He was all sharp edges with a brooding darkness that set your pulse racing. His eyes blue fathomless pools. It was like looking into a void. Ice cold.
He was a cold hearted assassin. She was trained to take him down.
A Dark AU Van McCann story (thi...
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"Van!" His name burst from my lips like a shot from a gun, full of desperation.
Part of me was expecting the call to go unanswered, a gory scene playing in my mind of Van's bloody and lifeless body lying on the cold hard tiles of the agency foyer floor, but as the call connected my sense of relief was overwhelming. There was no time to seek solace in it though, Billy's chilling threats mingled with the repetitive dull thud of Nick's huge frame slamming against the bathroom door were a constant reminder of my precarious situation.
"Lyla... thank fuck!" Van blurted, his voice gruff and strangled. It sounded raw. "Where are you? I'm at the railway bridge. I tracked your phone here..."
I tried to hold in a sob, but my composure was in tatters and my state of mind was bordering on despair. The pain in my thigh was white hot, any tiny movement drawing tears from my eyes. Plans of escape were looking more and more like a hopeless notion as I heard a loud cracking noise as the bathroom door bowed slightly inwards.
"I... I don't know... I don't fucking know! It's Charles... it was him all along. I trusted him. He said it was a safe-house.... now he's gone and left me for dead. And they thought you were going to come... They've been sent to kill you... and now they're going to kill me..."
The words were tumbling out of me quickly like broken pieces, fragments of sentences that didn't fit and wouldn't make sense to Van. I was dimly aware of his voice underneath it all repeating my name over and over, growing steadily louder, but I felt like I was underwater, sucking in breaths that didn't even reach my lungs.
"Lyla you gotta listen to me for fucks sake!"
I stopped abruptly, still and silent, frozen like a spell had been cast, the chaos outside the door ensuing but it fell away for a moment. It wasn't the command or the roughness of Van's voice that subdued me. It was something else in his tone that I'd never heard there before. Fear.
I whispered his name as I heard a harsh sound escape him, a growl of desperation and frustration and I pressed the phone against my ear, flattening my other hand against my free ear, trying to shut out the racket.
"Listen to me... you need to be calm. Tell me where you are. Think Lyla! What can you see? I can trace the call if you stay on the line but it's gonna take time."
I dug deep into my reserves, mind over matter to quell my fear, trying to turn my panic into something productive that I could use. My mind slid back to my car journey with Charles. I'd been too caught up in my fury at Paul to take too much note of my surroundings, but scraps came back to me, snap-shots of the snow-covered scenery and road signs that had shot past the passenger window in a blur.
"It's North-East of the city... we passed Preston and just kept going. There was countryside and then woodland. I wasn't looking where we were going... I just felt so fucking angry... trying to make sense of it all..."
