The Alex King Series, A BATEMAN [good books for high schoolers .TXT] 📗

Caroline was face down in the muddy bath. She was struggling, but her legs were tied back to her wrists and she had no strength or flexibility to keep her head out of the water. King lunged to the bath, just as her face went down and her whole body went ominously still.

King grabbed her roughly and hauled her out. She dropped to the floor like a game fish on the deck of a boat. She wasn’t moving. He took out his knife and sliced the bonds at her wrists, rolled her over onto her back. He started to pump her chest. He knew he should calm down, follow procedure, but he was simply too desperate. He bent down, listened to her for breathing, but her chest was still. He opened her mouth, checked her airway and thrust his fingertips into her carotid artery at the edge of her windpipe. There was a pulse. Faint, but detectable. He knew he had to get air into her, clear the water out of her airway, her lungs. He pinched her nose and breathed steadily. He started to pump her chest again, this time with the knowledge that she had a pulse and he had calmed himself enough to do it right. He worked on the principle that if air went in, he needed to get it back out. He couldn’t simply keep filling the lungs. He breathed for her again, pumped three more times to work her lungs. On the third attempt at breathing for her, she lurched, and a large amount of muddy water spewed out of her mouth. She opened her eyes and turned her head as she was sick. King rolled her over and rubbed her between her shoulder blades.

“Thank God!” he said. He wasn’t a religious man and had seen enough evil and hostility in the world to call himself an atheist. But he also knew that he had begged for his own survival in the past, and had no idea who he had been begging to.

Caroline wrapped her arms around him. She was sobbing. He had never seen her in such a state before, but then, she had never been so close to death before. And this from a woman caught in the terrorist’s blast that had killed her fiancé.

“Where is she?” she rasped, her throat raw, her breathing shallow and wet. The effort of talking make her cough repeatedly.

King looked up, saw the broken window. He hugged her close. “She’s gone,” he said.

“And Giorgi?”

“Dead.”

She smiled, wiped her tears. “Get her, Alex. I’m okay here. Leave your knife so I can get my legs undone,” she said. “Just get the bitch…”

54

There were noises. There was ambient light. The city was seldom dark, especially in open ground like this, where the light created a halo around the edges of buildings. The city was seldom quiet either.

King crouched and listened. He tuned out the natural sounds of his environment, sought what was out of place.

He had left the same way as Amanda Cunningham had. Through the broken window and down onto the flat roof. He had jumped the eight-feet or so to the overgrown garden. He couldn’t help but think he would have done it quicker than Amanda. This was the sort of thing he did. Or had done until a year ago. The landing shocked him all the way up his spine, and he hobbled out of the garden and into the waste ground. His ankles were stiff from the landing, but he couldn’t think about it. Had to keep moving.

King could hear footsteps on loose gravel ahead of him. He crouched low again. Closed his eyes briefly, putting his focus into his hearing. It was unmistakable. Someone was running. This wasn’t the place to take a jog. Not at this time of night. Uneven ground, no street lights, the risk of drug addicts and the homeless avoiding the law. He was certain that the noise was coming from Amanda Cunningham as she made her escape.

The waste land was mainly rubble. It was a predominantly flat area, but in places, great piles of rubble and earth had been piled high in the early stage of a previous failed development. King ran, skirting the hillocks. It reminded him of the terrain in Northern Iraq. He had fought there with the Kurds against ISIS. He had hunted battle-hardened, armed and ruthless men on this kind of ground. Amanda Cunningham didn’t stand a chance.

He was gaining on the noise. He tracked across to his right, could hear the noise on his left. It came from behind one of the hillocks of earth. He crouched low again, could hear breathing. She was breathless. He tried to imagine her - scared, cowering behind the mound of earth, praying he wouldn’t find her. He edged forwards. He could hear her. She was close. He edged forwards again, heard something on the air. Like a draught, or something scything through the air…

King was caught with the blow, absorbed it fully with his arm and shoulder, but the force at which it was travelling made the length of wood glance upwards and strike the side of his head. He went down hard. His ear ringing, his face hot and throbbing, his arm numbed from the impact. He tried to get up, but sensed the second blow before it got close enough and he rolled. The length of wood struck the ground, rebounded high in the air.

When he came to rest, he was sitting, his legs outstretched, his hands on the ground. Amanda’s eyes blazed in the gloom. She pulled the seven-foot length of four by two back, struggled to raise it, but got it above her head. King noted that she must have changed strategy and was attempting to strike with the thin edge.