'Oi, lads!'
A low voice I recognize cuts through the darkness on the other side of the fence. A torchflashlightshines toward us, pointing at a hole where the fence has been freshly cut.
Mav urges me through first, and I get to the other side and stand up, my knees soggy from the wet ground. I hear the sound of a car door opening, and I'm pushed inside. I struggle at first, but then I feel Blake behind me, and Mav gets in on the other side. Shade is in the front, and the car begins to move slowly, as if we aren’t fleeing.
I wonder who the fourth person is. The driver.
'All went according to plan then, eh?' the man asks.
'Douglas?' I mutter, astonished.
'Aye, lass.'
'What are you doing here? They said you were gone.'
'I’m still local. Your mates met me in the pub in the village. We got to talking, and, well, I thought I might be able to help…and maybe get one over on that cunt, Stoke, as well. Glad they got you out of that bloody hellhole.'
He doesn't say anything more. When we roll up to the village, a place I've heard about but never seen, we keep going.
The car drives through what sounds like a river going across the road and then Douglas puts his foot down.
'Where are we going?' I ask.
'London City Airport,' Blake says, his arms around me.Mav’s are as well. Shade's hand comes back to rest on my knee, and I clasp it.
'Turn the heat up, would you?' Shade says, feeling how cold I still am.
I’m not sure what to do, or what to say, still half afraid that I’ve cracked up in the cell downstairs, or that maybe they drugged me with something that’s causing hallucinations. So, I close my eyes and lean my head back. I must fall asleep for a while because, when I wake up, there's a lot more light around us and more cars on the road, but the clock on the dash says that it’s past midnight, so there aren’t enough drivers out to slow us down.
'Are we in London?' I ask.
'Not far now,' Douglas says with a nod. 'Just coming into Ilford.'
We go down a couple more roads and Shade points to a high security gate.
Douglas stops at it and rolls down the window. Shade passes the security guard a card with a black symbol on it.
'Where’d you get that?' I ask.
He looks back at me with a small smile. 'Sauvage? Who else?'
'Sauvage gave you a plane to come get me?' I ask.
'Yeah. We looked for you.'
'I don’t understand,' I whisper. ‘I only left you the voicemail a couple of days ago. How did you get me out so fast?’
‘That was four days ago.’ Shade cocks a brow. 'But we were already on our way when you called.’
‘How did you find me?’
‘It was actually Laurie,’ Blake mutters with a shake of his head, ‘if you can believe it.'
‘Laurie?' I say, unable to keep the shock out of my voice. 'How did she know where I was?'
'She didn’t. But she heard Joseph Banderville talking on the phone about a guy named Heath.' He puts the name in air quotes. 'We thought that might mean that someone had taken you back toThe Heath. There were no other leads, so we came here hoping we were right.’
I take in their words. So, it wasn’t just John who had me taken. Both John and him were in on it together. That must be why I saw Joseph that day when he pretended to be a doctor like Stoke.
