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I can feel his eyes on me, no doubt looking at the pitiful creature in front of him. Without words, he beckons at me with his head to get up and follow him.
I stagger forward past the plate of food and come out of the shed into the cool evening air.
“You can go over there.”
“Shut ya yapping!” he snarls at the hysterical hounds. And they fall instantly silent.
“Can you untie me? I won’t escape.”
Something tells me to stand tall and I hold my head high in defiance, my eyes challenging his in the dusk.
“My circulation’s gone and I can’t feel my hands.”
He stares down at me and I quell the gasp of fright as the moonlight reveals his densely tattooed face. Thick blue lines cover his nose then fan out over his forehead and extend in sweeping arches around his mouth swirling into bold circles across his cheeks. He’s terrifying.
His mouth curves at my mock-bravery. Pulling out a blade from his back pocket, he slashes open the tape, freeing up my hands.
“Try to run and you’re dead.”
I lift my chin proudly and walk to a spot by the side of the shed.
He turns his head as I squat.
Pulling up my jeans, I stumble my way back into the kennel, rubbing the circulation back into my hands.
“Thank you.”
He slams the door shut behind me and it goes dark again.
“How the Hell did you get into this shit?” I hear him mutter outside the door.
Perhaps to himself? Perhaps to me?
???
Shaun veered towards the bushes at the side of the track. He started to jog as quietly he could, making contact with the ground on his midfoot, limiting the force, keeping his posture straight. Efficient soft running, like he’d been trained to do all those years ago.
A bright moon had risen, and as he approached the end of the track the forest was thinning out revealing the camp below him. It lay in a meadow with a stream running through it, a natural clearing in the woods.
He crouched down and slid onto his belly.
Retrieving the small pair of binoculars from his bag, he could see the layout of the buildings. First, a house with lots of motorcycles parked up. Choppers and custom bikes. There was a muscle truck there too, modified with jacked-up wheels. These guys liked to do a bit of showing off.
Like Rawiri had said, there were makeshift sheds at the back, behind the polytunnels.
It was a bad place to be. Behind the house. By the dogs.
Swiftly and silently he slipped down towards the camp gate. There, he deposited his rucksack in the irrigation trench that ran by the side of the gate following the fence. He covered it in the long grass.
Then he crept stealthily into the compound, staying in the shadows and heading through the motorcycles towards the polytunnels and the sheds beyond.
An explosive shout. And then another.
Shaun crouched low behind a modified Fatboy. The shouts were coming from the house.
Rawiri’s quad bike was parked up to the side by the door. It was likely that he was inside with them. Taking the heat because of him.
He weighed it up.
He should get Claire first. But, dammit! There was no way either that he could leave the boy if he was in some kind of strife.
He crawled around the motorcycles until he was safely under the back window, as close to the shouting as he could get without being seen.
“So you nicked my fuckin’ quad, did ya? Ya little shit!”
An aggressive male voice, a little high-pitched. Angry. Then Rawiri.
“Didn’t know it was yours, Jon.”
“Well you do now. And nobody takes it without askin’. Not never!”
Shaun placed his ear under the windowpane, listening intently.
“Where you been, boy?”
A different voice this time. Deep and rumbling. Dangerous.
“The lakes. Fancied givin’ my new rod a go.”
Rawiri sounded upbeat. Cool. He was holding up well.
“Sure it wasn’t the Antarctic?”
They’d felt the fish.
“Water was bloody cold, alright.”
“That so?”
“Yeah.”
Shaun heard the note of defiance in the boy’s voice.
“You don’t take the quad without askin’ first, ya hear me?”
The tone was commanding but the words were a climb-down.
“Sorry, King.”
“That all yer gonna say?”
The angry goat-voice again.
“Yes!” the deep voice thundered. “That is all I’m gonna fuckin’ say. Unless you have a problem with that? Or with me?”
There was no debate after that. Rawiri was off the hook. For now.
Shaun moved swiftly away from the house towards the densely vegetated polytunnels.
There was no mistaking the jagged leaf of the large plants. Marijuana. Probably hydroponically grown. The high THC psychoactive looney toons variety that was in global demand.
He moved forward cautiously, past the end of the polytunnels stepping closer to the sheds.
Then froze.
A dog started up.
Shaun kept rigidly still.
Quickly realising that the others weren’t joining in, the dog wound down and gave up.
Now was his chance and he needed to be quick. He sped forward again, running over the open ground towards the sheds fifty metres in front of him.
Shit!
He snagged his foot on something. It nearly sent him flying.
Two temporary security arc lights flickered, and then suddenly the ground around him lit up like it was day again. He was bathed in brilliant white light.
He groaned as he saw the fishing line snagged in his trainers. A homemade sensor. He hadn’t expected that.
All the dogs were jumping now. Slavering and barking into a furious snarling crescendo. Winding themselves up
like an air raid siren into a cacophony of gnashing and growling against the mesh doors of their kennels next to Claire.
This was his only chance. He needed to grab it now.
“Claire!”
“I'm in here.”
His eyes darted to the end shed. It had a full wooden door barred across with a heavy wooden block.
No time to think.
He sprinted over and began lifting the solid block out of the way.
The door swung open and Claire flung herself into his arms.
“Shaun!”
He held onto her tightly as the air around them filled with the loud clicks of gun barrels being locked and loaded.
“Hey, King! We snagged ourselves a bite.”
Ten armed men spread out in a circle around them stepped menacingly closer. With hands pointing upwards into the air and his back to his new guests, Shaun was roughly shoved with the end of a shotgun down onto his knees.
“Sion Edwards?”
“I’m Shaun Cobain.”
“Whatever.”
With a kick of a boot, he was forced into the kennel with Claire. The door jammed into place behind them.
“What’ll happen to him?”
Shaun heard Rawiri’s voice outside the door.
“Some Pom’s coming,” a deeper voice answered. “Wanted to cut them up at the meat plant. King told him he could either put a bullet in their skulls or piss off home.”
“I’m so sorry, Claire.”
It was all Shaun could say. He was such an idiot. He should have known that it was all too easy, that they would have booby-trapped the place.
Whatever had happened his brain had gone soft. He’d taken too many risks, been too careless. Now, they were both in deep trouble and it was his fault. Again.
“Shhh.”
Claire comforted him, finding his lips with hers.
“One way or another you were always going to snag their line.”
He kissed her again, this time more deeply, more passionately as if this kiss would be their last.
