Chapter Twenty-Five

Lying flat on his stomach, peering through the small space in the back basement window that wasn’t blacked out, Steve had seen enough. He had to find a way into the place. Now! Assuming he could work out how the bloody hell to get to his feet, that was. Cursing his protesting spine and the pain that shot straight down his leg, he rolled over and then, wincing, pulled himself to sitting. Dammit, he wasn’t cut out for this any more, not since that bastard Sullivan had shot him. You’re just going to have to grin and bear it though, Ingram, he told himself, grimacing as he heaved himself up. Inside that building was the gun-wielding psychopathic daughter of a psychopath, a bloke built like a brick shithouse, and Matthew, who looked like death and who was now trying to save the life of his daughter.

Steve needed help fast. The way Taylor Sullivan was swinging that gun around uniforms crawling all over the show might just mean it would go off, Matthew or little Mia on the receiving end, but there was simply no other choice. They needed marksmen, someone who could take the bastards out the second an opportunity presented itself. Meanwhile, he had to get inside and do whatever he could until they got here if things went awry. Moving far away enough to make his call without being overheard, he surveyed the back of the premises, noting another basement window on the opposite side of the fire exit. The window he’d managed to get a look through was obviously a no go with Connor Preston apparently babysitting in there. If the other window didn’t give, Steve hadn’t a bloody clue what his next move would be, but he had to try to gain access somehow.

Pulling out his phone, he selected Davies’ number. He was just about to press call when he felt the unmistakeable cold steel of a gun press against the base of his neck.

‘Don’t!’ a female voice warned him.

Shit! Steve gulped back hard, immediately feeling the impact of the bullet all over again, like a sledgehammer slamming into him. The odd tingling, surging throughout his entire body. The warm sensation as his blood had flowed from the open wound in his torso. The use of his legs, gone in an instant.

‘The phone,’ she said, pushing the barrel further into his neck as Steve relived his worst nightmare. ‘Drop it.’

His thumb hovering shakily over the keypad, Steve looked down at it, and then, steeling himself for whatever was to come next, did as she said.

‘Crush it,’ she growled as it landed in front of him, her voice low and menacing.

Steve hesitated, knowing that to do that would be to destroy any chance of him being tracked.

She pressed the gun closer. ‘Do it!’

Not daring to nod, lest the bloody gun go off, Steve lifted his foot and slammed the heel of it down.

‘Again,’ she snarled.

Thorough bitch, wasn’t she? Bracing himself, praying his dodgy leg didn’t cause him to fall over and give the cow an excuse to decorate the ground with him, Steve repeated the procedure, cursing himself silently as he did. He should have pressed call. This delightful spawn of her equally delightful father was probably going to blast his brains out anyway. He should have connected the call.

‘That’s better,’ she said, sounding marginally appeased. ‘Now, you’re going to turn around and walk back towards the building, very slowly. One twitch in the wrong direction and the sewer rats will be feeding off you for weeks. Comprendre?’

‘I think I’ve got the drift, yes.’ Steve gave her an answer, assuming she needed one from the way she gave his neck another vicious jab.

‘Move,’ she said, nudging him in the desired direction and shadowing him as he turned. ‘Hands where I can see them. No smart business. Not that you are that smart, poking your stupid moronic face up against the window. Did you honestly think I wouldn’t see you? Or hear you?’

She kept talking as they walked, grating seriously on Steve’s jagged nerves.

‘Not exactly light on our feet, are we, with that stupid spastic limp of yours?’

Steve smiled wryly at that, and repressed an urge to turn and shove the gun so hard down her throat it would reappear where the sun didn’t shine.

‘Stop,’ she instructed as they reached the fire escape door. ‘Now open it,’ she said, stepping a safe distance back from him.

Finding it still slightly ajar from when the bitch from hell had obviously emerged, Steve did as she ordered, and prayed he might still be of some use to Matthew once inside.

Stepping through the door, though, Steve found the metal staircase beyond it looming towards him faster than he’d expected, thanks to a violent shove from behind.

Shit! His vision fading to white as his head cracked against the last step, Steve fought to stay conscious. Attempting to spit the blood and crap from his mouth, his final thought as the deranged woman looming over him raised the gun high and smashed it down against his skull was that he really should have placed that call.

Matthew waited for Mia to take another shallow breath in, then, praying in earnest, he simultaneously pressed the canister down. Please breathe, baby. Please … Holding his own breath, he studied her pale face intently, and then closed his eyes and pressed his forehead to hers when her breathing slowed, becoming deeper, slower, as she dragged life-giving air into her small lungs.

‘Is she all right?’ Preston asked warily, after a second.

Matthew didn’t answer. Easing back a fraction instead, he scanned his baby’s face again, noting, as he did every time he looked at her, how beautiful she was, how completely perfect this little replica of his wife was, with her gorgeous fiery hair, her softly curled eyelashes, delicate features and tiny cupid lips, which were no longer tinged blue. Matthew offered up another prayer, this time of gratitude.

‘Is she breathing?’ Preston’s voice was a hoarse whisper. He was scared. Not nearly as terrified as Matthew was. He had to get her out. Whatever they wanted, he had to make them see that they had it. They didn’t need to torture him by torturing this child. Surely, they must know he’d do anything for her?

Planting a soft kiss on her forehead, he brushed Mia’s sweat-dampened ringlets from her face, wiped his tears from her cheeks, and nodded tightly. ‘She needs to go to a hospital,’ he said, his own voice ragged with the effort of trying to control his heartbreak.

‘Not happening,’ Preston said, trying for adamant. He wasn’t confident, though. He knew he was deep in the shit and he was floundering, hoping that Taylor Sullivan would pull him out. ‘You need to sign the confession and then …’ Preston stopped and furrowed his brow, apparently at a loss as to what happened next.

‘And then?’ Matthew asked, easing his daughter closer as she stirred in his arms. ‘And then what Connor? She’s going to let me go? Let Mia go? The police will pick me up, lock me up, and you two waltz off into the sunset hand in hand, happily ever after?’

The furrow in Preston’s brow only deepened.

‘Is that what you think’s going to happen, Connor?’

‘I’m not going to prison.’ Preston’s gaze shot to his. ‘I didn’t do anything.’

Apart from allow himself to be coerced by a deranged woman, Matthew was pretty sure that he hadn’t. ‘Nor did I, Connor,’ he assured him quietly.

At which Preston narrowed his eyes. ‘That’s crap. Someone killed that girl. And it sure as hell wasn’t me.’ Jabbing a finger at his own chest, he stared at Matthew accusingly.

Matthew nodded, and simply let it hang.

‘You’re twisting things around, that’s what,’ Preston jabbered on, taking two paces to the side and back. ‘They have my DNA and you’re claiming it was me who killed her and it wasn’t! It was you. Jasmine said you’d point the finger at me.’

‘Taylor,’ Matthew calmly corrected him.

Looking flustered, embarrassed almost, that he might have fallen for her obvious lies, Preston took a step in the other direction, and back. ‘I didn’t do anything,’ he repeated, looking as if he might burst into tears.

Matthew could probably take him, here, now, if not for Mia. Cautioning himself not to take any risks that might endanger her further, he stilled his desire to beat some sense into the man. For what he’d done to Mia, for being complicit in allowing this to happen to his family.

‘If I didn’t do it and you didn’t …’ Matthew left him to ponder that too.

‘Bullshit,’ Preston said, at length, dragging a hand under his nose.

‘Why is it, Connor? Don’t you think she’s capable?’ Matthew pushed it. He was balancing on a knife-edge, he knew it. Had no idea what Preston was capable of. What he wanted him to be, though, was uncertain. Suspicious of Taylor Sullivan’s motives and worried about his own pathetic skin once this was all over. ‘Do you think allowing anything to happen to this little girl will help your case, Connor?’ he asked him, noting the beads of sweat on the man’s upper lip. ‘Because it won’t. Trust me, the worst kind of punishment is meted out to child killers.’

Matthew kept his tone quiet, hoping that Mia couldn’t hear. That the sadistic bitch, who was as likely to let them go unharmed as she was to sprout wings, couldn’t. Glancing quickly towards the closed door, he forged on. ‘What else does she want, Connor? This other thing, what the hell is it?’

‘I don’t know, do I?’ Connor splayed his hands helplessly.

‘For Christ’s sake, Connor, you need to tell me,’ Matthew appealed to him, ready to beg. ‘I need to make sure my child is—’

‘Daddy?’

Feeling his daughter’s fingers brush his arm, Matthew stopped. ‘Hey, baby.’ He smiled down at her, trying to inject some normalcy into his voice. ‘How’s my little munchkin, hey?’

‘No like, Daddy.’ Mia studied him, a puzzled furrow in her little forehead, her rich velvet brown eyes still hazy and dazed as she uncertainly searched his. She needed him to fix this. Immediately seeing Lily’s confused eyes silently begging him to make her pain go away, Matthew’s chest tightened.

‘I want to go home, Daddy,’ Mia said, surprising Matthew with a whole sentence and cracking his heart wide open all over again.

‘We will. Soon, sweetheart,’ he promised, a promise he intended to deliver, whatever it took. He’d take the shot gladly, as long as he could kill Taylor Sullivan going down.

On cue, the woman herself came through the door. ‘Well, well, isn’t this a nice little family scene?’ she said, looking Matthew over icily. Also looking cocksure, he noted. Definitely a chip off the old block. With her cropped hair, ripped jeans, Dr Martens on her feet and that fucking gun propped on her shoulder, she looked like she’d stepped straight out of a vigilante movie. Had she worked on her ‘Don’t mess with me’ image, he wondered? Whatever, knowing exactly what she was capable of, he had no doubt she intended to live up to it.

‘Time for you to leave her,’ she said unemotionally.

Matthew locked eyes with hers. ‘No way,’ he stated emphatically.

She nodded. Obviously, it was what she’d expected him to say. ‘You can either hand her over now, without any fuss, or we’ll take her. Your choice, Adams.’

Meaning she wouldn’t hesitate to use whatever force she deemed necessary. Glancing over at Preston, whose belligerent expression told him he was still ready to believe her version of events, Matthew knew he had no choice. To resist would be to distress Mia further. Looking disgustedly back to Taylor, Matthew drew in a breath and acquiesced with a short nod.

‘Hand her to Connor,’ she said, a glint of victory in her merciless black eyes. ‘Don’t worry, he’s child friendly,’ she added glibly. ‘She wouldn’t still be here if he wasn’t.’

Preston stepped forwards, his stony expression faltering for a second, as Matthew handed his daughter to him. Watching the man lift her higher in his arms, gently at least, Matthew worked at containing his screaming emotions. He felt as if his vital organs had been ripped out. She was still lethargic, her limbs floppy from the drugs that sick bitch had pumped into her system, her face tearstained and bewildered. He would kill this woman, Matthew vowed. And there would definitely be no compassion, no second’s hesitation while he struggled with his conscience. Given a chance he would take it, and kill her as calculatedly and dispassionately as she’d taken his daughter.

‘Daddy!’ Realising what was happening, Mia’s face crumpled. ‘Want Daddy,’ she screamed, stretching her arms towards him, as Matthew got to his feet.

‘I’m coming straight back, Mia,’ Matthew lied, his gut twisting violently, as Preston moved away from him.

‘Stay,’ the bitch warned him, as Matthew instinctively took a step towards Mia. ‘Or she watches.’ She levelled the gun, and Matthew froze.

Mia was sobbing in earnest now, stretching a hand over Preston’s shoulder, as he turned his back and made some clumsy attempt to placate her. She wouldn’t be placated. Did the man honestly think promises of chocolate would subdue her, take away the sheer terror running through her? Matthew’s fury escalated, along with his frustration at his own pathetic powerlessness. He could do nothing. Nothing but watch as his daughter’s little heart broke. How long would it be before the sobs turned to chokes? What then? What if the asthma kicked off all over again?

‘I’m … getting the car, Mia,’ he said, trying to disguise the choking desperation in his voice. ‘I’ll be back soon.’

‘Now, Adams,’ Taylor instructed, backing towards the door, the gun, the only thing stopping Matthew doing something he’d never imagined himself capable of, poised and ready.

Should he call her bluff? Matthew debated as he walked towards her. Dragging a hand over his neck, hopelessly attempting to ignore his daughter’s distress, he considered it seriously, and then, Natalie’s lifeless form, the emptiness in her eyes, flashing through his mind, he immediately dismissed it.

‘That way,’ she said once he reached her, gesturing him through the door and back towards the torture chamber she’d fashioned especially for him. ‘And, incidentally, if you look at me like you did just now again, like I’m a piece of dog shit you just stepped in, it will be your darling little girl’s head I blow off. Comprendre?’

A sense of déjà vu washing over him once more, Matthew felt bile rise afresh in his throat. Sullivan. She talked like him, reasoned like him. She was a female reincarnation of the bastard. Narrowing his eyes, he searched her face, looking for some small shred of humanity.

‘Why are you doing this?’ he asked her. His daughter’s cries were killing him. Unaffected though she obviously was, surely she must know it. ‘Why can’t you just tell me what you want?’

‘Funnily enough, I was just about to. Spooky that, don’t y’think? I reckon you must be a detective, Adams,’ she drawled amusedly, sounding more and more like her psychotic father every time she opened her vile mouth. ‘Being the caring sort that I am, though, I didn’t think you’d want your little “munchkin” around to witness events.’

Matthew shook his head. ‘You’re completely insane, you know that?’ he said, disbelieving.

‘Correct.’ She smiled flatly and then loosened one hand from her gun to land him another stinging slap to his face. ‘Avert the judgemental gaze, copper,’ she snarled, as Matthew fought very hard not to react. ‘You’re the one on trial here. And guess what, you’ve been found guilty. Now move.’