Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
“ D o you want something to eat?” Jonah asked Steph. “You should eat, for your baby if not you.”
Steph stared at him and wondered if he heard the irony of his concern as he had kidnapped her and was keeping her hostage. She considered telling him to go and fuck himself but she sensed that he might be the softer option in terms of gaining some ground and control in the situation she found herself in. She nodded and was rewarded with a smile.
“I’ll be right back.”
He was gone only a matter of minutes before he returned with a selection of snacks including pre-packaged sandwiches. He offered her a prawn one initially and she attempted to explain that she didn’t eat fish she panicked slightly that her poisoning hadn’t been down to him and Vicky, meaning someone else was still after her unless he was taking the piss.
“Or cheese,” he offered, sensing that prawn wasn’t to her liking.
“Thanks, but I can’t really eat,” she replied, waving her tethered arms behind her back.
“Steph, if I untie your hands, please don’t try anything stupid,” he warned.
She nodded, realising she was in enough shit without making an ill-prepared break for freedom.
Sitting with Jonah, chatting as they ate seemed like the most surreal experience of her life. He spoke about his wife, the breakdown of his marriage and his separation from his children and she genuinely felt sorry for him, which seemed the most ridiculous thing of all. Steph did wonder if he’d really thought this plan through because there really was no way he and Vicky would get away with it. There was no way in this world or the next that he could go back to his wife, win her and his family back using Jon’s money.
“You and Vicky,” Steph finally said.
“You’re wondering how I know her,” he stated more than asked and continued. “I met her in a coffee shop near Brookers. I’d been for an interview nearby. I didn’t get the job but I met her and we soon realised we had you and your old man in common. We got close and here we are.”
Jonah looked more confused than Steph felt as to how he’d gone from getting close to being here scaring her, confirming that Vicky was definitely the driving force, the danger. She suddenly lost her appetite and stopped eating.
“You okay?” He sounded genuinely concerned.
“I’m scared,” she admitted tearfully.
“Don’t be. Your old man is going to pay up, we both know he’s crazy for you.”
Steph nodded but was more afraid now because whereas her husband was simply crazy for her she feared that Jonah might have some real crazy issues if he hadn’t thought through this whole plan and was having his strings pulled by Vicky who was bursting through the door.
“What are you doing? You know she’s our hostage and not your friend, don’t you?” she asked a sheepish looking Jonah.
“Sorry,” he muttered, immediately backing off from Steph.
“Come on, we have things to do before our pay day arrives.” Vicky was already leaving again when she spun back and strode towards Steph. “I am not like the boys . . . I don’t buy your butter wouldn’t melt routine. You are a player, a mover, a shaker to have reeled in Jonny like you have, so rest assured I’m not taken in by you.” She grabbed Steph’s hands and tied them up again.
Vicky had almost got to the door when Steph called to her. “Is this just about money?”
The other woman turned to face her again. “You mean is it jealousy, a broken heart? Do I cry myself to sleep at night that he didn’t love me like he loves you?”
Steph nodded.
“We could have been happy and I loved him and seeing how he is with you made me realise that he hadn’t loved me, not ever and I got to thinking then. I thought back to the man I met and I figured out that I got a damaged version of the man you met so I began to dig. I never knew much of Jonny before we were together, didn’t want nor need to, until you, until that day where he interrupted our lunch. He told me how much he loved you and how much he wanted the kid. I saw a different man that day, one I had never met before. I considered hiring someone to dig on Jonny but then figured you were the key to it all so I began to watch you and then I met Jonah and he watched you too. He followed you to that nursing home and with a few phone calls and a couple of visits we found Penny and discovered her tragic past. I got broken hearted Jonny and you didn’t.”
Vicky sounded angry now and Steph was relieved that she was on the other side of the room. She knew that Jon had been devastated by what had happened to Penny and the baby but was in no doubt that he’d been broken beyond his heart. She knew that the woman before her could never have been his wife and the mother to his child because she didn’t get it or see it, she didn’t get or see Jon.
“But for me this is about cash. I am broke and hoped that by coming here I could maybe get Jon to help me out, maybe we could help each other out, but you were there and he wasn’t interested in anything that wasn’t you. When I met Jonah I considered cooking up some deal and ripping you off, but he reckoned you were too good for me to get it past you so I guess sometimes you can be too smart for your own good. It’s a shame for Jonny really.” Vicky waited for Steph to begin to see where this was going, although she already suspected it. “He is totally smitten with you and this kid so it’s a shame he’s going to lose you both. Oh well,” she said with a shrug and then she was gone, closing the door and plunging Steph into the darkness of the room and her thoughts that were now being realised in terms of the outcome here, or a lack of one.
“You need to let us do our job,” the irritated police officer was saying again having said it countless times over the last eighteen hours he’d been there.
“Are you going to though? That’s the bigger question,” Jon snapped back.
“If I insist you wait here are you going to do it?” the policeman asked with a resigned sigh.
“No fucking chance!”
“Fine, then if I can’t trust you to stay still, you’d better stay close, all of you,” he said to Jon, Charlie and Jason who were all following the policeman.
Jon sat back in a chair and was relieved to find a plan was forming, even if they were almost twenty-four hours on. He was going to make the drop off of the ransom, as agreed. The police had a team of people checking out the location they’d traced which was in the same vicinity as Jelly Bean’s tracker. While the ransom was being delivered, armed police would be getting into position as there was no indication of how small or large the group of hostage takers might be. Jack Baker had been ruled out by Jon as he’d been with Steve Cannon from the time they’d parted. Simon was dead so he was unsure just who that left with a motive.
“Mr Brooker, we’re going to get you wired, just in case because we don’t want to risk sending an officer with you and then we can get the ball rolling.”
Jon nodded, he just needed something to happen now.
Steph was unsure how long she’d been alone and even though alone meant she was still alive, her and Jelly Bean, she was relieved to see Jonah reappear because her bladder was fit to burst.
“You okay? Did she hurt you before?” he asked Steph who shook her head.
“I really need the loo,” she replied, with a pained expression.
“My wife was a permanent fixture in the bathroom towards the end.” He smiled at the memory.
“Yeah. I really need to go.”
He nodded, helping her stand and prepared to lead her towards the door.
“Please, I don’t need you to take me. Untie me, please.” Her voice was pleading and she just hoped that he wouldn’t insist on going in with her.
“I don’t know,” he muttered in deliberation with himself.
“Jonah, what am I going to do? I’m no match for either of you. I’m eight months pregnant so I can’t see me outrunning anyone, can you?”
He nodded and undid her feet and then her hands before leading her out of the basement that revealed a house, a normal residential property. She went through a kitchen and a laundry room before finding herself standing in a bathroom, unfortunately with no window, not that she’d have been able to fit through a typical bathroom window with Jelly Bean on board.
Sitting on the toilet Steph struggled to actually release the pressure from her bladder for several minutes. Jonah spoke to her from the other side of the door, presumably to ensure she hadn’t found a way out. She chatted to him, knowing that he’d burst in if she didn’t, but also because as strange as this situation was she didn’t necessarily believe he was a true threat. No, that honour belonged to Vicky.
Steph allowed her mind to think about how she’d ended up here; pregnant and kidnapped. If she hadn’t been quite so afraid she would have laughed at her predicament. She gently rubbed her hand across her belly and began to whisper to her unborn baby. “Hey, baby, come on, I need a sign because Mummy is kind of shit scared that we might have to stand up and fight and I need to know you’re on board with the plan even if Daddy is going to go ape shit.”
Nothing.
Steph sniffed back tears at her dormant baby, scared that something bad had already happened to her loved and wanted baby girl, but now was not the time for tears, they could wait until much, much later.
“Please, Jelly Bean. I know I don’t have Daddy’s magic touch but I’m gonna need you to give a little here. I’ll even find you a real name, one me and Daddy like.”
Before Steph could negotiate with her daughter further she heard voices on the other side of the door, Vicky’s and Jonah’s. Vicky was clearly unhappy to find Steph anywhere other than locked in the basement and Jonah was apologetic. Momentarily, she forgot about her baby’s lack of movement and tuned in to the conversation. Vicky was ordering Jonah to go and pick up the ransom and then to phone her so she could take care of things this end. Steph was in no doubt what that meant for her and Jelly Bean.
“You have sixty seconds to come out or I’m coming in,” Vicky called to her as heavy footsteps moved away indicating that Jonah was leaving to collect the ransom money that Jon had clearly agreed to pay, but surely he knew it wouldn’t be as simple as to just pay up.
“I’m just washing my hands,” Steph said, switching the tap on but beginning to look around the room for anything that might come in handy as a weapon, when, rather than if the time came because she’d already talked herself into a fight to escape, she just hoped she might be able to keep herself out of shackles.
Jon had returned to his car after leaving the ransom money at the drop off point. He was breathing heavily, his chest heaving as his heart lurched. Part of him wanted to wait, to discover exactly who was behind this, but that was one of the conditions, drop the money and leave, plus the police were going to plant someone, in a park of all places to keep tabs on things.
Leaving the car park, his mind began to drift to Steph and Jelly Bean and thoughts of losing them. It had been bad enough when Penny had been hurt and she’d lost their baby, but he would never recover if it happened again with Steph and Jelly Bean. He wondered if this was why he’d remained single until he’d met his wife. Alone he was safe, if a little insular but he wasn’t risking the pain and suffering of loss that would befall him if he lost his other half and he didn’t mean in a spouse kind of way because she really was the other half of him. She completed him. She made him whole. She made him better. With those thoughts running freely now, a tear ran down his face, then another and another until he could barely make out the road ahead.
“Sir.” A police officer was heading towards his boss while Charlie and Jason watched on at the whispered exchange. The junior officer was passing paper to his boss who was scrutinising the sheets in his hand.
“Any sign of Mr Brooker yet?” the senior officer asked.
“Is that something we should be aware of?” Charlie asked as he and Jason joined them.
“We have some images from the hospital of your sister’s abduction.”
“Let’s see!” Jason demanded, ready to take the images by force if need be.
“Jay,” Charlie muttered, hoping to avoid Jason going off on one, or getting himself arrested.
“If you have pictures then I’m with my brother-in-law.” Jon was already stopping alongside them.
Before the officer could respond someone else was rushing in. It quickly became apparent that the ransom had been collected and the armed response team were now in place at what was believed to be Steph’s location. The property, a residential property had been scoped out and three people had been seen; a man, and two women, one of whom matched Steph’s description and she had only been seen passing a window.
“I will only warn you all once,” the senior policeman warned. “You get in the way or compromise things and I’ll have you nicked, understand?”
Jon and Jason nodded as they followed him to a waiting car that was on its way to Steph. Once they were in the car Jon asked about the photos again and immediately found the images thrust at him. Looking at the man looking back at him he was speechless. What the hell was going on? Jonah Mason was stood next to the van that was parked next to his car and opening the back doors. Another figure stood further away but was wearing a hoodie, their identity concealed but they looked slighter. Feminine. The other one was a woman. The next image showed Steph next to the car, holding her phone and then the next image showed the concealed figure behind her, close by, hitting Steph’s head. The tears he’d shed earlier were clearly inadequate as he felt more ready to fall at the image of his wife crumbling to the ground and then being manhandled into the back of a van.
“Jonah Mason, this is him . . . we did business with him. He had information about my wife’s former boss spreading rumours about her. I was convinced he fancied my wife, he did . . . I don’t get this at all.”
Jon saw the expression that was spread across the policeman’s face and knew there was something else.
“What?”
“The house we have as the location is mortgaged to a Mr and Mrs Jonah Mason.”
“He has kidnapped my wife and taken her to his home . . . this doesn’t make sense.” Jon was confused. “I can’t see the other one.”
Another image was passed to him from CCTV at a pub down the road from the hospital.
“I don’t know Mrs Mason so I might not . . . oh fucking hell!” Jon thrust the image towards Charlie who muttered Vicky’s name under his breath. “Yup,” replied Jon before explaining who the other person was.
Steph was back in the basement again but fortunately had talked Vicky into only tying her hands together as the other woman had been most concerned by Steph attacking her. She had a metal nail file concealed beneath the band of her bra and a handbag size bottle of hand gel in her pants. She was struggling to find any way of measuring time but felt it must be the best part of an hour since Jonah had left and the longer she remained there the more she worried that something had gone wrong, although she had no clue how much more wrong things could go.
A shard of light invaded the room, signalling the arrival of Vicky who was carrying a tray and wearing a large grin that chilled Steph to the core.
“Jonah is on his way back with the cash so this is where we part company,” she said flatly.
“You don’t have to do this,” Steph said, unsure whether she should go with pleading or defiance.
“Except I do, we both know that. We can do it the easy or the hard way though.” Vicky looked down at the tray that carried a container of tablets, a bottle of water and a large knife. “You take the tablets and once you zone out I’ll finish things, or,” she said, picking up the knife that seemed to glimmer in glint in the darkness.
Rubbing her hand across her belly, Steph slipped a hand under her top, hunching over slightly, hoping she looked like a desperate woman preparing to say goodbye to her unborn child and her own life.
“The tablets,” she replied on a broken sob having somehow managed to palm the hand gel in preparation for what was quite literally going to be the fight of her life.
Watching Vicky put the knife back on the tray that now sat on the ground near her feet, Steph breathed a short sigh of relief. She was opening the bottle of water and tipping out the pills ready for Steph to take, meaning she only had a matter of seconds to make her move.
“Vicky.” Steph called her name from her position sitting on the chair and hoped the other woman would look up long enough for her to get the first strike in. She heard the sigh leave her opponent’s lips and assumed she was expecting some kind of protest or plead. There wasn’t one. What she did get when she glanced up and held Steph’s gaze was both eyes filled with the hand gel.
“You little bitch,” she screamed, rubbing her eyes while Steph was on her feet and running for the door.
With her hands still securely bound she found it more difficult to keep a hold on the nail file but she had no doubt that the other woman would pursue her and there would only be the hard way left now.
“We’re assuming the call he made was to the other kidnapper so she’ll be expecting him back within about half an hour so we need to move quickly.”
Jon nodded his understanding at what he was being told. “So you’re going to strike soon?”
“The general consensus is that time is of the essence in getting your wife safely out of there now, so yes. We are going to wait here so as not to draw attention to ourselves.”
“I’d rather be closer.” Jon frowned.
“Of course you would but we can be there in a matter of minutes . . .” an interruption came over the radio. “We have Jonah Mason in custody so we’re going in.”
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Jon muttered as the reality of everything began to overwhelm him and his stomach began to churn and he knew that nothing and nobody was going to make it stop until he had his wife back with him, safely in his arms.
Steph got as far as the kitchen before she felt a thud across her back and she was heading face first for the floor. Aware of her need to break her fall, or at least Jelly Bean’s she attempted to curl up with her bound hands over her bump.
“I will fucking kill you!” the other woman screeched, pulling Steph over so that she was flat on her back. The light caught the blade of the knife that Vicky still held. “Maybe I should just fucking cut you open, split you like a pig,” she threatened, holding the blade, point first against Steph’s belly.
It really was do or die now for Steph and with her hands clasped together she swung them, aiming for her jaw with enough power that she knocked Vicky off her and onto the floor next to her. Suddenly Steph saw red; how dare this woman do this, kidnap her, extort money from her husband who she knew would be frantic by now and make threats against a baby, her innocent baby.
“Maybe I’ll be the one killing you!” She screamed and shouted as a red mist descended and she rained blow after blow into Vicky’s face.
The other woman still had the advantage of being untied and not heavily pregnant or maybe being pregnant was to Steph’s advantage because she had a far more intense motivator in surviving this. Steph saw the second where Vicky planned on striking, her hands coming up and that is when she seized her opportunity, bringing her hands down as if in prayer so that the pointed end of the nail file was exposed. With a single, powerful thrust the file was embedded in the soft flesh of Vicky’s neck and while she screamed, Steph was clambering to her feet and running to what she hoped would be her exit.
Jon listened to events unfolding from the car. Jonah had been arrested and everyone was ready to retrieve his wife. He needed this to go well, he needed Steph back at his side and he needed to make sure his baby girl was okay, too. He couldn’t allow his mind to go back to the dark place it had been to earlier with thoughts of losing his wife and unborn child so he focused on their survival and the life that awaited them.
“What does that mean?” Jon heard Jason ask, bringing him back to the present time.
Reports were coming through of events at the house. It appeared that Jelly Bean’s tracker was in Steph’s bag still and the bag had been found in the back of the van she’d been abducted in and left a few streets away. The armed response team were waiting on the final say so to enter the property, as was Jon, but just as he thought it was going to come, another message came through, that a heavily pregnant and bloodied woman had just exited the property.
Jon was already trying to leave the vehicle but was pulled back by Charlie as the police officer reminded him of his earlier words. “I will arrest you, Mr Brooker, make no mistake and you will be on your way back to the nick in three minutes flat if you leave this vehicle.”
Reluctantly Jon sat back in the seat and waited a while longer. It was only a few minutes before they discovered that Vicky had been apprehended and Steph was being attended to by paramedics.