Curtis didn’t move from the spot as he watched Emily walk away. She momentarily glanced over her shoulder when she reached the doors to the apartment building – as though checking he hadn’t followed – but was soon inside and out of sight.
He sighed and turned but then froze on the spot.
Not again.
The darkened figure disappeared around a corner, on the other side of a pedestrian bridge over a stream that snaked into the woods. Was it just a passerby? Curtis didn’t know, but his unease increased nonetheless. He looked around. He didn’t know the area well but was sure he’d find another way back to his car other than through the woods.
But wasn’t he only being paranoid? There was no sign of them now.
He took a deep breath before moving across the bridge back toward the trees. The inky water of the stream rippled below him. His eyes worked overtime, continually returning to the spot in front where the figure had disappeared. But he soon came out the other side without incident.
An intersection lay twenty yards ahead – the main road to take him back to the stadium and beyond. A heavy truck boomed along the cross-street, out of sight, but the vibrations from its movement travelled through the ground. The big beams from its headlights jostled as it passed by from left to right, casting an arc of light toward him, and down an alley to his right that led between two tall buildings.
Was there a figure lurking down there?
Impossible to tell properly because the area was soon bathed in darkness once more.
In fact, it felt even darker than before in the aftermath of the dazzling light. Curtis reached a hand into his pocket, almost subconsciously, grasping for his keys, hoping the sharp metal could act as a makeshift weapon. As though he actually thought he’d need a weapon. As though he had any sort of idea how to use such an improvised weapon in the heat of the moment.
The distraction – the alley, the truck, the keys – had gotten the better of him. He was so focused on the darkness where the shadowy figure may or may not have laid in wait, he didn’t sense or hear the movement behind him until—
Too late.
He’d not even half-turned, had made no progress in bringing his weapon out into the open, before the figure grabbed him. Big, strong hands. One seized his shoulder, the thick fingers squeezing tight, crushing his muscle and bone and sending a wave of pain into his neck and down his arm. The other hand grabbed his wrist, yanking his hand – his now empty hand – free from his pocket. His arm was twisted painfully behind his back, surely only a fraction away from bones breaking.
‘Fight back… I dare you,’ came a growly voice in his ear. He smelled a waft of tobacco and… something else. ‘Move.’
The man pushed Curtis forward, toward the alley. Curtis’s mind burst with fear, with a million questions as to what was happening, what he should do.
He complied.
He shuffled forward, yet the man still pushed Curtis’s arm closer to breaking.
‘My arm!’ he shouted.
‘Will be in pieces if you try anything stupid.’
‘OK, Danny, you can let him go,’ said a female voice from in front of him.
The woman peeled out of the darkness.
‘Remember what I said,’ the man whispered, the new softness to his voice somehow giving it an even more sinister edge.
The next moment he released Curtis and pushed him forward. Curtis spun around, crouched slightly, hands out at the ready like a wrestler in a ring.
He could barely make out anything of the two people in front of him, other than the woman was short and slim, the man short too with a thick frame and a bald head that somehow shone even in the dim light.
‘We don’t want to hurt you,’ the woman said.
‘You already did,’ Curtis replied, sounding as pathetic as he felt.
‘You’re Curtis?’ the woman said. ‘Curtis Delaney?’
‘Y-Yes.’
‘That woman you were speaking to just now. Emily Poulter.’
‘What? I…’ He didn’t know what to say. Was he in trouble for following her? No, he was sure these weren’t police officers.
‘You’re looking for your brother, Finn,’ the woman said.
‘How did you—’
‘We figure, given what you’ve been up to the last two days, that you don’t know where he is either.’
‘You’ve been following me? But…’ The figure he’d seen in Clemson. The presence he’d sensed more than once today. So it hadn’t all been in his head. ‘Why?’
‘Why?’ the woman said, her voice sterner now. ‘Because I know what your brother did two days ago. And I’m looking for him too.’