it’s not going to happen.”
The masked mob soldier scoffed. “No?”
With a sudden switch of aim, Damon shot out the fluorescent light overhead, and plunged into the now-dark room. I felt the panic of the man holding me, but the butt of the gun pointed at the side of my head was removed.
There was another gunshot, and I knew that one was aimed at Damon. It lit up the room; I thought I saw Damon crouched and feared he’d been hit. Then the grip on my arm was released and I fell back.
The next two seconds were uneventful except for the sound of the first man still groaning from a bullet wound, but they were the most unbearable of my life. I was lying on my back and unable to make anything out, even as the door opened again and light returned, but then Damon’s face came into view looking down at me.
Suddenly my bonds were free, thanks to a knife I never actually saw that Damon clearly handled almost as well as his gun. I caught sight of the man who’d held me just then, also lying on his back. He wasn’t dead, or even shot, just knocked out. I’d been wrong about how Damon would handle them, but they were the last of my worries now.
As Damon stooped to pick me up and squeeze me tightly against him, I shouted “No!” in order to point to the blood between my thighs.
“The baby!” I said, seeing the victorious expression on his face turn to a look of horror. “I need a hospital!”