Page 86 of Ticket Out

He stopped when he caught sight of her, as if he was confused at why she would be coming toward him.

She thought about last night and wondered if James had assumed she would stay at home, and whether the bobbies on patrol had thought that was where she was.

She frowned at the thought. She had work. She thought he understood that.

Like him, she had to make her own way. They had talked about their families over dinner, and she knew he had come much further than his laborer father and his mother, who was a cleaning lady.

Her own mother worked herself to the bone, getting up at 3am to start making bread and working until she fell asleep at the table on her accounts at night.

He shouldn’t have assumed.

She’d half-lifted one of the bags in greeting to the bobby when there was a rustle in the bushes that edged a run-down, abandoned building a few houses down from her own, and suddenly Mr. Knife was behind her, knife to her throat.

“Good timing,” he whispered in her ear. “I wanted a witness. Can’t get better than the filth.”

The bobby had gone very still, eyes wide.

He was young, Gabriella saw now. And he didn’t know what to do.

Mr. Knife dragged her to a black car parked on the road right beside her. She could feel the strength in his hands and arms.

She’d noticed the Bentley as she’d turned onto the street. A car like that didn’t belong in this neighborhood, unless it was owned by one of the slumlords who’d bought up swathes of Notting Hill, here to cast an eye over their property.

“Open the door,” Mr. Knife told her.

She bent to put down her shopping, but the knife dug into her throat.

“No. Don’t drop the bag.”

She awkwardly opened the passenger door with two fingers.

“Get in. Careful now, keep your shopping safe.”

She slid in, putting her bags at her feet.

She kept her gaze fixed on the bobby.

He had started moving closer.

Mr. Knife gave a little chuckle, and she cried out as he pressed the knife deeper into her throat.

She felt the blood, and the constable stopped dead, eyes even wider.

“Hands out.” He pulled rope out of his jacket pocket, already tied into two loops. “Quickly now.”

She reluctantly did so, brain racing for a way out of the problem, heart pounding as she felt the tickle of blood running down her neck. He still looked normal, she thought, shocked. Absolutely normal.

“Good girl.” He pulled on the two tails of rope between the loops, and they tightened around her wrists. There was a metal ring shaped a little like a capital letter D hanging from the center loop, open on the straight edge, and he pushed her against the still-open passenger door, and hooked the ring onto the door handle, then twisted it closed.

It was something they used in rock climbing, she remembered. Her Uncle Guido often spoke about his time climbing the Alps, and she’d seen these in the photos of him standing, one foot on a rock, mountain peak in the background.

With her hands tied, she wouldn’t easily be able to unscrew it.

She was attached to the car. Trapped.

He slammed the door closed, and she leaned away from it just in time to save her head being hit by the window.

He ran around the front of the car, waving the bloody-edged knife at the bobby. There was something bizarre in the action. It was almost as if he was dancing.

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