Watching Her: A Gripping Thriller Novel With A Twist Page 4

  The Albino was.

  Chapter Five

  Shit!

  Panic gripped me. Adrenaline flooded my veins. What the hell? I upped my pace, stared at the deserted path before me, and clutched the strap of my bag in a death grip. What did I have buried in there that I could defend myself with? Did I have something heavy? And could it be used as a weapon? I certainly didn’t have a gun or a knife—bloody hell, not even a rape alarm.

  The dogs from the shanty village on my left barked as I passed, and one howled. For a moment I felt as though I was on a horror movie set. Stalked. Hunted. Murdered.

  The hotel stood in the far distance. There was no one on the road, not even the man on the rusty bike with the missing teeth. What I wouldn’t do to see the security guard heading my way now.

  What are my options?

  Thinking wasn’t easy; my thought processes were shot through with fear. It was as if razors were scraping over my brain.

  The instinct to run, flight not fight, twitched my muscles. Brain stem had taken over.

  There was only one thing for it.

  Throwing down my bag—damn thing had a bug—I dashed into the alley on my right. My hat flew off, but I didn’t care.

  I couldn’t outrun the Albino on the path, but maybe in here, twisting and turning, dodging and diving, I could lose him.

  A flapping yellow bed sheet slapped over my face. Frantically, I brushed it aside. A clothes peg went flying. Heart pumping wildly, I leapt over two empty drinks crates blocking my way. My shoulder bumped a leaning brick wall, and I over-compensated and ended up bouncing from the house opposite. But it only slowed me for a split second. I steamed on.

  I could do this.

  I knew I could.

  I continued for another ten or maybe twenty seconds. So far, so good. But there was no way I was pausing to see if he followed—he would be.

  Where the hell was Sutton when I needed him?

  The man had been like a magnet for weeks, and now…

  Making a sharp left, I avoided a snarling dog straining on a metal link chain. His foamy saliva basted my calf. He was the least of my worries.

  A woman, wider than she was tall, stood in her doorway shaking a rag. She paused. I skimmed past, her eyes wide, and surprise registered in her expression. I suspected they didn’t see many white girls around here, and even less tearing past as though the hounds of hell were on their tail.

  Which one of them was.

  I broke off to the right then realised I’d lost all my bearings. The axis of my world had shifted, and I had no idea where I was or where I was going. Which was a good thing. It meant I’d hopefully lost him, too. Or at least confused the hell out of him. He couldn’t possibly know his way around here.

  I was panting hard but kept on. A fog of thick, acrid smoke from burning rubber blocked the entrance to an alley up ahead. I aimed for it. Even better for hiding in.

  Holding my breath, I dashed through the smoke. It stung my eyes, shrouded my vision, and cloaked my skin. For a moment I was completely disorientated, not knowing where I was placing my feet.

  Then I came out the other side.

  I drew to an abrupt halt. My internal organs seemed surprised by the deceleration and ricocheted, creating nausea that had nothing to do with the foul smoke.

  If I’d been scared witless before, now I knew I’d landed in the deepest pit of my worst nightmare.

  Before me stood four black men, naked from the waist up. They circled a corroded oil drum, which the smoke billowed from, although all of them were clear of the stream of pollution.

  I blew out a breath then inhaled and immediately coughed. I’d made a mistake running this way. A very basic part of me, primitive, limbic, screamed that they meant me harm. Them rescuing me from the Albino would not be on the cards.

  It was their eyes, their delight at seeing a defenseless white girl hurtle into their midst, that told me everything I needed to know.

  One spat something thick and tar-like onto the ground.

  Another straightened and gripped his crotch, as though waking his groin from slumber and getting it ready for action.

  Out of the frying pan and into the fire.

  I turned, dreading coming face to face with the Albino but having no choice but to take that risk.

  “Wait up, lady.”

  Someone grabbed my upper arm, a tight pincer hold.

  “Get off!” I spun to face another of the men. This one had a single upper tooth and a scar over his left cheek shaped like a pitchfork. “Leave me alone.”

  “But you just got here.” He grinned and didn’t slacken his grip in the least.

  “Yeah, we wanna play,” another said. He cupped his naked chest as though mimicking breasts.

  Bile bit at my gullet. I shut my eyes. Wished I could magic myself away. Be transported from the horror of what was about to happen.

  I would have done anything to have Sutton follow me now. His annoying habit of always being there would be quite handy.

  A sob erupted. I tensed—I was about to wet myself. The effort of willing my crashing heart not to explode almost drew me to my knees.

  “Got us a princess, have we?”

  Hot, stale breath swished over my ear. A rough finger tugged at my hair.

  “No!” I slapped him away.

  “Don’t be like that, sugar. You’ll enjoy it.” He laughed, the sound revolting, sickening, debased.

  “Don’t you dare touch me.” I fought against the clamp on my wrist. “Don’t you know who I am? My father will hunt you down. You’ll all get the death sentence. He’s a powerful English aristocrat.” I opened my eyes.

  “Yeah, he’ll have to find us first.” The one who’d spat loomed over me. He spoke in a flat, deathly ominous voice. “And he’ll have to find you first, too.” He tipped his head and guffawed.

  The others joined in.

  I staggered backwards, but now two men held me, one gripping each arm, and all that happened was I staggered in a cross-shape.

  “Get her naked,” the one standing in front of me said. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

  In that moment the evil of the world seemed to weigh on my shoulders. Rape, murder, the abuse of innocents, torture, war. It was a fug of blackness presided over by the Devil himself.

  “No. No.” I struggled, writhing to try to loosen their hold.

  A rough hand yanked the front of my sarong, removing it in one swoop.

  Again I shut my eyes. The looks on their faces were so vile, so hideous. They’d be burnt in my mind forever, seared into my dreams the way animals are branded.

  They whooped, whistled, hooted.

  A rough hand grasped my right breast.

  Another slipped into the back of my bikini bottoms and groped.

  Then it all stopped.

  A whoosh of energy swirled around me.

  For a moment I wondered if I were fainting.

  “What the fuck?”

  “Who the hell…?”

  “Kiss me rass.”

  I slumped to the ground; the men holding me had released their clasp. The hard concrete grated my knees, and I slapped my palms down. I sucked in air that was still sharp with smoke.

  I opened my eyes, spotted my abandoned sarong, and reached for it. I didn’t know why. It was of no value now. Trying to capture a single droplet of water in a flood was the same amount of use.

  Scuffling backwards, trying to get my footing, I looked up.

  Before me stood a tall, broad man. He was facing away, hands on his hips, feet apart and shoulders rounded as though he was preparing to attack.

  It wasn’t Sutton.

  This man had sheet-white skin, chino shorts, leather loafers, and a moss-green T-shirt, and had hair the colour of freshly fallen snow.

  The Albino.

  Thank goodness he’s here?

  Damn, he found me.

  Those two thoughts collided in my brain, splintering apart, fracturing my reality. I didn’t know
what to think.

  Other than one against four was a tall order.

  I shuffled back farther, until my shoulders hit the heated, smooth metal, the side of a makeshift structure. Cowering, and seizing the sarong to my chest in a fist, I tried to catch my breath. The smoke was sending me light-headed. I coughed but attempted to hold in another splutter. The attention of the four men had switched from me to the Albino.

  “She’s mine,” the Albino said, tilting his chin slightly. He was several inches above the tallest black man, so he looked down on them. “Take a hike.”

  “Fucking hell, white man, what the bumbow happened to you? Fall in acid, did you?” The nasty guy who was fond of spitting stared at the Albino, obvious fascination on his face, and apparently not in the slightest bit concerned by the belligerent stranger who’d intruded on their fun.

  “We walk away now. Me and the woman.” The Albino stood solid and still.

  “Yeah, right.” The leader laughed. “We just got ourselves a bit of meat. You really think we’re gonna let you steal it from under our noses?”

  The Albino was silent.

  I whimpered into the sarong then pushed up, sliding my back against the metal. Once upright, I locked my knees.

  A squall snatched the smoke, dragging it vertical. I gasped for air, glad of the respite. It was then I saw it. A blade.

  A shard of sunlight glinted off the three inches of steel as the man with one upper tooth raised it high.

  I stifled a scream, mashing the sarong into my mouth, the strength to run gone from my legs.

  It was aimed at the Albino’s head. About to be brought down with crushing accuracy.

  But the Albino had spotted it. He moved. Suddenly. His actions were a blur but clearly well-practiced. Calculated.

  He stepped back, raised his right arm. Blocked. Caught. Snatched.

  A yelp of agony screamed against my eardrums. The man who’d held the knife hurtled towards the oil drum, his arm hanging in a sickeningly unnatural position.

  The disintegrating old oil drum came down easily, spilling its burning, rubbery contents across the ground. The man followed, landing on hot, sticky embers.

  His friends didn’t pause to help; they rounded on the Albino.

  I held my breath.

  The Albino held the knife.

  In yet another slick move, he swiped the blade over the chests of each of the three men. It wasn’t a stabbing motion, not enough to puncture or kill, more of a warning slash.

  The screams of the burning man roared around my brain. The sight of blood leaking from the three men, the sticky, scarlet rivulets expanding over their bellies, blazed into my eyes.

  The Albino was helping me—he’d stepped in where Sutton was supposedly meant to be.

  Sutton was as useful as a pack of bacon at a Hanukkah.

  “Now get your howling mate and get the fuck out of here,” the Albino said. “Before you all end up dead.”

  It was the most I’d heard him say in one sentence, and despite my panic, the sheer terror circulating my brain, I’d noticed he had a strong accent. Eastern European? Russian? I couldn’t be sure.

  The leader pressed his hand to his wound then studied the splay of blood on his palm. “You are dead, white man.”

  “I do not think so.” The Albino half turned, drew up his knee, then crashed the sole of his shoe onto the leader’s patella.

  He dropped like a stone, howling, his leg bending the opposite way to how it should.

  Jesus Christ. The Albino was not a man to mess with.

  I glanced to the right—it was time to make my escape. Make the most of the fight and their distraction.

  The smoke twisted around me, swirling shambolically in a chaotic pattern. I pushed away from the metal wall and staggered into the alley I’d raced along before ending up in my very own smouldering hell.

  I glanced left then right. Which way?

  I had no idea; the lack of orientation was disconcerting, but I had little choice other than to get a move on.

  Feeling ridiculously vulnerable, running in just a bikini and my sarong floating from my hand, a lilac flag of victory, I ploughed on. I was a target for any other creeps who lurked in places like this and had one thing on their mind.

  A dog snarled as I sprinted past. It wasn’t the same one as before.

  I looked to the right, hoping to see something other than endless alleys. Skittering past a man with a child in his arms, I was aware of tears on my cheeks. I had to get out of there. Had to get away, from everyone, everything.

  The next turn I took was a mistake.

  I hurtled into a wire fence, a coil of razor wire on top. A lopsided orange triangle displayed the words: NO ENTRY.

  I hooked my fingers into the metal diamond shapes and rested the length of my body on it. In the distance, my hotel rose from a crop of palm trees and frondy shrubs.

  Safety.

  “Help!” I called, jittery, and wondered if a security man or a gardener might see me. “Help!”

  “Shh.”

  I spun around.

  I wasn’t alone.

  Standing before me was the Albino. His chest rose and fell rapidly. He was clearly fresh from a sprint. And his green T-shirt had several round splatters of blood sprayed across it in a rainbow-shaped arc.

  “What? What do you want?” I gasped out.

  He said nothing, just stared at me. A muscle flexed and unflexed in his cheek, then he linked his fingers and cracked them in front of his chest.

  The noise rattled around the narrow alley I’d cornered myself in.

  Fuck, is this it?

  Was he going to rape and murder me now?

  He stepped closer.

  I surged up against the wire fence. It rattled under my weight. “Please, no.”

  He came closer still. So near that the toes of his shoes touched mine. The bulge in his shorts rubbed on me, and my breasts mashed up into his chest.

  My insides tumbled.

  His eyes, boring down on me, were the wateriest shade of blue imaginable, so weak they could have been coloured with one drop of azure paint in gallons of crystal-clear water. And his lashes, curled and frosty white, matched his eyebrows and his shorn hair. His lips were full with a central crease in the lower one.

  I had a sudden, crazy urge to touch his almost transparent skin. Was it as smooth as porcelain the way it appeared to be?

  “Claudine Montague-Fostrop,” he said in a slow, deliberate way, rolling out the vowels and precisely uttering the consonants.

  Yes, he definitely had a Russian accent. It would come in helpful when I had to describe him to the police. A Russian Albino—how many of them were there in St Lucia?

  “What do you want from me?” I curled my fingers so tight into the wire fence it pinched my skin.

  “I want to know…”

  His breath washed over me. Warm and sweet, like the pineapple from the market.

  “You want to know what?”

  “How you know who to trust.”

  “What?”

  He didn’t repeat his question. Instead, he stared at me and swiped his tongue over his bottom lip.

  How do I know who to trust?

  What the hell does that mean?

  Movement in my peripheral vision. I flicked my gaze over his shoulder.

  He must have seen my action, for he spun and came face to face with the deadly end of a gun.

  The man holding the gun was Sutton.

  About bloody time.

  The Albino froze, the black metal denting his forehead. He took a step backwards but was followed by the gun not losing connection with his skin.

  For someone potentially about to meet their maker, he seemed remarkably calm.

  “You stay away from her, you hear?” Sutton said. He was breathing fast, his polo shirt stretching over his chest as he inhaled and exhaled.

  The Albino glared at him.

  “You hear me?” Sutton jabbed the gun. “Stay away.”

&
nbsp; Albino’s neck jarred backwards.

  “I don’t want your blood on my hands,” Sutton said. “So I’ll give you one warning. Get on the next plane back to Moscow. You’re not needed. I’ve got this covered.”

  How does he know he’s from Moscow?

  A long pause. Tension fizzed in the air. I dreaded hearing the sound of the gun discharging.

  “Got it?” Sutton repeated, his voice low and dangerous.

  He actually seemed quite manly and tough.

  “Yes.” The Albino tilted his chin. He also spread out his fingers then formed fists again.

  I didn’t think Sutton had noticed that.

  “Claudine,” Sutton said. “Walk past me, turn right, and don’t stop until I catch you up.”

  “O…okay…” I pushed from the fence, not taking my attention from the Albino.

  How do I know who to trust?

  I did as Sutton had instructed, turned right, and broke into a jog. My mind was fudged, my body suddenly exhausted.

  I glanced behind me, my hair catching on my cheek, one strand finding its way into my mouth. I hooked it out.

  Sutton appeared, gun now directed at the floor, my bag hanging on his shoulder, and raced after me.

  Chapter Six

  “What the sodding hell is wrong with you?” Sutton’s grip was tight on my elbow as he steered me away.

  It hurt, but I wasn’t about to try to throw him off this time. Despite the pain, his hold was a comfort. “I needed to get back to the hotel. I—”

  “What you needed was to let me walk with you. What you needed was to stay at the hotel in the first place, to not come here. When I say to do or not do things, there’s a reason. Now you know the reason.”

  But did I? It was all very well warning me about the Albino, but I didn’t know the real reason the man was following me. Things were certainly not as clear-cut as they might seem. If being trailed by a creepy man could be called clear-cut.

  “You’re pinching my elbow.” I clutched my sarong to my chest.