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“He won’t come near Eloise,” I said and hoped I sounded reassuring. “We won’t let him.”
“Never mind that,” Hansen suddenly contradicted me. I turned to correct him, an unhappy temper building up in me, as I saw him leave the kitchen at a run.
I blinked once. Saw the takeaway box he’d eaten from fall to the floor as his hand dropped it, food and chopsticks spreading out on the tiles as I heard his footsteps vanish into the living room. Heard Amy’s sharp intake of breath as I turned my eyes to the little girl in the lovely garden, and saw her blissfully ignorant while feeding her little bunny. A man wearing a ski mask came climbing over the fence. In broad daylight.
I remember shouting something, but not what, as I started running myself. Through the living room, through the sliding doors that led outside. I saw Hansen ahead of me as he ran to intercept the masked man, who was headed straight for the oblivious girl. Saw the detective reach for his gun as he ran, then luckily discarding the weapon. Not like he could look at the attacker and not fall victim to the man’s ability. Saw that the masked man was bigger than me. Depending on his skill, he could be hard to subdue. I was already in pain from my last violent interaction. I noticed all of this in the few seconds it took me to reach them. Saw the masked man grab Eloise by the shoulder, heard her scream at the sight of the black mask in her face. Saw Hansen go for the simplest solution as he came as a surprise to the masked man. I could see the man’s eyes widen as the large detective simply ran into him, pulling him with him as they both slammed into the ground a few feet away from Eloise. Grass and dirt flew around them, and I heard the masked man cry out in pain as he crashed, Hansen slamming into him at the same time. The detective had both height and weight on him.
I ran past the girl, prioritizing as I went. The masked man needed to be restrained first before we all fell victim to him.
I reached the two men and saw the struggle. Saw Hansen be overpowered as he kept his eyes closed, fighting blindly and viciously on the ground. I didn’t stop to watch, though. As the masked man started getting to his knees, I ripped my jacket off and jumped onto his back. I threw it over his head and pulled it back, like I was reining in a horse. The man shouted something, but I couldn’t understand. Didn’t care, either. I clamped my legs around his waist and hung on for dear life as he started fighting me, trying to get hold of me. He managed to grab my hair, making me cry out in pain as he pulled at it. I didn’t let go, though. Knew that if I did, he would be able to see. To entrap us all, if he wanted. I pulled hard on my jacket as he grabbed it with his free hand. It was pulled too tight for him to rip it off. I felt myself falling backward, taking him with me. He hit at my legs with desperation now, trying to get free from my hold on him. The subdued thumping noise seemed to reach me seconds after the blows.
Shit, it hurt.
I cried out in pain, but I couldn’t let go. Heard muffled words from inside my jacket. Breathing didn’t come easy for him now. He tried rolling over to the side to lose me, but I managed to keep him put. Saw Hansen move toward us, eyes open now. He grabbed the man by his shirt collar and simply hit him in the face, fist clenched. The soft, sickening sound was dampened by my jacket and the ski mask. It took three strikes before the attacker slumped backward, pinning me to the ground.
For a moment, I could only hear my own heightened breathing. My heart was pounding in my chest.
“You can let him go,” Hansen croaked. He’d been hit repeatedly in the upper body before I’d managed to intervene.
I did as he said, and he pulled the man off me. I had no doubt he was unconscious. I’d felt his muscles relax. And I’d seen Hansen hit someone in the face before. One of the kidnappers at the farm. There were some advantages to being a pissed off giant. I had actually been surprised the kidnapper had been walking afterward. Luckily, this guy wasn’t.
I got up on my knees and grabbed my jacket again, holding it in place, just in case. I turned toward Eloise and saw, to my utter relief, that the girl was awake, dandelion leaves still in her hand. Her mother held her arms around her, while she stared at us with big eyes. So much for not scaring the kid.
“You’re not realtors,” she decided as her mother hushed her.
I managed a bleak smile before I told them to go into the house. They did as I said without question, and I scanned the garden, or more specifically, the fences. No faces and prying eyes. No neighbors watching. It was nice to have some luck, I thought darkly as I staggered to my feet, my legs hurting.
“We need to get him inside before someone sees us,” I said. I removed my jacket from his head then. Hansen bent down and pulled the ski mask off him as well.
For a moment, we stared at him.
Lying at our feet, unconscious and with a cracked lip and bleeding nose, lay a tawny-haired man we’d both seen before.
“That’s one of the kidnappers,” Hansen said.
There was no doubt in my mind that was the man who’d threatened us with a gun when we’d searched for Andrea at the Kreutz farm. The same man we’d seen in the police station a few days before that.
What was this? I stared in continued disbelief as Hansen grabbed hold under the man’s arms and began dragging him into the house. I noticed, as I followed, that the man’s eyelids started fluttering. I moved to Hansen’s side and pulled his gun from the holster under his jacket. Thankfully, he did not argue. He might have been a total newbie to this, but he clearly understood the threat this man posed.
As the man's feet were dragged past the sliding doors, he started moving a little. I cocked the gun and let him feel the weapon pressed to the back of his head. He might have been dazed, but he got the message. Hansen let go of him and took over the weapon.
I turned to see that Amy had sent Eloise into another room. Not only that, she came with a gray pillowcase and handed it to me without a word. I placed it over the tawny-haired man’s head and tied it around his neck so that he could breathe, but it would be a hassle to get off fast.
He wouldn’t answer any of our questions. It wasn’t a language barrier. He’d spoken in English at the farm, and he told us in no uncertain terms to “fuck off” now. Nope. He didn’t want to cooperate.
“Maggie?” Amy said, a hand on my shoulder. “Does he need to be here?”
I turned to her and saw she was about to break down. She’d kept it together this long for her kid, but with the attacker in her house, it was getting a bit too much. I understood. No, we did not need to be there. We needed to be somewhere else I decided and grabbed my phone, texting Dr. Morris.
“Maggie?” I heard from under the pillowcase. I stopped texting and looked at the kneeling man. “Maggie Evans?” he repeated.
“What’s it to you?” I asked, though I knew very well he was part of the group who had kidnapped Andrea. Who had wanted to kidnap me. This guy worked for Yorov.
He didn’t answer me, and I was beginning to lose my patience anyway.
I was glad Hansen simply followed my lead in all of this. We got the man into the car, no small feat considering the tiny space in it. We were helped by the fact that the tawny-haired man didn’t resist us. He knew there was a gun near him, despite it not being flaunted in the Boudreau’s driveway. If any neighbors saw us, we never noticed. Maybe Amy got some visitors after the fact, but she would have to handle that. No one called the police at least, as we were not pulled over on our way to the hospice.
“Why there?” Hansen asked. He sat in the passenger seat but was halfway turned around, watching our prisoner, gun ready just in case. The tawny-haired man sat slumped in the backseat, not causing any trouble.
