Jerking his gaze to the left, he studied his surroundings—no one else seemed to have noticed anything—and then followed the path to the left and around the corner. Just down from the junction was an alleyway, and he paused just before he reached it. Not hearing any other noise, he peered around the edge ofthe building and into the shadowed alley. He couldn’t be sure if there was anyone in there because the dark areas covered a significant amount of it. But then he heard the sound again.
This time, he was sure it was a silenced gunshot. Creeping down the alley, he kept close to the wall, pulling his gun from his holster. Everything was quiet again, but he kept going, hoping something—or someone—would show themselves sooner rather than later. He paused and listened and then stepped around the large industrial bin at the back of the building.
He wished he’d called for backup.
Five men stood around the edges of the dead-end of the alleyway with guns pointed towards him. He held his hands out, showing he had a gun but had no intention of using it.
“Everything okay here?” he asked, glancing at each person in turn, trying to collate all the information he could about them on the off chance he would get out of this alive.
“Throw your gun towards me,” the man in the centre, right opposite Felix, said. He did. “Now, strip and get on your knees.” He did. The guy bundled his clothes together but paused when he saw Felix’s watch. “Watch, too.”
Felix hesitated for a split second and then removed it slowly, ensuring he quickly stopped it before handing it over.
“Do you want something in particular? With the noises I heard here, I was expecting to see a dead body,” he joked but received no response.
“Where’s your phone?”
“In my jeans.” Felix cursed silently as they remove it. So much for keeping it for one of the team to locate him with. “Sure. Feel free to call my family to let them know I’ll be late for dinner.”
“Hands behind your back,” the same man ordered. He was obviously the one in charge.
Felix complied with every order they gave, despite the chill beginning to seep into his bones from being stark naked at theend of October and knowing there was nothing he could do to get help for himself. “What’s the plan? Are you killing me here or taking me somewhere else first?” They tied his hands with zip ties.
The man, who reminded him of Harrison Ford in his younger years, said, “We will kill you when the time is right. That is not now.”
Although that didn’t fill him with the warm and fuzzies, he at least had a chance to live for a little longer. How long ‘a little’ was would depend on his captors. He silently cursed himself for being so predictable in his own life when he tutored others to be more unpredictable to stop this exact thing from happening.
“Do I at least get to know what or who I’m dying for?”
“Not yet.”
Red lights filled the alley, and he craned his neck to see the silhouette of a car reversing towards them. Hands grabbed him and forced him to his feet and then shepherded him into the back of it. After he was pushed into a chair, one guy put ear plugs in him first, then a strong, potent cream on his nose, which reminded him of the heat cream for soothing muscles, and a sprinkling of salt on his tongue. Then a bag was put over his head. It wouldn’t stop him from being able to figure out the direction they were going in—after all, he had significant training—but it would all mess with his senses, which he guessed was the point.
As they started moving, he concentrated on the turns of the vehicle and the amount of time they were driving. He’d counted seventeen minutes before they came to a stop and didn’t start moving again. Doors opened, and fresh air filled the space. Seventeen minutes. That was still a fairly large area they could be in, but coupled with the turns he believed he had remembered, they had to be south west of Windsor.
Rough hands pulled him from the vehicle, and he tumbled to the ground, smacking his face onto a rock or something and skinning his knees. Sandy with small stones. Like a non-paved driveway, maybe. It made a slight crunching sound as they walked across it and up some steps, indicating they’d moved indoors. They took several more steps before they stopped him. Muted voices were all he could hear. The bag was removed from his head, and he blinked to get his eyes to work as fast as possible. Then the ear plugs were removed, though there was not much sound to be heard. The guy who had bundled his clothes earlier came back with some and proceeded to dress Felix in clothes that weren’t his. He needed help when it came to unfastening his hands and then refastening them. If there hadn’t been so many men around, Felix would’ve taken the chance to fight his way free.
“Kneel,” the original voice said from beside him.
Felix knelt. One man took a photo of him, one he was sure would not win awards and then he faced a video camera with several people behind it, and two people beside him. One held a paper to Felix’s left, the other held a gun.
Swallowing hard, Felix knew the time had come.
The red light on the camera turned to green, and the man to his right, the main man, started talking.
“We have one of your men, and you need to understand that he’s not coming back to you. You have been warned over the last few months, but you have not listened. You have continued to make the wrong decisions, and because of this, you will pay the price.
“Number four is no more,
Are you scared to your core?
Tick, Tock, Tick, Tock,
No more time on the clock.”
And with those words, the man covered Felix’s head with the bag again and fired a shot.
****