––––––––
In the end Ava managed to break one nose and two fingers, but it wasn’t enough to keep the largest thug from picking her up and slinging her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. She hit his ear, his neck, his back - anything and everything within arm’s reach. But he merely grunted and swung her hard into a brick wall with a growled promise of “more where that came from if she didn’t knock it off”.
He set her on her feet when they reached one of the more crowded streets but kept an uncomfortably tight grip on her wrists, yanking them up to the small of her back until she winced in pain.
The rag came when she tried calling for help. A foolish mistake on her part, for other than few sidelong glances no one attempted to intervene. The sad truth of it was witnessing a woman being dragged through St. Giles was not an uncommon occurrence and it was a rare person who would risk their neck for another, especially if it meant pitting themselves against the likes of such formidable foes as Collinsworth’s henchmen.
“Never though’ we’d find ye, did ye?” he gloated now, conveniently forgetting that for nearly a week she’d managed to evade them. Were it not for her return to St. Giles she would be evading them still, a decision she could now admit had been rather poor and a tad impulsive. “No one escapes the likes of me.” Digging his fingers into her skin until he grinded against bone, Ava’s captor shoved her across the street towards a brick townhouse. The toe of her boot caught on a loose stone and she stumbled, nearly falling onto her knees before he hauled her upright.
“Watch yerself,” he snarled in her ear. His breath stank of garlic and rot and Ava nearly gagged from the overwhelming stench of it. She tried to speak around the gag, but all she managed were a few unintelligible “hrmmm’s!” which he seemed to find vastly amusing.
Chortling, he propelled her up a set of narrow steps leading up to the brick townhouse and pounded on the door. It rattled on its hinges, in as poor a state of disrepair as the rest of the house. Half the windows were boarded up. The other half were hidden behind thick curtains, making it impossible to see in - or, Ava thought as the first true swell of panic rose inside of her, for anyone to see out.
She didn’t want to die here in this dark, dingy place. Not when she’d finally found something - make that someone - to live for. She began to struggle in earnest, even considered leaping off the top step to the ground below, but her captor gave her a good, hard shake that left her dazed and dizzy before he shoved the door open with one arm and hauled her through it with the other.
The door slammed shut behind them, the sound of it ringing in Ava’s ears as she struggled to get her surroundings. They’d entered a poorly lit parlor entirely devoid of furniture save a single high backed wooden chair sitting ominously in the very middle of the room. Floorboards creaked in protest as Ava was pushed across the parlor and into the chair. Her muffled shriek of pain pushed against the gag when her arms were lifted past her shoulder blades and slipped over the back of the chair, effectively pinning her in place. She could move her feet but not her head, for even the smallest movement of her upper torso sent excruciating waves of agony radiating down her slender arms.
Black dots danced across her line of vision. She blinked them back, refusing to succumb to a state that would leave her completely defenseless. Behind her she heard the shuffle of footsteps and a stranger’s raspy voice. He spoke too softly for her to hear, but the raised tone at the end of the sentence indicated a question. A question that was answered by someone who wasn’t a stranger.
Ava’s eyes widened in shock, then narrowed in betrayal. No. It couldn’t be. Except she knew that voice. She knew that voice. Just as she knew the man behind it.
Still she willed herself to be mistaken. She grinded her teeth until her jaw ached and prayed that she was wrong. Because it couldn’t be. It couldn’t be. She flinched when she felt a hand graze the nape of her neck, but a second later the foul tasting rag that had been stuffed between her lips was pulled gently away. She tried to speak, but her mouth was too dry to form words. And then even if she’d wanted to she wouldn’t have been able to talk, for the man who had untied the rag stepped in front of her chair... and she found herself staring straight into the achingly familiar gray eyes of Heath Mason.