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Her face was alight as she talked and laughed. He imagined her emerald green eyes sparkling; those eyes had haunted him every night in his dreams for a year now. He swallowed the words he desperately wanted to call out. Every part of him wanted to be with her, hold her, touch her, talk with her, make her laugh.
Fuck!
A cold wind whipped at his face, stinging his tear-glazed eyes. What was he doing here? She didn’t need him coming back in and fucking everything up.
Sarah didn’t need him.
He watched as the flatmate searched her handbag. Sarah laughed and held up a set of keys. She unlocked the door and two seconds later, disappeared inside. The flatmate followed, closing the door behind her. A light appeared behind closed curtains.
Alex’s heart cracked from despair. This had to be enough. Sarah was safe. She was happy. It was time for him to leave.
ChapterFour
‘Did you even take your keys with you today?’ Sarah was still giggling as she placed her own keys on her allocated hook on the vintage hall stand that held an assortment of coats, hats and scarves. There was a hook for each of the flatmates and the idea was they would hang their keys to let the others know they were home. Heather’s bunch of keys and assorted keyrings hung in their normal place.
‘Lordy! I did leave them at home.’ Heather clapped her hand to her head.
‘Come on, I’ll put the kettle on and you start packing. When will Matt be here?’ Sarah shrugged out of her coat and started down the hall towards the kitchen, following the path illuminated by the living room light Heather flipped on.
‘About half an—’
Sarah flicked the kitchen light on, pausing as she waited for Heather to finish her sentence. Instead, a loud crash came from the front of the flat. Sarah dropped her bag and coat on the floor.
What in the…
She hurried back up the hallway. ‘Heather?’
‘You little bitch,’ shouted a distinctly Australian voice, it’s edges hard and rough.
Sarah’s skin prickled with heat and she raced the final steps to the living room. ‘Oh my God! Heather!’
Her flatmate was struggling against a tall, well-built man with an ugly raised scar above his left eye. Heather kicked out, the hand across her mouth already sporting bloody teeth marks. A second man, a little shorter than the first, stepped forward raising a gun.
Sarah screamed.We’re being robbed.Another horror ripped through her mind.Please, please, take the money and leave us alone.
‘Evening, love. Where’s your boyfriend?’ said the shorter man.
‘What?’ Sarah felt her legs turn to jelly as he grabbed her by the hair and pulled her into the living room, across from Heather and her captor.
‘We’re looking for Hollywood. Where is he?’
She’d never seen either of the men in her flat, but instinctively she knew who they were. Or rather, where they were from. Members of outlaw motorcycle clubs wore menace the same way they wore their colors. Her mind flashed back to the night she’d met Alex. He wore a leather cut with a skull and guns insignia on the back. A patch on the front left was embroidered with the nameHollywood.
The gun was jammed into her ribs. Sarah held her breath, the lack of oxygen disorienting like she was being dragged under the ocean, twisting and turning her until she no longer knew which way was up. Except for the searing pain where it felt as if her hair was being ripped from her head, and the gun punching a hole into her side.
‘Fuck!’
The tall man shoved Heather away, and she collapsed over the back of the sofa. Her foot must have connected hard with his shin as he hopped about for a second. He recovered and punched her hard in the face. Heather collapsed to the floor.
‘No!’ screamed Sarah.
Something crashed out in the hallway, then a hooded man plunged into the room, tackling the tall guy to the ground behind the sofa. Heather shrieked and tried to crawl out of the way.What the hell was going on?
‘Heather!’
‘Keep your mouth shut!’ The grip on Sarah’s hair grew stronger, the gun pushing so hard against her she was sure her ribs would snap.
The third man emerged from behind the sofa. His hood had slipped from his head. Sarah’s lungs burned and spots appeared before her eyes. She dragged in a breath that felt like razor blades going down her throat. She knew that hair, that face.
