Chapter Sixteen

‘You keep your mouth shut, you hear me?’

I nod, although the man’s grip against my throat is tight and uncomfortable; any movement is difficult, but I guess that’s just what he intended. The arm he slipped around my neck is strong, and thanks to his height he’s got me at a disadvantage. Mentally I try and gauge where his various sensitive parts might be – gut, balls, knees – just in case I need to kick him hard and run, but I know that’s not really on the table. I took a self-defence class as a college elective, but that was almost a decade ago, and I never had to actually use it. By this point, what I learned has been almost completely forgotten.

‘I mean it,’ he says, and I feel something hard and metallic pressing into my back, just below my ribs. ‘I’m not fucking around, but if you play nice, no one needs to get hurt. OK?’ I nod again, but he jerks my head back. ‘I said OK?’

‘OK,’ I reply quickly. ‘Whatever you say.’

‘Good,’ he says. ‘Now give me your bag.’

Instinctively, I’ve gripped hold of my little purse as tightly as I can – as though that’s somehow going to stop him taking it from me, as though it’s going to be any use whatsoever. Unless…

I know I’ve got a can of pepper spray in there somewhere – a gift from Carter from a couple of months ago, when he got paranoid about a bunch of stories he saw on the news. I thought it was ridiculous then, but now it seems like fate is on my side. I wonder if I could manage to get my hand inside and grab it before he can react, but that’s crazy. He’s holding something up against my back – a knife, a gun, who knows? – and there’s no way I’d be able to get hold of the can in time, let alone turn around and spray him with it.

Could I?

‘I said give me your fucking bag,’ he says again – louder this time, angry and urgent.

‘Easy,’ I say, trying to keep my voice calm and steady even though it feels like my heart is beating out a samba in my chest. ‘Just relax, OK? I’m getting it for you, see?’

‘And keep your fucking hands where I can see them.’

Slowly – as slowly as I can without pissing him off, I hope – I move my hands up to my shoulder strap and slip it over my head. Before I can hand it to him, he’s snatched it out of my grasp. I expect him to run, to dart off down one of the alleys with his ill-gotten gains, but he doesn’t. His grip stays tight around my neck, and a fresh panic sets in.

What if it wasn’t just the bag he wanted?

Please let that be all, I think. Please let this be over and done with now. You’ve got what you want. Please just let me go.

‘What else you got?’ he demands.

‘What?’

Whatever he’s holding against my back gets another quick jab against my spine, and I wince; it’s not a sharp pain, though. That rules out a knife. That’s something, at least.

‘Don’t fuck with me, lady,’ he hisses. ‘What else you got? Money? Jewellery?’

‘I… I don’t have anything. It’s all in there. In my purse.’

Sure, for all that it’s worth. I have a card, for, God’s sake… it’s not like I’m carrying much in the way of money around with me. I’ve never been particularly big on jewellery, and for the first time since I took it off I’m glad that I’m not wearing my engagement ring. The bag itself is worth maybe a hundred bucks, but it’s not like I can imagine him putting it up on eBay.

But maybe he’ll check my purse anyway. It’s not likely, perhaps, but that would be enough of a distraction to help me run. Get to the main street, scream as loud as I can until I get someone’s attention, and hope for the best. Either he’ll try to get as far away from me as possible, or someone will step in to save me.

Except that won’t work either. Oh, sure, I think, looking down at my footwear. You just had to wear the heels…

They’re stylish as hell, but the stiletto isn’t exactly built for a quick escape. There’s no way I’m running anywhere.

I’m trapped. Well and truly trapped.

‘What about that?’

‘What?’

He squeezes his arm tightly against my neck and I gasp. ‘The watch, bitch. Give me to me.’

Fuck.

I’d almost forgotten I was wearing it, but that’s hardly surprising; except for showering, I pretty much never take it off. It was a gift from my grandmother on my eighteenth birthday, just after I went away to college, and just a couple of weeks before she passed on. It’s my keepsake, my lucky charm – not that it seems to be doing much good lately, of course but there’s nothing in the world I’d be more saddened to lose. Should have left it in the hotel room, I chastise myself. Should have kept it safe, but you didn’t – and now look what’s happening. Stupid, Ella. So fucking stupid.

‘Please,’ I start to beg. ‘It’s not worth anything. It’s just sentimental value, that’s all. It was a gift from –’

A jab in my ribs makes it clear he’s not interested in hearing my sob story. ‘Now,’ he hisses. I can feel him next to me, darting his head around, looking up and down the street anxiously: this has already taken far too long, and it’s only a matter of time before someone wanders down the alleyway and interrupts us. Maybe if I played for time a little, he might get antsy and run off… or maybe he’d decide he’d already gone too far, and things would get a lot more violent in short order.

It’s just a watch, I tell myself. It’s not worth being hurt over. It’s not worth maybe being killed over, that’s for sure.

Better to just give it up, no matter how painful the idea is.

As soon as I drop the watch into his palm, the world seems to explode into action. Almost immediately, he loosens his grip on me and shoves me away from him as hard as he can. I trip, stumble against myself and then go down hard into the wall of the Coeur de Vie, the back of my head colliding with the brickwork with enough force to leave me seeing stars. He takes off down the alleyway like a bullet out of a gun, but before he can go too far the door opens behind me and a figure barrels through it, running him down with a tackle that wouldn’t have looked out of place in an NFL highlight reel. There’s a sickening thump as my Good Samaritan collides with the thief, forcing him headlong against the side of a steel dumpster.

‘My dose!’ the thief screams. ‘You mudderfugger, you broke my dose!’

‘Shut the fuck up,’ my new hero says. The voice is stern, threatening… but there’s something familiar about it, tugging away at me. I know that voice. I know that man.

Then he turns, and I see Jack looking down at me.

‘Are you OK?’ he asks, but I can’t seem to bring myself to reply. The back of my head is throbbing, but it’s more than that: what the hell is he doing here, and who the hell would have thought he had the whole Superman routine in him? The thief tries to fight his way out, but Jack’s grip is firm, and his weapon – a length of pipe, it looks like – went skittering across the alleyway as soon as Jack tackled him. Now, it’s almost difficult to believe I was so scared of him. He’s a thin little man – a boy, perhaps, no older than about twenty, all twitches and sinew and with a panicked look on his face from knowing he’s trapped. Sure, it’s easy to be scared when you’re on the other side of it, I think. From down here on the floor, my sympathy for his plight is minimal.

‘Ella,’ he says again. ‘Are you OK? Did he hurt you?’

I shake my head and regret it immediately. ‘No. I’m just a bit… shaken, that’s all.’

That’s good enough for him, and he turns his attention back to the thief. ‘Now, what the fuck do you think you’re doing? Didn’t anyone ever teach you about how stealing is wrong?’

His captive is barely listening. ‘You broke my dose,’ he says again, as though he can’t quite believe it.

‘Yeah, I did,’ Jack says calmly. ‘And if you’ve harmed a hair on her head, I’ll do way worse. What did you take from her?’

He points a limp finger across the alleyway, where my bag has scattered its contents onto the floor: purse, lipstick, mirror, phone. All intact, as far as I can tell. It doesn’t take me long to get it all back into some sort of order.

‘Is that everything?’ he asks the thief, who nods. Jack turns back to me. ‘Ella? Is that all?’ Jack asks. ‘Did he take anything else?’

The thief squirms again, like a fish on a line. ‘I already told you, no!’ he yells. ‘I didn’t–’

‘My watch,’ I say weakly, interrupting. ‘He took my watch too.’

Jack nods, and it takes him only a fraction of a second to drive his fist upwards into the fleshy abdomen of his captive, who gasps as every single breath of air is driven out of him in one swift movement. ‘Now, what did I tell you about lying to me?’ he says. ‘Do you have my friend’s watch, or not?’

In an instant, the young thief seems to decide that his little score is more trouble than it’s worth; silently, still too winded to speak, he reaches into the pocket of his hoody and a second or two later there’s my watch, dangling off from the end of his fingers. He tosses it across to me and I snatch it out of the air.

‘Everything OK?’ Jack asks, without taking his eyes or his hands off the other man.

I run my fingers over the glass – still intact – and hold it up to my ear to hear the familiar ticking sound. ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Still working.’ Everything OK is a bit of a stretch, but after the last couple of days I’ll take any small scrap of mercy from the universe; God only knows it’s in short supply.

Jack nods. ‘Good,’ he says. ‘That’s real good. As for you… you just need to consider yourself lucky that you didn’t hurt my friend over there, and that I’m in a forgiving sort of a mood. If I ever see you around here again, I sure as shit won’t be. You understand?’

The boy nods, frantic but mute.

‘Good,’ Jack says, finally releasing the vicelike grip he has on the boy’s shirt. ‘Now get the fuck out of here before I change my mind.’

The thief doesn’t need to be told twice. He makes his way towards Bourbon Street like the devil himself his on his heels – and who knows? If he’d actually done me any real harm, Jack might not have been quite so willing to let him go as undamaged as he was.

He crosses the alleyway towards me and helps me up off the floor with a strong hand, pulling me to my feet with ease. ‘There we go,’ he says. ‘It’s OK. It’s all over now.’

And he’s right. The whole experience felt like it lasted for hours, but it could only have been two minutes at most. Just like that. If it wasn’t for my heart pounding in my chest, it would be hard to say it had really happened at all, rather than just being the briefest of nightmares.

But now it’s over, all thanks to him.

‘You… you saved me,’ I say. The words sound strangely melodramatic now the moment has passed, but there’s no other way of putting it. Who knows what would have happened if he hadn’t been there?

Jack shrugs. ‘Nah,’ he says. ‘Nothing like that. Saved you the trouble of cancelling a couple of credit cards, maybe, but that’s all.’ He taps a toe against the length of pipe that had seemed like such a terrible weapon in my imagination. ‘He wasn’t trying to hurt you, just scare you enough to get you to hand over your money. He was probably just looking for an easy score.’

‘And that was me?’

Jack shrugs. ‘Lone woman, on her own in an alley after midnight? No one around to see? Yeah, it was you. You need to be careful around here. It’s more dangerous than it looks.’

I’m starting to get that impression.

That’s what I want to say, anyway. The words are almost there, ready on the tip of my tongue – just another glib little rejoinder to add to the list – but the realisation of what could have happened, what almost did happen, takes its place and gurgles up out of me in a hacking sob, then another, then another, and I can feel tears beginning to roll down my cheeks.

What if it had been a knife or a gun he’d been carrying, instead of just an old length of pipe? What if he hadn’t been satisfied with the contents of my purse, and had wanted something more? What if he’d got properly violent, instead of just trying to scare me? What if I’d been in a different alleyway, instead of outside the relative safety of the Coeur de Vie?

What if, what if. Every one of them another danger I just about managed to avoid; every one of them another gasping, ugly cry into the night.

‘Hey,’ Jack says. ‘Hey. It’s OK. You’re OK. You’re safe now.’ Before I know it, he’s got his arms wrapped around me in a hug for the ages. I can smell him, the mingling scent of cologne and cocktails and sweat from his set at the club. It’s strange and unfamiliar, but… comforting, somehow. Like a child with a security blanket, something about having Jack so close makes me feel like everything might just be OK, if only I let it be.

‘There we go,’ he says as my breaths begin to slip back to normal. ‘No problem. Everything’s fine.’

‘But…’ I begin, but he stops me before I can finish.

‘But nothing,’ he says. ‘You’re safe now. That’s all that matters.’

He reaches a hand up to my face, as though he’s about to brush a loose hair out of my eyes, and then stop; his calming smile slips away, and in its place his eyebrows curl downwards in concern as he touches me.

‘What’s wrong?’ I ask.

‘Ella, you’re bleeding.’ And sure enough, he’s right: when he pulls his fingers away, the tips are dark and sticky, a vulgar red against the caramel tone of his skin. ‘I thought you told me you were fine,’ he says. ‘You said he didn’t hurt you.’

‘I… I was,’ I reply. Suddenly my voice feels weak, my legs shaky; I’ve never been great at the sight of blood, especially when it’s my own. Given the choice, I’d prefer to leave that to Lauren and Paige and the rest of the Doc Squad, wherever they might be. ‘I mean, I thought I was fine. I didn’t realise I’d hit the wall that hard. Is it bad?’

He tilts my head down gently, so he can get a proper look.

‘Well?’ I ask, but for now he’s not smiling.

‘Come on,’ he says. ‘Let’s get you inside.’