Quick little update.
"Got him!" Beth shouted. "Blood belongs to Tarmin Kay, known associate of the Free Islam movement who have recently been focused on gaining more weapons for their stores."
"Great," Malcolm said sincerely. Both he and Tariq were looking for Free Islam strongholds in London. They soon discovered there were four known possible locations which tied in with the information they had from the phone call. Option one was unlikely as it had been stormed last month. The second one was under a busy office block so it didn't look plausible to be hiding an MI5 agent there. Which left two abandoned storage rooms in the back of London warehouses. Tariq went to inform Harry who emerged from his office immediately.
"Dimitri, you're coming with me to the one at the back of the eastside estate," Harry told him. "Beth, arrange for some discreet people to have a look around the other warehouse. I don't want them to be scared off. I want to catch these bastards."
"What makes you sure she's at eastside?" Dimitri asked.
"I'm not," Harry replied. "But I can't sit here and do nothing. I'm taking a fifty fifty gamble. Get the weapons before we leave." Dimitri stared at Harry for a second but saw he wasn't backing down. He didn't argue with his boss and unlocked the guns stored at the back of the grid. Each armed with two handguns they left the grid while Malcolm, Tariq and Beth arranged for backup at both locations.
Ruth was in agony. She still couldn't move much but she had been left alone, finally. Every muscle in her body was screaming out in pain and it was all she could do to turn her head when the door opened. She was terrified but she couldn't seem to relate the message from her brain to her body which didn't want to move.
"What the hell did you do to her?" one of the kidnappers asked his friend. He seemed to know by the silence and hit his accomplice around the face. "Oh bloody hell, he'll never let us get out of this alive now! You've just signed all of our death warrants! I told you to give her something to make her sleep, not paralyse her. This is important, I warned you to keep your baser instincts to yourself this time. You idiot!"
While they had been arguing Ruth had stretched her foot and was pleased to find that with effort she could move her toes. Whatever she had been given was wearing off slightly. Slowly but surely. But she couldn't concentrate anymore and felt her eyes drifting closed even as she fought to hold on to consciousness. Because clearly her body had had enough.
I'm sorry for putting her through hell! Once this story is finished I'll come up with something much happier.