Chapter 39
THE GREAT ESCAPE
RAVEN
Does the drama ever end?
I got a phone call from Aiden to hall arse over to his house and check on Katie, since I’m closer.
Pulling into the garden, I kill the engine on my new bike (thank you, AJ) and walk up to the front door. It’s when I hit the stairs that I realise something is off. The front door is ajar, and the decorative window to the side of it is shattered.
Cock.
I’m going to have to be the one to tell him, aren’t I?
Pulling my Kershaw knife out of its sheath on my belt, I cautiously make my way inside. The house is eerily quiet as I move through the rooms; definite signs of a struggle evident, the girls put up a fight.
Fuck.
Where is everyone?
I reach for my phone, just as I’m about to call Aiden, I hear fast approaching footsteps before something clocks me in the back of the head.
“Where are they?” Maria shrieks, swinging the frying pan wildly.
“Fuckin’ hell,” I grunt, ducking just in time to avoid getting hit again.
Maria’s eyes are wild with fear and desperation, it’s only when I catch her blood-stained wrist that she realises whose head she tried to cave in. “Maria, it’s me! It’s Raven!”
Relief floods her face, and she lowers the pan, tears streaming down her cheeks.
“What the hell happened here?”
“They took them,” she sobs, turning to drop the pan on the floor with a loud clang. Her side weeps with blood.
“Christ, are you ok?” I ask, rushing to her side to inspect the wound. An angry red gash mars her side, but it doesn’t look too deep. “Who took who?”
“I don’t know. Four guys ran in here with balaclavas and grabbed them. They wanted to know where Aiden was. They seemed pretty pissed that he wasn’t here.”
“That was their exact words?”
She shrugs, seemingly only noticing the gash in her side now. “They just keep asking where “he” is. Who else could they be talking about?”
“How long have they been gone?” I’m already tapping away on my phone to the lads; you’d be surprised how easy it is to hack into traffic cameras.
“Only a few minutes,” all the colour seems to drain from her face. She’s going to pass out any second now. “We need to call Aiden.”
“Already on it.” Lifting her up, I dial Aiden’s number and hope he picks up quickly. “We need to get you to the hospital.”
* * *
KATIE
“I’ve got a lovely bunch of coconuts, diddley dee; there they are all standing in a row.” I sing, partly to keep myself calm with this bag on my head. Partly to piss these arseholes off.
“Bum bum bum,” Ciara echoes back with a shaky laugh.
The bag smells like cigarettes and sizzled arsehole. “Big ones, small ones, some the size of your—”
Christ, that hurt. I’ve got stars dancing in my vision now.
“Shut the fuck up!”
“Yes, daddy,” Ciara mutters, making me laugh despite the pain shooting through my head.
The sound of footsteps approaches us, and I can feel Ciara tense up beside me. Something sharp presses against my throat, the smell of stale tobacco wafting to my nose. “Where is he?”
“I don’t know; I can’t see shit!”
Ciara barks a laugh, and I’m struck in the temple with what I can only gather: the handle of a very large knife.
“Corpse’s bride,” I whisper, my head spinning as darkness creeps in around the edges of my vision. I would rock that look. I wonder how Aiden will feel about me turning up at the alter in black and blue.
“What are you laughing at?” This guy has to be from Summerhill. That nasal accent is unmistakable.
“Up da flats!” Ciara yells before everything goes black.
I rouse to the sound of distant sirens and the feeling of rough hands dragging me across a cold, hard surface. My head is pounding, but I manage to open my eyes just enough to catch a glimpse of the tallest of the arsehats above me before slipping back into unconsciousness.
“Wake up!” I hear a voice demanding.
I slowly open my eyes in time to be struck in the face by ice cold water. I sputter and cough, trying to make sense of my surroundings.
Ciara is tied up next to me, her teeth chattering as she struggles against her restraints.
The guy who gave me a rude awakening pulls off his balaclava, revealing a face I doubt his drug addled mother could love.
I mutter, “Fuck me, you’re an ugly bastard,” and receive a punch to the gut in return. As I double over in pain, I realise I’m not going anywhere; cable ties dig into my flesh, keeping me secure to this damn chair.
The guy turns on Ciara and snarls, “Anything to add, bitch?”
“Mam?”
We’ve been called a hell of a lot worse, a hell of a lot more creatively. If he thinks name calling is going to work on us, he clearly hasn’t met our mother.
Two of the shorter lads grab a bucket of ice water and douse us with it, causing me to shriek in response. I hate the cold.
Ciara’s teeth chatter so viscerally that I think she might break them. “Mmm,” she humms through chattering teeth, “anyone g-g-got s-some o-o-onions? I’m ma-aking s-s-soup!”
Oh my God, it hurts. It hurts like the devil’s razor edged cock, but I can’t stop laughing.
The frigid water drips down my back, sending shivers through my body.
Aiden, please hurry up. My nipples are going to fall off from frostbite at this rate.
* * *
AIDEN
The bike flies through the wind, the rain feels like needles against my skin. I can barely see through the downpour, but I make out one of the cars up ahead.
The bike comes to a screeching halt as it skids to a stop.
The idiot driver turns right into the barrel of my gun as I pull the trigger and paint the inside of his windshield red. “Where is she?” I roar, emptying the rest of the clip into the car as I approach on foot. One lad ducks out of the way just in time, spilling into the road.
He’s going to run?
Good.
I love the chase.
Jumping back onto my bike just as he pulls some unfortunate out of their car and speeds off down the street, I rev the engine and take off after him.
In times of panic, people run to safety. There is a good chance he is unknowingly leading me straight to her. “Mikey, have you got your eyes open?”
His voice comes over the earpiece a second later. “Looks like he’s heading in the same direction as his mates; Raven’s waiting up ahead with Jay, sharp left on Cumberland Street; the lads are waiting on Marlborough to see if he turns up there.”
* * *
RAVEN
Jay sucks on his teeth; he’s bored. He’s made that clear several times already. “What are we looking for?”
“A blue Toyota Aqua with a dent on the driver’s side door.
” I dropped Maria off at the hospital and answered AJ’s call the second he found out the direction the van was headed.
They tried to pull the old switcharoo but were sloppy as fuck about it.
We know Katie is around here somewhere; it’s just a matter of figuring out where.
We have to be careful. AJ has lost Moore a few times on the road, but every time he loses the detective, another garda car seems to find him.
Too bad the bastards can’t be this efficient with the men who took AJ’s girl, or he wouldn’t be out here himself—ok, he would, but they could stop the impending bloodbath.
Jay stops drumming his hands on the steering wheel and calls out of his buzzed down window. “You mean like that one?”
The car screams down the road, taking out several wheely bins and, thankfully, no pedestrians as it skids around the corner. I hear AJ’s bike before I see it.
“Christ, he’s not…” My horror filled eyes cannot tear away from the demented bastard rallying up the dirt mound halfway between the two roads.
“He is,” Jay mutters, shifting into gear and speeding after AJ, who’s bike is now airborne. The sound of screeching tyres fills the air as Jay accelerates to catch up with AJ.
“You don’t do that to a Kawasaki!” I yell, watching in disbelief as the spinning tyres bounce off the roof of a slow-moving car and land with a slight wobble at the crossroads. “The suspension on the poor bike is going to be shot after that.”
I’m right on Jay’s tail, avoiding the dirt mount because, if I tried to jump that pile of debris, they’d be scraping me off the pavement for weeks.
I’ve seen AJ pissed before, but this is beyond anything I’ve ever witnessed.
This was NOT the plan. This was an unseen incident that might have just fucked up plans A through Z.
By the way AJ is tear arseing his way through Dublin City Centre, I can tell that he gives no fucks about the consequences of his actions.
He’ll be carted away in state bracelets by the end of this. There is no other way around it.
With any luck, reckless driving is the only thing they’ll get him on.
* * *
KATIE
“Where is he?” Another hammer like fist smashes into my jaw; I’m almost certain two teeth just went flying.
“Up my arse, picking blackberries,” I manage to spit out, blood mixing with saliva. The pain is excruciating; he may have just one-upped my mother. Who’d have thought?
The tip of a dirty kitchen knife gleams in the dim light before it’s pressed against my throat. “You think you’re funny, don’t you?” He growls, his breath hot on my face.
“I’m a scream.” I swallow hard, blood coating my oesophagus to the point where I almost choke on it. “You know what I find fucking hilarious?”
The sting of the knife against my skin intensifies as he leans in closer, his eyes glinting with malice. “Watching you squirm.”
“Knowing that even if you kill me, Aiden is going to gut you like a fish and hang your entrails from the rafters,” I force myself to ignore the invading blade. I meet his gaze with defiance. “And he won’t be quick about it.”
The man’s smirk falters for a moment before he forces a chuckle. He thinks I cannot see the fear in his eyes.
“If they find you,” I add, “they’ll have to piece you back together like a jigsaw just to identify your body.”
As soon as the words pass my lips, I realise I should have kept my stupid mouth shut.
“He likes that, doesn’t he?”