Present day – Thursday, 20th October
She can't just stand here; she has to find him. "Harry," she calls in desperation as she begins to walk as fast as she can manage along the beach towards the rocks that are nearest to her. Surely those must be the rocks they'd crashed into earlier. She calls his name again, but the wind is so strong that she's sure he wouldn't be able to hear her even if she was standing right next to him. A flash of lighting illuminates the landscape again and she sees a shape that could be a man several yards away, just round the side of a large boulder that had shielded it from view until now.
She runs clumsily towards it, tripping several times before she reaches it and throws herself on her knees beside it. It's definitely a man. "Harry," she says, but gets no response. He's lying on his stomach, his face facing away from her, and as the lightning illuminates her surroundings once more, she sees that the hair on the back on his head is matted with what can only be blood. She hesitates just for a moment, scared to touch him, fearing that he's gone. But then a wave crashes over him, momentarily lifting him a little and dragging him back towards the sea, and with a cry of alarm, she grabs hold of his jacket, pulling in the opposite direction. She has to get him further up the beach. She stands once more, and grabs his jacket firmly with both hands. When the next wave hits, she pulls hard, using the momentum of the water to inch him slowly further up the beach.
Once he's safely out of reach of all but the biggest waves, she takes a deep breath, rolls him over, and with a desperate prayer to the universe, she presses her fingers against the pulse point in his neck. He's wet and cold, so very cold, but then her fingers are also icy, and for a moment, she's not sure if Harry's dead, or if her fingertips are just so numb that they can't feel anything.
There is no pulse.
"Please, Harry," she begs as tears begin to cloud her vision and she leans over him, pressing her lips against his cold, lifeless ones. "Please," she murmurs as she moves her fingers across his skin, thinking that she must surely have the wrong spot. "Don't leave me."
Yesterday afternoon – Wednesday, 19th October
She can see him looming over her, his face covered by a rough beard, his body odour overpowering, his expression predatory, but she refuses to go to pieces. She's already decided that she's not going to give him the satisfaction of eliciting any emotion from her. Harry has a plan and she has to trust that it will work, even if it'll be harder than they'd thought now that he's tied to the chair as well.
It had been difficult and time consuming, but she'd managed to loosen the bonds tying his hands together earlier so he can slip them off easily though he hadn't had time to do the same for her before their captor had returned. In fact, he'd only just managed to wrap the rope round his wrists in what appeared to be a tight knot before the man had lifted him off the floor, punched him in the face, and before Harry could recover, shoved him in a chair and secured him with a rope wrapped round his chest and another round his ankles. Harry had managed to knee him in the face as he'd attempted to do the latter, but it hadn't served any purpose but to anger the other man who'd retaliated with another punch, this time to Harry's stomach, winding him.
She feels the panic rise inside her as he pulls her to her feet, but she managed to control it, taking deep breaths to steady herself as she seeks out Harry's eyes with her own. He looks calm, his gaze warm and reassuring, and she takes courage from that, convincing herself that he's got everything under control. So she shuts down her mind, losing herself in recitation of poetry inside her head, revisiting her favourite books, imagining what it would feel like to be an eagle soaring in the sky, picturing herself at the top of the Empire State building in New York gazing out across the city. Part of her brain still registers what's going on, but the most important part is no longer paying attention. She acts like a doll, displaying no emotions as he rips her shirt open and pushes it off her shoulders, tearing off her bra next and groping her breast roughly, pinching her nipple.
"Come on, sweetheart," the oaf growls. "You need to put on a good show. See? Your boss there is watching us. You're not bad looking. I bet he spends all day watching you, lusting after you. I bet he wishes he was me right now, standing here ready to fuck you."
She doesn't even react when Harry replies, "If I was the one in front of her right now, she wouldn't be standing there with that vacant look in her eyes. She'd be begging me to fuck her. But I bet you don't even know what it's like to have a woman beg you to let her please you, not without forcing her."
"You don't know shit," the man replies angrily, releasing her momentarily and turning towards Harry.
"I know a lot of things," Harry replies calmly, "and one of them is that it makes you more of a man to give a woman pleasure than it does to take from her what she doesn't want to give."
"I said shut up!" the man shouts, taking a few steps over to Harry and punching him hard in the stomach. He grunts in pain and the sound serves to bring her back to her surroundings with a jolt. When the man turns back towards her again, undoing her jeans and pulling them and her underwear down, she's overcome by panic and fear.
"Please," she begs softly. "Don't do this, please."
He laughs at her fear and roughly turns her round, pushing her forward over the surface of the table in the corner. She whimpers once as he exposes her, but otherwise makes no sound, biting her lip to stop her cries as the tears slide down her face.
"For Christ's sake!" Harry exclaims, his voice changing as he loses his composure and his anger and fear surface for a moment. "Have some compassion. What if this was your mother or sister?"
"I have no mother or sister," he sneers, "but if you want, I'll do yours next."
"Get your hands off her, you despicable piece of shit," he growls, "or I'll personally castrate you and remove your puny, little prick, so you never bother another woman again."
He laughs, pausing in the act of unbuckling his belt, and says, "And how do you plan on doing that? You've no weapon and you're tied to a chair."
"Come over here, if you're man enough, and I'll tell you," Harry smiles, regaining some of his composure, and she finds herself desperately hoping that this means he's managed to loosen the rope around his chest.
"Later," the man shrugs. "I'm busy." Then he swiftly unbuckles his belt and pulls down his jeans and boxers, letting them pool round his ankles. She whimpers at the sound of the buckle hitting the floor and squeezes her eyes shut as she feels his hands on her hips, but the rough thrust of his cock into her never comes. Instead she hears a strange gurgling sound coming from behind her and feels the man's hands release her. When she hears the scuffling noises, she straightens herself up in alarm, turning to face him, and what she sees has her heart skipping several beats. Harry has the man's neck locked into a hold from behind that is suffocating him. The man is struggling, but his legs are tangled in his trousers and he can't regain his footing. He's fighting Harry with his hands, trying to scratch his face and eyes as he struggles to free himself, but there is such a look of determination and hatred on Harry's face as he hangs on, tightening the pressure on his windpipe with every passing second, that she's sure there's no way in hell the man can break free. "Castration's too good for you," she hears him snarl in the other man's ear.
Recovering from the shock of such an extraordinary change in her circumstances, she quickly moves to help Harry, but discovers that she can't as her jeans are still around her knees. Ashamed suddenly of her nakedness in front of him, she crouches down to pull her bound hands forward under her feet so she can stand and pull her trousers back up. By the time she's finished refastening them and has pulled her shirt closed in front, pushing it into the waistband of her jeans to hold it in place, the man is dead. He's stopped struggling and falls limply to the floor when Harry releases him.
"Harry," she whispers softly as she watches him stand over the man he's just killed, the same expression of disgust and hatred on his face as he bends over to check his pulse and pat down his pockets, looking for a weapon of some kind.
"Yes?" he asks, lifting his gaze to hers as he straightens up, a large, folding, pocket knife in his hand.
"Thank you," she murmurs and feels tears of gratitude and relief spring to her eyes and begin to slide down her cheeks even as she attempts to keep them at bay.
"Men like that," he says firmly, "don't deserve to live." He takes several steps towards her until he's standing in front of her, lifting his hand to gently touch her elbow. "Are you all right?" he asks softly, his eyes filling with concern.
"Fine," she nods and wipes at her cheeks with the back of her hands, trying to pull herself together. This is no time for tears. There's a boatload of men like this one who will probably be more than willing to gang rape her in retaliation before they kill them both. "I'll be fine. What are we going to do now?"
"We have to try to escape," he says as he pulls her wrists towards him and cuts her bonds with the knife. "When they find him, they'll probably want retribution and I don't fancy our chances. I reckon it's best if we try to swim to shore. With any luck, the tracker I swallowed is still working and Zaf will be tracking us. Let's look for a couple of life vests and then we'll see if we can spot any land, and hopefully, slip into the water unseen. Okay?"
She nods, confident that swimming to dry land is something she can manage well, especially with Harry's reassuring presence close by. She's always been a good swimmer.