15 April 2011

Run & Hide

Chapter 11
Hiding


Javier got to his family's restaurant and the fire fighters had been working on keeping the fire under control since he received the call from his mother.  The fire was being contained but from the damage, he knew they'd have to rebuild everything from scratch.  Whoever started it, had done a pretty good job at completely destroying the place.  His mother's face distraught, buried in the chest of his father who was looking on in complete shock and disgust.  He couldn't possibly badger his family right now, so he directed his questions to the chief of police who was standing a few metres away.  He was a fairly tall guy, aged with service and was talking to the London Brigade henchman, when Javier approached, he cut to the chase.

"This is no accident, do we have any eye witnesses?" Javier stood in stance, hands on his hips.
"You must be Javier Romano, your father had informed me you're a specilised cop," the chief of police said nodding towards Javier.

"Yes that is correct, but I'm not here for small talk..." Javier said grimly.

"Of course," the man nodded, "One man, medium build, balding accompanied by another man a bit taller but far heavier approached the premises a few hours ago, carrying lighter fluid, our CCTV caught them in the process of torching the property... an eye witness tried to stop them...but got assaulted by them..."

"And where is the eye witness?" Javier said sternly.

"She's seated over there," the chief of police flicked his head behind him and Javier's gaze followed, there was a woman sitting on a stretcher outside an ambulance having stitches applied to her face.

"Did she get an ID on them?" Javier asked.

"As a matter of fact, something better..." and he withdrew a phone from his pocket and showed him the photo.

Javier only needed to glance at the photo to determine who it was and he ran towards his car which was parked behind the cordoned off street, he took out his mobile and dialled Ruby's landline only to get the machine, he tried her mobile but it had kept on ringing.  A shot of fear ran through the course of his veins as he realised the fire had been a way to distract him and that Ruby's life was in danger.  He called Ryker's number and he picked up on the first ring, "Ruby's house now." And hung up.

He drove like hell on wheels, having run three red lights to get to her.  He had a sinking feeling he wasn't going to like what he was going to find when he got there.  He barely parked his car as he bolted out of the drivers seat and towards the front door, but found the door a jar and it seemed that Ryker had already got there and was in the process of handcuffing Christopher and Felix.  Half of Felix's face was red and the skin peeled off and he sat handcuffed against the wall. Christopher was sporting a shiner and the kitchen was a mess.

"Where is she?" he growled.  He was met with silence. "I'll say this again but I'll only say it once, where is she?"

It was Felix that spoke up, "She ran off, locked us in here."

"Shut your mouth Felix..." yelled Christopher.

"I will not shut my mouth, if I did the planning, we wouldn't be in this fucking situation, this is all your fucking fault..." Felix yelled at Christopher.

"Shut your goddamn mouth Felix..." Christopher yelled, trying to usher forward but Ryker had chained him to the cupboard handle.

"Christopher, he's screwed up, he hates spoilt little rich kids, he hates that they use up the resources of their wealthy parents... and live extravagant lives without even lifting a finger... he wanted to torture Ruby...." Felix mouth spewed up the details making Christopher increasingly fucked off.

"Shut your mouth, you twerp... shut it, or I will shut it for you," Christopher shouted, hatred in his cold eyes.

"He wanted to torture Ruby, he had started to... but I couldn't bare to watch her suffer anymore... he kept pumping drugs into her, so she would forget, that her memory would be erased... but I couldn't allow him to do that to her... so I let her go... I let her escape..." Felix revealed.

"You traitor, you fucking traitor... you betrayed me... I had plans for her," Christopher yelled.

Above the noise, Javier spoke to Ryker giving him specific instructions when the police came to take them away and to contact chief of police as he had evidence. Javier walked into Ruby's room and started searching for clues to where she might have headed to.  He was relieved that her abductors had been caught, but he was worried about the state that she was in.  She had managed to lock them up in her own house and to cause them injury, so she couldn't have been too bad a state. He rifled through her things and then came across the locket in her drawer with a letter.  He opened the clasp to see a picture of her mother and then the letter.  He read it and put it back in the place he found it. He was going to have to pay her father a visit.


Ruby had been running for what seemed like forever, she wanted to give due credit to those who perish every year to run in Marathons because she was definitely feeling the effects of it now. She had been running since she had left the house and she hadn't stopped, mostly scared that they would catch up with her and she wanted as much space between them.  Her legs were aching now, but she was a strong runner, so she could do a couple more miles before she would have to stop.  What ached the most, was her heart.... she had fallen in love with Javier and was afraid he may never know, because no one knew of this place, just her, her mum and maybe her dad but he was a different person and well... something he chose to forget because they were happy memories. 

She wished for happy memories, more then anything.  She wished for memories of her childhood, of her mother but now that she had seen Felix and Christopher, the memories she thought she had forgotten were coming back one after the other. It was Christopher who had tortured her and it was Felix who had sat back and watched, the evil glint in their eyes as they proceeded to question her motives and pump wild drugs into her system.  They were the devil reincarnated, she wanted to be free of the memories, free of the pain and free of everything that had happened. She carried on running, she wanted to be there... she didn't care that she was running, she just wanted to get everything out of her system and if hiding was what she had to do, she would be the best.