‘Turn around,’ Donovan told me.
I turned and stared at him, my eyes flicking to Sam.
An intense wash of desperate energy coursed through me. Adrenaline. Cortisol. My fight-or-flight response had kicked in but I had nowhere to flee to and no way to fight. The fight was inside me, tearing me apart.
Sam was holding himself rigidly still, clinging on to Donovan’s forearm to prevent himself from falling because his upper body was tipped so far backwards from his hips.
His eyes were endlessly darting between us, wild and pleading.
‘Go into the kitchen,’ Donovan said.
Sam’s cheeks quivered. Sweat sprang from his face and brow. His mouth was making fast plosive sounds from behind Donovan’s hand.
‘Let him go.’
‘The kitchen,’ Donovan said. ‘Now.’
I shook my head at Sam – a wordless apology – and started to move, crabbing sideways and descending the steps down into the sunken kitchen area.
‘Sit on one of those stools.’
In the periphery of my vision I could see the open door to the basement, but I made sure not to look at it directly as I hurried by the end of the kitchen island. The last thing I wanted was to draw Donovan’s attention to it or have him think of forcing us down there.
‘Sit.’
I lowered myself onto the same wooden stool I’d perched on earlier when he’d gone upstairs with Bethany. It felt hard and unyielding underneath me.
My hands found their way to the granite countertop. I spread my fingers. They were tacky with perspiration and so alive with nervous energy that the little finger on my right hand flickered of its own accord.
‘You have to let him go now,’ I said. ‘Please. He can’t breathe.’
He watched me for a second more, a strange curiosity lighting his eyes, then he opened his arms and stepped back as Sam dropped to the ground.
Sam gasped and heaved. His back arched. He immediately coughed and hacked and clambered onto his hands and knees, spit dribbling from his lips, his chest and lungs quivering and his throat making a horrid dry retching noise.
Donovan clutched a hand against the wound to his side, grimacing, then swiped the back of his glove across his mouth, a stripe of blood marking his cheek.
After taking another moment to brace himself, he moved towards the front door and used his duplicate keys to lock the deadlock and seal us inside. He then returned the keys to the right hip pocket of his trousers before bending low with a gruff exhalation of agonized pain and rapidly patting down Sam’s clothes until he found and removed his mobile phone.
Once he’d confiscated it, he hauled Sam up by the scruff of his shirt, dragging him forwards as Sam scrambled to get his footing until they reached the top of the steps leading into the kitchen and Donovan tossed Sam down them.
Sam twisted and hit the floor on his flank, skidding sideways, then sprang to his feet and hobbled backwards away from Donovan towards the bare brick wall behind me on my left.
From the corner of my eye I could see him heaving air with one hand on his chest and his other hand feeling for his throat, massaging the bruises and marks on his skin as he contemplated Donovan with fear-filled eyes.
Donovan monitored him coolly, clamping his hand to his side again and labouring down the steps to move to the opposite side of the kitchen island from me, then turning awkwardly towards the units running along the wall.
With one quick movement he opened the door of the microwave.
I could see my mobile phone inside and what I guessed was Bethany’s phone, too.
The plastic casing of both phones was bubbled and pocked.
A terrible odour of burnt chemicals wafted out.
Donovan tossed Sam’s phone in, slammed the door shut, prodded buttons on the front. They blipped and binged, and then he punched one final button and the microwave whirred to life.
As he turned back to face us, his features contorted in discomfort, our phones flickered and glitched inside the microwave behind him.
There was a fizzing pop. A tendril of smoke.
‘Word of advice.’ He was talking through his pain. ‘Don’t ever heat a phone for more than a minute. Ten seconds is normally enough to kill the signal. We wouldn’t want to start a fire now, would we?’
The microwave binged a final time and went dark aside from a brief blue fizz from inside.
He then snatched open a drawer on the island unit across from me.
A thunk and a clatter and he removed a large hatchet knife that he slapped down sideways on the countertop.
I recoiled inwardly.
The knife had a short rubber handle and a large rectangular cutting blade. It wasn’t a utensil we used very often, which was why it had been buried deep in the drawer where the duct tape had been. Sam had purchased the knife on a whim during a trip to a department store several months earlier. He’d prepared a couple of meat dishes with it and after that it had stayed in the drawer ever since.
Until now.
I tried not to look as scared as I felt.
But it was hard.
I knew the blade was fiendishly sharp. From the way Donovan clutched his side and tilted the blade to the light with a quick, appraising gaze, it was clear he understood that, too.
I looked up at him slowly.
I had no idea how much blood he’d lost but he appeared to be in a very bad way. He looked drained and sickly, his face bloodless and drawn, his neck gleaming with sweat. Blood was seeping through the tea towel he’d taped to his side, dripping in slow splotches onto the floor. But something was driving him on. He wasn’t going to relent or let us go.
I withdrew my hands from the countertop very carefully and cupped them together on my lap.
Next to me, Sam shuddered as if he’d been doused by an icy shower, then murmured something that sounded like a silent prayer as he bumped up against the exposed brickwork behind him. His shirt was untucked and parted where several buttons had come loose. His skinny chinos had slipped downwards, exposing the tops of his boxer shorts. His hair was matted and sticking up in clumps, his lips slick with saliva.
‘Why are you here?’ he asked Donovan. ‘What do you want?’
But Donovan didn’t answer him. He simply lifted the hatchet knife and then wrinkled his nose against a fresh jab of pain as he inspected the wound in his side.
‘Didn’t have to stab me, Lucy. This really smarts.’
Not enough.
I stole a glance at the front door, listening for the sirens that were coming, the squeal of brakes, the thump of car doors.
‘What are you going to do when the police get here?’ I asked him.
Donovan paused, studying me with feigned surprise.
‘Sam?’ He waved the blade of the knife at him. ‘Do you want to explain or should I?’