6
Ianto kept going over and over the confrontation he had just had as he followed the fuckers at a distance. Now his brain had engaged, he was remembering more, the edidic part filling in the foggy parts where he had panicked. Him. Panicked. He could not believe himself. All his training, al the times he had stepepd up... he had froze. What the hell. Was he rusty?
It had been like snapshots, moments. Now the film was running and he saw the entire thing.
As well as his own cowardice.
His only thought had been Damo. He had forgotten who he was for fucksake.
.
.
He opened the wallet. He could only be disappointed by what was inside, and he was. When he found out that Ianto didn't have much money on him, he looked at him as if he had betrayed him.
"I don't have much in there because we… we are from America, no need to carry British notes" Ianto tried to explain. "I card most of it."
An idea seemed to come to him then, a flicker of something flashed across his face. He looked Ianto up and down, and then pulled Ianto's British driving license out of the clear plastic compartment it lived in.
He held it up, almost triumphantly.
He waved it in the air, as if it were a polaroid waiting to be developed.
"Now I know where you live," he said. He turned to Nic. A silent signal passed between them. Nic nodded, and grinned unpleasantly at Ianto. If this was a joke to them, then they were playing it on him. The short one looked Ianto up and down again. "I'll come visit. Maybe tonight. Maybe tomorrow night."
"What?" What they were saying didn't make sense. Besides, the address on that license was useless now … pre Jack it still only said Jones for Godsake "Why?"
"I want twenty grand," the short one continued. "I want you to hold it for me, until I turn up."
Ianto didn't understand. He was missing something. Something was happening here, and he didn't know what it was, and that scared him "Twenty grand? I don't…"
"Twenty grand," he said again, waving the license in the air once more. "Oh. I almost forgot."
He delved into the jacket again and then pulled out the mobile phone. He dropped the jacket on the floor as if he had forgotten it existed. It hit with a clatter. More stuff spilled out.
"In case you get tempted to call someone," he said, putting the phone in his pocket. "Like the pigs for instance."
He stepped closer. Ianto could smell him. He didn't smell good. He'd eaten something, something spicy, and it was on his breath. "Twenty grand, prick. I'm not fucking around." He turned. "Let's go, Nic."
Nic started to move away.
He dragged Damo with him.
Stupidly, until that moment, Ianto hadn't realized what they planned to do. It was absurd. People like him didn't have their sons kidnapped. This sort of thing happened, sure, but it happened to people with money. Not to people who didn't. Not to people like him.
"Please, no, my son… wait, the address on that…"
The short one spun back around and punched him in the stomach. Hard. He had something in his hand to cause more effect. It was agony, like someone had torn Ianto's middle out. In a rush, Ianto felt all the strength drain out of his legs, and waves of nausea flooded his body.
Ianto collapsed to the floor, on his hands and knees, clutching his stomach. He could not breathe. The short one knelt over him.
"Hey," he said.
"Hey," he said again, slapping the side of Ianto's face.
Ianto looked at him. The pain was abating slightly, anger starting to wake up those long since sleeping parts of his brain..
"If you try and stop us before we're out of the shop, then we'll cut his throat," he said. "Don't follow us. You got that?"
He spat in Ianto's face, to emphasize his point.
He moved off. They both did.
Ianto didn't even wipe the man's spit off his face as his eyes never left Damo.
.
.
The automatic double front doors opened and Ianto stumbled out on to the street. The light was too bright. After the dimness of the shop, it was like the sun was piercing his eyes like needles. An overcast day in March, there was no warmth to it. His stomach felt broken. The muscles around it were sprung. Cupping it with his hands made it feel marginally better. Some internal bruising for sure, that fucker had used something hard.
Ianto looked for him. Damo. He couldn't see him. He tried looking everywhere at once, to cram what he was seeing into his brain as fast as he could. He couldn't be too far behind them. He hadn't been incapacitated for long. Something was happening inside him, something I couldn't comprehend, like a war on two fronts, with his body screaming at him to do something, while at the same time his mind was screaming at him that he couldn't, that it was expressly forbidden. To do something was to risk Damo's life. Or was not doing something putting him more at risk? It was an earthquake, but only inside his body. Ianto shook. He was hot and cold. His throat felt swollen and dry. Blood pounded in his ears.
You take your eye off the ball as a Tad, and your child is in danger.
A car horn sounded in the distance. Not once, but three times. It drew his attention. It was coming from halfway up the Street. Some wrangle, with a chorus of other car horns joining in.
Before he could move, the sound of a racing car engine rose above the orchestra of horns. As he tried to identify which car might be responsible for this ruckus, a black BMW disentangled itself to mount the curb outside of the Marriot entrance. More car horns. The BMW struggled along the pavement, negotiating the narrow dimensions, desperately trying to forge a path forward.
And then, so quickly Ianto might have imagined it, he saw a flash of a little face in a passenger window of the black BMW.
I knew in my heart that I hadn't imagined it.
"It's him!" Ianto shouted, and set off running once again.
The traffic was slow enough that Ianto could run through it, almost in a straight line to where he could see the BMW struggling up the hill. He had to dodge a few bumpers, and one angry driver beeped at him as Ianto ran in front of his car, but he was able to make it to the opposite side of the road without stopping.
There was a pedestrianized square of pavement cut out of one end of Castle Park. Park benches surrounded a rectangle of grass. An old couple sat on the bench this side of the square and glanced up, startled, as Ianto ran past at speed. Over the grass. On a diagonal, a bee line to the BMW. It was still a long way away. Maybe a hundred feet. It came down off the pavement, butting its way back into the traffic. Several cars veered off to make room for it.
Ianto ran.
His lungs were burning, and his heart was pounding. Ianto reached the other side of the pedestrian area, on the pavement. Perhaps only eighty feet from the car now. The BMW was only two vehicles from the traffic lights at the end of the street.
The lights were green. If they turned red Ianto might be able to reach them. He had since stopped thinking about any warning, about cautiously observing, about reporting back to the police. In the short space of time since they had taken him, Ianto had come to believe something. A vague suspicion had hardened into a concrete conviction that, should Damo leave his sight, he would never see him again. This was not a ransom demand… this was a taking.
The traffic lights turned orange.
The black BMW was one car from it.
The car in front of it – a red Toyota – raced through the amber light.
They wouldn't have time to make it through, Ianto thought joyously. They'd have to stop.
The light went red.
Yes.
The black BMW blasted through the red light and on to the ensuing roundabout without hesitation. There were protesting horns, but it didn't deter them. They were gone.
Ianto stopped running.
He had failed.
In every way.
Oh God. Oh God, Damo.