Be safe, people.
The man strode straight towards Hannah
Wilson, looking as if he was eager to greet a friend. In the second before she
realised his wide smile was utterly fake, she registered the small, black
object clasped in his hand. Then he was upon her.
“Hannah.” There was nothing in the word
but friendliness and surprise. “Good to see you.”
He embraced her with a frightening
tightness, pulled back a little and shoved his mouth against her ear. “I have a
gun. If you don’t do exactly what I say, I’ll shoot you right here.”
Metal pressed against Hannah’s stomach,
cold through her thin jacket.
“You’re going to come with me. You won’t
make a sound. Understood?”
Hannah understood nothing. They were on
the High Street with crowds of the usual tourists and workers and locals on all
sides as the early evening ticked closer to night in Edinburgh. The office was
two minutes behind, the bus-stop another five around the corner and hundreds of
people flowed past while this man held a gun into her stomach.
Hannah’s mind stuttered and threw off the
barrage of emotions: confusion, fear and a surety that none of this was
happening. A single thought buried everything else. Scream. Scream your head
off.
Moving with a terrible speed, the man’s
face swooped forward, blocking out light and people, even blocking the smells
of the damp ground.
His mouth hit hers, the sudden kiss
crushing any chance of calling for help. His sealed lips were warm, repulsive,
and his hand on her lower back pressing them together made pulling free
impossible.
He eased away no more than half an inch.
“Don’t make a fucking sound, Hannah.”
She couldn’t. While the man walked her
over the road and the old buildings watched and the people passed by, she
couldn’t make the tiniest squeak. Not aloud, anyway. Inside, she shrieked at
the people on every side; she begged them for help and she shouted the word gun
over and over.
If you can’t scream, then run.
As if he’d heard the thought, the man
tightened his hold on her side, the pressure increasing to a painful level.
They reached the opposite pavement; he shoved through four tourists blocking
the way and turned into St Giles’ Street which was slightly quieter than the
road behind. A few office workers further along strode away from the noise of
the High Street, and Hannah’s mind gave another stutter. She saw the faded
briefcase a man held; she saw a splash of puddle water strike a woman’s bare ankle
and the woman walk on without looking down. Six or seven pigeons came from
nowhere to streak overhead. A few drops of rain landed on Hannah’s arm, and
through everything, the shout for help in her head couldn’t make it to her
mouth.
Several cars were parked in a line,
a white van at the end of the row. He steered her towards it, still with his
fierce grip. They reached the same puddle that marked the woman’s leg, and the
man’s big stride pulled them over it.
“Okay.” He spoke normally, apparently
unconcerned about the people still in sight. Nobody was close enough to hear in
any case. “That’s my van. You’ll get in the back and you’ll do it fast or I’ll
shoot you.”
“Please,” Hannah whispered.
“Just do what I say and you’ll be fine.”
This was really happening. She was about
to be kidnapped in broad daylight, kidnapped slap bang in the middle of a city,
the capital city, for Christ’s sake.
One of the rear doors opened as they drew
level with the side of the van and that did it. She took another breath and he
hissed at her. “You make a sound and your mother’s dead, Hannah.”
“What? No, please.”
“Get in the van.”
The words rolled in on a wave; a dark,
crashing sea swallowing a beach.
“In the van, Hannah. Right now.”
Five thirty on a Friday and the damp
pavements of Edinburgh now steaming as the showers from the early afternoon
vanished and the sun came out for a couple of hours. Five thirty on a Friday
and the weekend ready for her, another weekend of the long hours of looking
after her mum while Aunt Janey did what she could. Except they both knew Janey
wanted to be away because she’d been in Hannah’s house the entire week and
Monday was coming much too quickly and it would all start again.
Hannah remained perfectly still. Someone
had to be seeing this. Someone. She was in the middle of a city. Not
just any city. Edinburgh. You couldn’t move without walking into someone round
here. Tourist, student, resident, old, young. Everybody was here but nobody was
anywhere near her but the big man with his gun.
A small degree of self-control took over.
It’d barely been three seconds since the man last spoke. The nearest people
were still at least thirty feet away and there was no reason for them to be
paying attention to this. Chances were she wouldn’t in their position. The only
way out was to attract attention.
“Last chance. In the van.”
The obscene lack of light inside the back
of the vehicle held the potential for every awful thing in the world. She
finally looked the man in the eye. Tiredness and truth were etched in his face,
and Hannah knew what would happen if she refused.
He would kill her and he would kill her
mother.
And what happens if you get in the van?
Is this real? Is it?
It was. And she had no choice.
Moving on feet that felt like rocks,
Hannah stumbled forward. The man shifted to his side, shielding the gun with
his other arm. Up close, he seemed even bigger. Way past six feet and solid
with it. No crappy fast food for this guy. No nights boozing. This man was all
about exercise and muscle.
“Hey.”
The shout seemed to come from all
directions. Hannah jerked away from the man with the gun, moving off him for
the first time since he said her name and his fake smile swallowed her.
“Hey. What’s going on?”
Emerging from a shop doorway, a
middle-aged guy crossed to them. The gunman swore under his breath, pulled
Hannah closer and strode towards the older man.
“Everything okay?” the guy from the
doorway asked, frowning, eyes darting from Hannah to the man who held her.
The gunman swung his hand, forming a fist
at the last second. It smashed into the other man’s nose and mouth, knocking
him backwards. He fell, reaching for his mouth, blood flying with him. The
gunman was already moving away, turning Hannah with him.
“In the fucking van right now.”
He pushed her, hard. Hannah’s flailing
hands hit doors. A second figure loomed out of the van, grabbed both of her
wrists and pulled. At the same time, he twisted, spinning as gracefully as a
ballerina, and shoved her. She tripped and fell on something soft. The bigger
man jumped up and slammed the doors.
“Drive,” he bellowed.
Hannah’s voice, shocked into numb silence,
returned. She screamed. Her throat burned. She screamed again and made it
upright. A spinning light illuminated her surroundings; shadows and brightness
danced together. An arm rose, gloom licked around the shape, then fell away as
the arm pushed her back down. Someone, perhaps the man who’d pulled her,
slapped his hand against her mouth. She yelled against the horrendous feel of
his flesh and kicked out. Her foot hit something that might have been a leg but
the hand remained.
They shoved her towards the van’s side;
the seal on her mouth vanished and as she drew another breath, a gag covered
her lips.
Hannah thrashed from side to side. The men
bracketed her, their heavier weight forcing her to still. Both of them grabbed
her hands and pulled. A second later, metal hit her wrists and she realised
what was happening.
Handcuffs.
Moving fast, the men cuffed Hannah to a
metal pole jutting from the wall, and pushed more of the mattress underneath
her body. The torchlight skimmed over the gag and cuffs and settled again on
her face. Bumps in the road caused the van to shake, and the noise of the
vehicle turned all the sounds into a meaningless mix. One of those sounds broke
through a moment later. Her name.
“Hannah?” The second man said it again.
He’d crouched opposite. The one who’d grabbed her shone the torch over his
face, revealing his features. “Hannah?”
For the first time, the man’s accent
registered. Unlike the first guy who’d sounded local, he was English. Northern
was about all she could say. “Can you hear me?” He leaned closer and she kicked
as hard as she could.
He was fast. Even so, her shoe hit a
glancing blow on his chin. He swore, grabbed her ankles and held them to the
mattress.
“I don’t want to have to tie your feet but
I will. Blink once if you understand that.”
Hannah made no move at all. Sweaty strands
of hair had fallen over her forehead. Madly, she wanted more than anything to
push those strands back from her face.
“Come on, Hannah. I know you understand
me. Just blink once.”
Her hate for the nameless man a blazing
fire, Hannah blinked.
“Good. Now listen. We won’t hurt you. I
promise. We’re not going to rape you or hurt you or anything like that. You’ve
got no reason to believe me, I know, but it’s true. You’re completely safe.”
I want to kill you, Hannah thought
“We’re sorry about the cuffs and the gag,
but we need you to keep still and quiet. We’ll see how it goes. Maybe we can
take the gag off in a bit.”
“Jay,” the other man said. The warning in
his voice was unmistakeable.
“Oh, what? We leave her gagged all the
way? Come on.”
She knew his name. They wouldn’t let her
go if she knew names.
Oh, Jesus Christ, I am in trouble here.
The first man sifted through her handbag,
found her iPhone and placed it on the floor. Without hesitation, he smashed it
into pieces with the butt of his gun. Each impact of the weapon made Hannah
want to cry out. When the man finished, he shoved the wrecked device to a
corner.
“We’ve got a long journey,” Jay said. “Try
to be comfortable, okay? And no kicking. I really don’t want to have to tie
your legs.”
They slid away; the illumination remained
on her face for a moment, then dropped to her mid-section. The van slowed.
Hannah caught a few seconds of noise from the traffic before their speed increased.
They turned what might have been left, gears crunching, and drew alongside what
had to be a bus.
Still in the city. Work no more than a
couple of miles behind. Mum and Aunt Janey at home, both waiting for her, Janey
especially. She wouldn’t be able to leave until Hannah got home. And Mum in her
chair, sitting where she could see the telly and the front window, placed there
where they pretended she had a choice but to sit. And all the noise and people
and life of Edinburgh right outside while she was tied up in the back of this
fucking van, tied up, tied up, fucking tied—
Hannah squashed her panic and listened.
The bus moved on. There was still a fair bit of traffic on all sides. And
someone other than the man from the shop had to have seen her being grabbed.
Seen it or heard it. This was Edinburgh. Thousands of people all around; people
walking, driving, looking from windows. She’d been seen. Had to have
been.
You can’t rely on that. You do and
you’re dead.
Hannah breathed through her nose, calming
herself, listening for anything outside that might help her. A police siren, a
traffic jam. Anything.
She heard nothing but the occasional honk
of a horn and the crunch of the unseen driver changing gears. She saw nothing
but the torch light resting on her stomach. And she felt nothing but the
steady, unblinking gaze of the two men who’d pulled her into their van.
When Jay spoke to the other man, telling
him to phone the others and report they had her, Hannah barely managed to keep
a sob inside.
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