Chapter XVII
Brynn Wydd, Wales
'The time has finally come,' Justin thought, thinking of Guy, 'I can finally make her pay for what she did to you, and I'll do my best to make her suffer, I promise you.'
Justin Black had taken Alex back to her cottage, deciding that its isolation made it a perfect place to do the job. He had waited so long for this moment, over seven years, and now he wanted to relish every second of it in order to make it linger in his memory.
If he had wanted to, he could have killed her with one swift blow to the neck. Her martial arts skills were rudimentary compared to his own. But he wanted to make her fight him. To plead with him. The thought brought a smile to his face.
He had handcuffed her to her bed. "So you finally got your wish," she said to him, "I'm sure Guy would be so proud."
In spite of the handcuffs and the bed, Justin knew that Alex had no fear that he would rape her. He suspected that she had known what he kept secret from everyone, including Charlotte, for a long time. "He was more than just your mentor, wasn't he? Guy was your lover." She said it matter-of-factly as though his homosexuality was the most obvious thing in the world.
Justin glared at her. He wanted to strike her with every remark she made and he saw that Alex took some pleasure knowing it was taking every ounce of self-control he had, to refrain himself. He would leave her the pleasure now, because the last thing he wanted was to kill her too soon, without being able to savour the moment.
He took out a syringe and injected its contents into Alex's arm.
She cringed. "Poison, really? That can't be very rewarding for you."
It was a sedative and it would ensure him that she wouldn't have the speed or the energy to escape should anything go wrong. But at the same time it wasn't strong enough to prevent her from putting up a fight once he undid the handcuffs in a few hours. Justin knew her one advantage was that she was small and fast and he needed to make sure there was no way she could get away alive. Still, he wanted to keep the thrill of the chase alive. He wanted her well enough to challenge him.
"You're going to lose that attitude soon," he sneered.
While waiting for the drug to take effect, Justin decided to take a nap. He wanted to be suitably refreshed for what lay ahead.
Swansea, Wales
The flight from Pine Valley to Swansea had been smooth and fast with no delays. While en route, Dimitri had arranged to have a rental car waiting for him when he got off the jet.
"We're here. What are you going to do now?" Erica asked him after they touched down the runway, as Max looked on.
"I'm going to go to the address Max gave me. According to the map, it shouldn't be more than an hour and a half's drive from Swansea. If I don't call you from my cell phone within a couple of hours, I want you to send the police there," Dimitri whispered to Erica so that Max wouldn't hear.
Erica shook her head, baffled by his single-minded determination, "Please don't do anything reckless Dimitri."
He kissed her on the cheek, "Not a chance. Don't let Max out of your sight, please."
He bent down and kissed Max as well, "I'm going to bring your Mom here, and I'll tell her I made you break the promise, okay?"
"Okay."
He glanced back, looking at their serious faces once more, and then he grabbed his jacket and left the jet sitting on the tarmac of the airfield.
Brynn Wydd Compound, Wales
Room #6
Heidi watched as the two men in the room fought to keep their eyes open. It had been over two hours since Charlotte had ordered them to bring her here, and still there was no word of further instructions.
Heidi wasn't sure whether this was something to be grateful for or not. All she knew was that she was horribly uncomfortable in the chair into which they had forced her. Her hands were handcuffed and her wrists were sore. Her legs had fallen asleep and she desperately needed to use the bathroom.
She wondered about Philip, who would be worried sick looking for her by now, and she wondered too about Alex and Max. 'Please let them be alright,' she thought.
"What are you staring at?" one of the men asked her.
"Nothing." The last thing she wanted to do was irritate them.
"It didn't look like nothing to me," the agent was obviously bored and tired and needed to rile her in order to pass the time.
Heidi said nothing.
The man got up and stood next to her, "Hey, I'm talking to you."
Just as he moved closer, Charlotte entered the room, "What's going on here?" she asked, the expression on her face one of irritation.
The guard stood up straight, "Nothing ma'am."
Charlotte frowned at him and asked him to hand over his handgun to her, "I'd like you both to leave the room, and wait outside."
They did so without a word.
Charlotte had pondered the problem of Heidi for several hours before coming into the room. She wanted to avoid killing her, as dead bodies always created problems, especially with nearby spouses looking for them. But in the end she concluded that there really was no other way to ensure that the nanny remained silent. Heidi knew that Alexandra had worked for her as an agent and that she had ordered to have her killed. Those were two facts that could never leave this compound.
Granted Philip would conduct a search and her disappearance would make for sensational news in the local papers, Charlotte took comfort in the fact that Brynn Wydd was off limits to the local police, or any law enforcement agency, for that matter.
In a few days they'd find her body in a nearby lake and not long afterwards Heidi's death would be all but forgotten.
She decided to kill Heidi herself.
Doing so would give her agents something to talk about. It would cement her reputation as a fearless leader who was not afraid of getting her hands dirty. The kind of leader who commanded respect and obedience.
"We women always have to do everything twice as well, to be thought of as half as good, don't we?" she mused to Heidi.
Then she raised the gun and aimed it directly at Heidi.
Meanwhile, outside in the hallway, the guards heard the noise of a moving chair and then two bullets fired in quick succession.
They waited for several long minutes for Charlotte to come out of the room, before realizing that something must have gone horribly wrong.
They rushed into the room, weapons drawn.
Alex's Cottage, Brynn Wydd, Wales
Alex watched Justin sleep on the chair next to her as she felt herself become lethargic. Not having slept or eaten in the last 20 hours, the drug quickly made its way through her bloodstream. It would have been so easy to give in to the temptation of sleep. To go to sleep knowing she'd never wake up again.
'Oh no you don't,' she chided herself. 'You're not going to give up without a fight. You promised Max.'
Alex heard a watch alarm go off, and saw Justin wake up.
He walked up to her bedside, stretching himself. "This is it," he said with a smile of satisfaction, "I'm going to give you a chance to fight for your life."
He undid her handcuffs.
She looked at him angrily, "Coward. As if being twice my size doesn't give you enough of an advantage, you have to drug me."
In one quick movement, she took off her watch, strapped it around her fingers, and struck him in the face with it.
The action caught Justin off guard and left him with a bloody scratch right below the eyes. He obviously didn't think she would as fast or as hard.
Without waiting for him to realize what she had done, she jumped off the bed and ran past him, towards the doors.
She felt as though her legs were made of lead and that her movements were in slow motion. 'You can do this,' she thought. 'I just have to get to the gun in the cabinet downstairs. Think of Max.'
She ran down the stairs and felt Justin grab her from behind. Instead of grabbing her, he pushed her and lost his footing, sending both of them tumbling down the staircase together.
Near Brynn Wydd, Wales
Dimitri cursed when he realized he'd taken a wrong turn. As if driving on the left side of the road wasn't enough to confuse him, he noticed that every hill he passed looked exactly the same as the previous one.
He saw a young girl on a red bicycle pass by next to him, and stopped to ask her for directions. She pointed to the curving road ahead of him and told him to make a sharp left turn as soon as he passed the footbridge that led over the creek.
He thanked her and hurriedly rolled up his window again. He was so close to the address Max had given him. 'What if she's really there?' he thought to himself. It was a thought that left him nervous, afraid, and ecstatic at the same time.
'What if she's not there? What then?' He didn't want to consider that possibility because he had no idea what he'd do next. There was no plan. There was only a desperate need to follow his instincts. And they had led him here.
The sense of dread and urgency he had felt at Wildwind came back again, with an almost overwhelming force, enveloping him like a blanket of cold air.
He pressed on the gas pedal and forced the car to speed up.
Alex's Cottage, Brynn Wydd, Wales
The fall down the staircase, had knocked the wind out of both Justin and Alex, and for a moment there was a dead silence in the cottage as both of them struggled to regain their bearings.
Justin had taken the harder fall by virtue of his body weight. He moaned in pain, lying on the bottom with Alex on top of him.
Alex struggled to break free from his grasp and make her way towards the cabinet that held her handgun.
The thought that he had cushioned her fall filled Justin with renewed rage. He watched her get up and stumble like a drunk towards the cabinet.
He saw her pick up a handgun and clumsily attempt to load it, with shaking hands.
In spite of a searing pain that shot up his entire left side, he managed to get up and knock the gun out of her hand.
"I don't think so…" he told her. She tried to retrieve the weapon, but she was too slow and Justin too fast. He picked her up and threw her into the liquor cabinet, the back of her head breaking the glass into a hundred pieces.
He watched her slump to the ground, crying out in pain.
At first Alex thought she was going to pass out, when the impact with the glass knocked the wind out of her but instead the resulting pain renewed her alertness. It was strong enough to conquer the effects of the sedative.
She was lying on the floor with Justin on top of her and she saw him pull out a knife.
He was about to stab her, when she jerked her knees into his groin making him collapse to his side.
Alex made an effort to get up and get to the gun, but this time the combination of the sedative and her head injury made the room spin around her. She tried to find the gun by other means, crawling to it on her hands and knees. She spotted it, lying next to the sofa, and was about to reach for it, when she felt the razor sharp edge of Justin's knife stab her in the back.
It tore though her body with such force it nearly paralyzed her.
This was it, she realized. It was over. After everything she'd gone through, it would end like this, with Justin's brute force triumphing over her determination.
At least Max got away. Max is with Dimitri. That's all that matters in the end. I did one thing right. I kept him safe.
As he pulled out the blade, he turned her around and stabbed her once more, directly into her chest.
"I want you to see my face when you die," he said and stabbed her again. His voice was raspy from the obvious pain he was in and his face was now covered in blood from where her watch and fist had originally struck him.
As he uttered those words, a man entered the room and gasped in disbelief at the gruesome scene that was taking place before him.
Alex thought she was dreaming, "Dimitri…?"
It couldn't be. He couldn't be here. She WAS dreaming. Dying. Dreaming. Maybe they were one and the same. Maybe heaven was a dream.
"Oh God…" Dimitri watched as the man was about to plunge the knife into Alex once more and then he saw the gun lying on the floor.
Justin saw what Dimitri saw and both men leapt for the gun at the same time.
Slowed down by his injuries, Justin watched in shock as Dimitri picked up the gun and fired it directly at this chest.
It was the last thing he saw, before collapsing on the floor in a heap.
Dimitri dropped the gun as quickly as he had picked it up and rushed towards Alex, lying on the floor, beside Justin.
"Dimitri…is it really you?" she reached for him, smiling, delirious. She touched his face with a bloodied hand.
He held her hand against his cheek, "It's going to be okay, darling, I promise you."
Alex didn't care that he was a figment of her imagination. His voice was so real, it was the most wonderful sound she had ever heard. "Don't leave me, please, I don't want to die alone."
Dimitri noticed she was breathing with difficulty, coughing with the effort. "You're not going to die, darling, and I'm never going to leave you again. But you have to hold on, for Max…and for me."
Her torso was blood-soaked. Dimitri took off his jacket and draped it around her waist in an attempt to slow the flow of blood.
Dimitri had never felt as desperately helpless and afraid, as he did at that moment. He tried to dial for help on his cell phone with trembling hands before realizing it was pointless. That there was no transmission out here amidst the countless hills.
Normally, he knew better than to move an injured body, but, in this case, he decided he had no other choice.
He picked Alex up with ease, shocked at how light she felt in his arms. He cradled her against him and walked as quickly and gently as possible towards his car.
He had wanted so much to hold her in his arms again.
'But not like this,' he thought, 'Oh God, not like this.'
He laid her down on the back seat of the car and she moaned in pain at the movement.
He squeezed her hand, wishing there was some way he could ease her pain, "I'm going to get you to a hospital, but you have to hang in there. Please darling, hang on. For me and Max."
He pushed down on the gas pedal, and for the first time in his life, Dimitri drove above the speed limit. He saw that the clothes he wore were now covered in her blood.
By the time he reached the hospital that he had seen on his way to the cottage, Alex was unconscious and he carried her into emergency room himself.
"Help me, someone! Please, someone help me, right away!" he yelled in the hallway.
The emergency room of the local hospital was small and quiet, and the two doctors on duty had a shocked expression on their face when they saw a man walk in, carrying a woman covered in blood.
"Here! Put her here!" one of the doctors told him. He pulled out a bed and together with the other doctor they pushed her out of Dimitri's view into the only room he saw.
"Where are you taking her?" he asked breathlessly, as he followed them into the room.
A nurse stopped him in the process, "I'm sorry sir, that's the operating room. You can't go in there."
Dimitri brushed her off, "I can't leave her. I promised her…"
"Sir, you cannot go in there," she told him, more firmly this time.
"I have to be with her!" How could he make them understand that he said he wouldn't let her die alone? 'Stop it!' he thought. 'She's not going to die.'
The nurse looked at him with concern. "Sir, if you go in there you're only going to make things difficult for the team that's in there with her. I'll have to call security. Do you want me to do that?" she asked him, gently.
"No." Dimitri shook his head without looking at her. "Please don't let her die."
"They're going to do whatever they can for her."
"That's not good enough," he told her, "They have to do whatever it takes. Because I can't lose her again. Not again."
The nurse brought him a glass of water, and left him seated, alone, in the hospital corridor.
Dimitri stared at his bloodstained clothes. He was covered in her blood. He took off his Omega watch and clasped it in his hands reading the inscription again, 'A love for all time. A.'
'A love for all time,' the words echoed through his mind.
Dimitri waited, for what felt like an eternity.
It was hours later when Dimitri felt a sudden and inexplicable draft of cold air chill his body. He shivered and glanced at his watch once more. In the corner of his eye, he saw a doctor come out of the operating room and at the very moment, he noticed something else.
He saw that the hands on his watch stood still.