“Or there’s a chance I could go bungee jumping and be perfectly fine.”
“Please don’t go bungee jumping,” he says.
“Alright, I won’t. But I am going to discharge myself. Maybe we can take along a pet surgeon. Do you have anybody around who would like to earn a hundred thousand dollars for three days of being on call to patch me back up if necessary?”
The doctor stares at me. “Are you serious?”
“There’s nothing illegal about employing a surgeon as far as I am aware.”
“There’s Brown. He used to be a field medic. He might be interested in being shot at for a sizable sum of danger money,” the doctor says. For a man who looks serious and staid, he’s actually what Luke would call quite chill.
We depart the hospital forty minutes later with Dr. Brown, who used to provide field medic services to the Marines, which means he’s very used to patching up all kinds of nasty wounds. My stomach hurts like hell. I’d rather die than admit that.
“You’re cold sweating,” Doc Brown says. He’s got one of those round, well-meaning faces, light brown eyes, and a dirty blond mustache to match his hair. He’s probably Luke’s age, and he has a solid presence. I like him. He feels trustworthy.
“Yeah,” I say. “Never mind.”
“Let me top you up,” he says, producing a small bag with needles and vials in it. I have a flashback to the last time outside the hospital that someone gave me a jab. It was Ella. I thought I could kill her at the time. Now, I’d die for her.
CHAPTER 18
Aiden
We are on a plane over the Atlantic Ocean, and I have never felt less at ease as I do right now.
I should have never let her leave New Zealand without me. I should have put her in restraints the moment I found her, gagged her, and brought her back home against her will. My foolish gambit of letting her come to some kind of emotional place of acceptance has failed. Now she is in the hands of someone even I fear. That is saying a very great deal.
She will not see his cruelty coming. He will keep her in a state of blissful ignorance until it is too late, and then what he does to her will be so terrible we will never be able to get it out of our minds.
Leo and the doctor are in two seats at the back of the cabin. I know Leo should not be out of the hospital, but his presence was requested.
Luke is seeking reassurance via the medium of questioning me.
“We’re just going to go and deliver ourselves to Mr. Red, are we? Hope he doesn’t paint the walls of his home with our blood in retaliation for what we did to BP?”
“We don’t know that he wants to hurt us.”
“He started with a kidnapping. That’s not a great sign,” he points out. “And someone attempted to hold us hostage.”
“Luke, do you think I have any intention of letting anybody take what is mine, I mean, ours, and threaten us with it after we lost Teddy?”
I ask the question in a tone that is relatively balanced, but I think he hears the cold rage under it fairly well because he shakes his head emphatically.
“No,” he says. “I don’t think you will.”
“We are going to go and see this man, and we are going to ask nicely for Ella to be returned, and if she is not, then the streets of London will run red. Is that clear enough for you?”
Luke smiles and nods. “It is,” he says.
Our plane lands on a private runway at Heathrow. A wheelchair transports Leo down the stairs. He hates it, but the doctor doesn’t want him walking unless he absolutely has to.
The three of us make our way to a modified car. It has enough space in the back for Leo’s wheelchair. He’s practically seething with rage as he’s pushed about. He wants to get up and raise hell, but he can’t.
I have to focus on what is about to happen. We have all been summoned, but only one of us is really required here. Luke andLeo know Mr. Red by reputation. I have had more personal dealings with him. I know him in ways I hope they never will.
London is a pretty and impressive city to drive through. So much history, so many people. There are throngs of humanity here all hoping to drink in the ambiance and experience the city in all its richness.
I don’t like it. I don’t like the damp that hangs about the old stone, or the menace I sense in the air. This is a city in which power has been brokered for generations. The Romans were here for over three hundred and fifty years. It was their capital. I don’t like to give into the metaphysical too deeply, but this is a place in a way many places are not.
