He'll come through

Her head didn’t just hurt, it throbbed like hell. Lilah fought to open her eyes and felt as though she were blinded. In stages she opened first the easy right eyelid, then the heavy non-functional left one. She was slumped against Quinn, unless there was another huge wall of muscle in the same room. His head was on hers, and from the regular breath sounds, she figured he was asleep, though knowing that he was some sort of adult Boy Scout, he would have one eye open.  

“Quinn?” she wriggled under him and he lifted his head from hers.  

“You ok Blondie? I’m so glad you’re awake!” the relief on his face was genuine and her anger immediately softened.  

The room was dark; a single shaft of moonlight cutting across the room from the window in front of them, despite that she could still make out his features.  

“I was worried girl; you’ve been out of it for ages.”  

“What time is it?” she tried to move, every inch of her body hurt she wanted to stretch her arms, her legs, never before had she had such a desire to just stand up. She swore if she got through this she’d not forget how restriction like this felt, that she’d never take her freedom both physical and mental for granted.  

He shrugged, “I think it was about midnight when I fell asleep, though that wasn’t long ago.”  

She dreaded asking questions as the possible answers scared her, but she had to know if they were getting out of here. “Have they been back? Is Gavin finding the money?! "  

He shook his head slowly, “seems lover boy is either jealous of you being with a man, or doesn’t give a shit!”   She at least had the decency to blush at his quip, but then the defence was there again, “he knows I’d be alone, he probably doesn’t believe it’s me. I expect they’ll make me talk to him tomorrow to make sure.”  

Quinn shook his head, “if he had the slightest thought that you were kidnapped here, being held hostage in a place where people are recovering from such unrest, where it's dog eat dog, he’d NEVER leave you to them, there’d be no time for doubt. He should be here, now, sorting this.”  

Lilah sighed, “You don’t know anything about him....” even she knew this was a weak line of defence.  

“Listen to yourself Delilah! We are tied to bloody chairs in the middle of nowhere because your prick boyfriend boss won’t pay a ransom because he’s probably jealous of you being with another man! If he loves you so much, where is he? Where are the helicopters? The police? The SAS? Someone, anyone!! You are so out of touch.”  

They sat in silence for a while, arguing was pointless, but Quinn was right, if he antagonised her she seemed to pull herself together, angry was much better to handle than upset.  

“What are you doing?” she asked as she finally noticed he was wriggling, constantly.  

“If we’re going to get out of here then we need to at least get free. There’s only one guy here I think, the others have driven off. Our only chance to make a move is if there’s only one man here, we can try to overpower him. I just need to get these bloody ropes off my wrists.”  

She watched as he wriggled and writhed, “so if you get the rope off what then?”  

He paused and in a show of exasperation blew his hair out of his eyes, “recce the room, look for a weapon, we need a vehicle, a means of escape....”  

Then with a grunt he actually felt the ropes at his wrist give after numerous hours of friction against the chair. Bringing his arms around, he tentatively wriggled his shoulders.  

“How did you....” he stopped her exclamation with a finger to her lips. She gasped at the touch, it seemed so surreal.  

“What happens next is vital. There was only one man left here earlier, and if that’s the case we can make a run for it. I can overpower one, but if there’s no car, no vehicle we can’t make it at night, it gets too cold...we’re miles from anywhere.”  

“I’ll go however you say, if we walk then that’s ok, I’ll manage. It won’t be too cold, I promise.”  

Pausing he smiled at her bravery again, she meant what she said. Reaching down he untied his leg ropes then silently tiptoed to the window. Glancing out he sighed, then scoped the rest of the room, looking for weapons, tools, anything he could use. These guys weren’t the best he’d ever encountered, but they were still dangerous.   Finding a rusty knife under some sacking in the corner he slid it into a leg pocket. Back at the chairs he retied is leg ropes to the chair so that if he had to sit down he could slip his feet into the loops and appear to be restrained. Surprise was the only element he had.  

Then he bent to untie her. First her hands, then he helped her loosen her shoulders, admiring the way she grimaced in pain yet didn’t complain. Then he untied her legs.  

To Lilah it was like heaven, just being able to stand, take weight on her legs, stand and move. He repeated the same knots with her ropes and showed her how to slide her feet in.  

“We need to find out how many there are. If there’s only one then it’s game time, ok? There’s one car outside, the one they brought me in. We can take that.”  

The thought of returning to her seat for even a minute was abhorrent, she wanted to take an axe to it and smash it into a million pieces. Noting her look of disgust he reached out and squeezed her hand.  

“We need to play the game Delilah, I know it’s hard but please, just try.”  

With a groan she sat back down, slipped her feet into the rope rings and took her hands behind her back despite the protests from her stiff shoulders. When she looked across Quinn had done the same.  

“Arghhhh!” he screeched at full volume, his voice a strangled eerie noise. Her eyes widened with shock and she was glad that she knew this was all staged.  

The door burst opened and a man stood there. “What?” he shouted before striding across the room.  

He was the only one; Quinn glanced past him into the poorly lit adjacent room and saw there was no one else there. Perfect. He groaned and moaned, writhing his head from side to side. The man was armed; he needed him close to get his one shot at this.  

As the short stocky man stooped to reach for Quinn’s shoulder trying to assess what was happening, Quinn swung an arm and lashed out catching him flush on the side of the head. The gunman was completely unprepared, he’d entered the room thinking that they were both restrained, the move caught him completely off guard and he staggered. The gun clattered to the floor and the man followed closely behind. Before the man had chance to realise why he’d fallen, Quinn had lashed his hands together with rope and secured him to a chair leg.  

He tried to question the man in his poor Arabic reverting to French and then English, but he responded to nothing. Searching his pockets he couldn’t find any keys, he’d have to hotwire the car. Once he was happy that the man was secure, he took the gun and held a hand out to Lilah, she was shaking, she’d anticipated that being a lot more dramatic and it was almost anticlimactic, taking a deep breath she followed Quinn into the second room. A TV blasted in the corner, and there was a small cupboard and a chair. Ransacking the cupboard he placed the half a dozen bottles of water and packets of some form of crackers into a cloth sack then led her out to the car.   It took less than a minute for him to start the engine, and Lilah didn’t breathe until the car started to move.  

“I’m presuming that north is a good move, that’s likely the coast. I’ve got some contacts. I just don’t know how far we need to go and how much fuel we have!” He scanned the night sky anxiously, “I just need some form of reference point!”  

“Even a few miles away from there seems like a saving grace.”  

He nodded, “but this car’s really recognisable so we’re best off ditching it. The last thing we want is to drive into the path of the other three.”  

“Why did they leave only one to guard us? That seems stupid even to my untrained mind.”  

He pulled onto the road and hit the gas hard flooring the vehicle into the dust, “you’re very right Blondie, it’s a mystery really. I think this is a personal thing. Since the unrest in this country there have been lot of attacks on foreigners, but they left those young boys on the bus. They wanted you, and I think lover boy is the key. He’s up to something, and we won’t know why this happened until we get to the bottom of that.”  

She shook her head, “you’re wrong about Gavin Quinn, he’s a nice guy, a good man. He would do anything he could to help me.”  

He turned so sharply to look at her that he almost pulled the car off the road, “you don’t get it do you? He’s done nothing. He could’ve dealt with this, I’m sure of that! Instead he’s left us to our own devices.”  

She squared up to him, “he works for a charity, spends his time helping people whose lives have been desecrated by disasters, how can you suggest that this is his fault?”  

He turned his eyes back to the poor quality road, their sore and stiff joints feeling every bump and ditch, “you are SO gullible Blondie! But that comes from only seeing one side of every argument! There are so many people who use political unrest like this to their own advantage. You have NO idea!”  

“If I’m gullible it’s because I see the good in people, but even I’m struggling to see the good in you!”   Quinn huffed loudly, “after all I’ve done for you? I’m the bad guy? Well that figures. They say love is blind and a few screws with your boss seem to have given you rose tinted glasses! Maybe that’s why he did it! Sleep with you and you’ll only ever see the good side of him! A controlling tactic I’ve never thought of!”   Lilah slumped into her seat relaxing then grimacing at the jolt of pain the next pothole caused. “You are despicable Quinn, do you know that? And a bloody bully.”  

Laughing he shook his head, “and you are far too innocent for your own good.”  

With a scowl she turned to look out into the night, anything was better than this pigheaded man. The drive continued in silence, Quinn straining to make out anything on the horizon, but it was a dark night. Suddenly he started to mutter under his breath, a set of headlights were coming towards them.  

“Who is it?” she breathed, “do you think it’s them?”  

He nodded, “this is a dead end road, the farm is the only place it leads I think. So the only car coming this way would be going there. If I’d seen them sooner I could’ve turned the lights off and pulled off the road, it’s dark enough that I doubt they’d see us. But it’s too late; we’ll just have to front it out! Put your seatbelt on and duck, if they see you they’ll know it’s us, there’s a chance they might not recognise me, and we’ll be far enough ahead that we can hide.”  

She did as he suggested and crouched down below the window, her poor heart she thought, it was racing again. If they survived this she was moving into her parents home and never leaving it again!  

“They’ve slowed down....” he mumbled, “That’s not a good sign...”  

Picking up speed he drove along the road heading for the oncoming headlights. He had to brazen this out, take them head on.