‘He-, he-, help…’ she managed to wheeze, and through her watering eyes she saw the man’s pale blue irises regarding her with a sense of mocking amusement as she choked. The world began to swim as her lungs burned in silent agony within her chest. Her coughing was ineffective; the gum remained lodged with stubborn tenacity inside her windpipe. She dropped to her knees, and the floor came rushing up to meet her with alarming speed. A darkness was billowing, gnawing with hungry force at the outsides of her vision, crushing and throttling the life out of her with invisible fingers.
It was as she was starting to lose consciousness that stout hands grasped her torso, locked themselves under her ribcage and forced their strength through her upper body in a swift jerk. The Heimlich manoeuvre worked; she coughed up the gum and life-giving air came rushing back into her lungs. The girl flopped back onto the patchy red carpet, not caring about the grimy stickiness of it pressing against her bare arms. She saw the haggard, craggy face of the old janitor, Jenkins, peering down at her with alarm.
‘You was chokin’,’ he mumbled, his crooked teeth white against deep pink gums and ebony skin. ‘Good thing I seen ya. Good thing, huh?’
‘Th-, thank you,’ she uttered through deep, intense breaths of air. ‘You s-, saved my life.’
The old man shrugged.
‘Ain’t the first time I saved s’mbody’s life,’ he said flatly. ‘Don’t ‘spect t’ get no thanks fo’ it neither. Just doin’ what I gotsta do.’
‘Did you … did you see him?’
Jenkins raised an eyebrow, causing his rheumy eyes to bulge a little out of their thick sausage lids.
‘See who?’
‘The gringo, Jenkins, the gringo … the, the white guy, the guerro, big, no, huge, tall-ass sonummabitch, standin’ there by the counter. Just a minute ago, while I was chokin’.’
‘Big tall cracker, y’ say? Nope … didn’t see nobody. Jus’ you, on yo’ knees, chokin’ on that gum.’
‘He was there, I promise you. Must have been close on seven feet, an’ built like a damn tank. Had a business suit on, long blonde hair, an’ a big-ass beard an’ shit too. Scary-lookin’ dude, real scary. He was watchin’ me choke. Watchin’ me an’ laughin’ about it.’
The old man shook his head slowly.
‘I didn’t see nobody. You was trippin’ or somethin’, girl … you must’a been.’
‘I swear he was there, though. There was somethin’ real spooky about that asshole. Real spooky, Jenkins.’
The janitor stood up and brushed his knees off.
‘If y’ say so … I gotsta get back t’ work. You sure you okay?’
‘I don’t feel too good after that. Think I’mma call Danny to cover the rest of this shift.’
‘You do that. Yeah, you do that…’
***
Sigurd’s eyes gleamed in the dark as his angular, strong-featured face was lit up in flickering hues of alternating light and shadow by the reflected luminescence of the images on the cinema screen. He was alone in the theatre, and he sat with his long, heavy legs draped over the threadbare seat in front of him. Trailers for forgotten films of yesteryear were playing, but his eyes were not on the screen; instead, they were locked on the Roger Dubuis watch strapped around his left wrist.
‘Yes,’ he growled to himself the moment the hands struck the appointed hour. ‘Yes...’
With a savage grin he sprang to his feet and leapfrogged over the seats, dashing towards the emergency exit. He tossed a rapid glance over his shoulder and then, seeing that the coast was clear, pushed through the emergency door.
As it closed behind him, leaving him in the dimness of the exit passage, he reached inside his suit jacket and caressed the grip of his Desert Eagle pistol.
‘Trust not in men,’ he whispered to himself. ‘Trust in steel … trust only in steel … I am the terror in the night.’
With silent speed he moved down the passage and rounded a corner at the end of it, vanishing like an evaporating phantom into the shadows, ready to commence his night of slaughter.
A minute later he stepped out of the back door of the theatre, emerging into a dank, cramped alley that was piled up with rusting hulks of scrap steel, old auto parts and other abandoned and broken items. He loosened his pistol in its holster; it would see some use in the next few moments, he was quite sure of that. His enemies would not have been so foolish as to leave their prize unguarded, but whatever troops they were using would be mortals, and Sigurd feared no mortal.
He sniffed at the air while pricking his ears to detect the slightest sounds, and his polar bear senses started to feed him a glut of information, for there had been people here very recently. Yes, very recently indeed, yet now he could detect no hint of a living, breathing human presence. Something felt off; he drew his pistol and gripped it in his right hand. He would not be taken unawares, nor step into a trap, which this situation was starting to smell like.
The first hints of a flareup of rage licked at the back of his neck with flicking lizard tongues; he knew that this was the place, and that his enemies could not have had time to move the prize. His sources – whose information was always accurate – had informed him that this would be the exact hour at which they would be moving her, in fact. This was why he had waited until now; they would be at their most vulnerable at this point.
But there was nobody.
Sigurd breathed in deeply and closed his eyes, allowing the oxygen to aerate his blood as he honed in on a crisp, clear and detached sense of focus and concentration.
You are a
