The Escape Artist - RIVER CARTWRIGHT

Chapter 4

He'd fallen asleep on the sofa with some mindless police procedural on TV. His phone had dropped on the floor and vibrated noisily against the wood until he'd stirred and reached for it. He half glanced at the caller I.D but it didn't register in his brain until the call connected. 

“Yeah?” He answered, his voice low and gruff with sleep. 

“It's me,” he pulled the phone away from his ear, purely to check he wasn't imagining the sound of her terrified voice. 

“What happened?” He was on his feet and tripping over the coffee table before she had a chance to reply, and when she did, it was only to tell him that she didn't know where else to go. “But where are you? What happened?”

“We're at Slough House,”

“I'm on my way.” He found a clean t-shirt and dressed in the dark, grabbing his go bag as the front door slammed behind him. He barely touched the brake as he made his way to Slough House, didn't stop for red lights and didn't so much as look at the speed limit. He was wholly unprepared for what greeted him when he made it to the office. He rounded the first set of stairs to see Ella at the top, poorly lit by the fire exit sign she held a baseball bat usually found behind Shirley’s office door and looked more like the ‘final girl’ of a horror film. “Fuck. It’s me, El, it's just me.” River stumbled back down the last couple of steps and she dropped her guard, the bat fell limply to her side. As he climbed the stairs again and got closer, he could see the cut on her forehead and the dried blood on her face. She waited for him at their office door and shoved the bat at him. Inside, he could just make out a mop of dark curls snuggled under his coat on the floor. Ella's phone was in pieces on his desk.  

“Kitchen, c'mon,” he pointed further down the hall, leaving the bat behind. “Clover's OK, she's sleeping,” he assured her. With the lights on in the kitchen, he could finally see her properly as she shrugged off the long, puffy coat she still wore. Her legs were bare in pyjama shorts and he could see purple bruises forming on her thighs. When she turned to put a cup of coffee in front of him, the oversized t-shirt hung loose around her neck, he quickly shifted his gaze to her face, ashamed that his mind wandered to places it shouldn't given her current situation. “Sit down, let me clean up that cut.” He offered her his seat and retrieved the first aid kit from under the sink. He gently cleaned away the blood with a sterile wipe, she winced as he got closer to the cut itself. He touched her as lightly as he could, noting her bottom lip wobbling as she tried not to cry. He carefully covered the cut with a plaster and crouched down so he no longer towered over her. “You don't have to tell me -” he started but she cut him off quickly. 

“Can you see how bad the bruising is please? I'm not sure if I need to go to the hospital,” she asked in a small voice. It was the first time she'd spoken since he'd arrived and he marvelled at how she could sound so vulnerable yet so composed at the same time. He stood up and stepped back to give her space and she sighed heavily, grimacing as she got to her feet. She lifted the hem of her t-shirt to show him. The soft curve from her stomach across to her waist was dark purple, he could make out the edge of a boot print within the bruise and gritted his teeth. She continued to turn on the spot and he was momentarily drawn to a small black line tattoo of a four-leafed clover on her hip. She lifted the top a little higher and he swallowed hard as he caught sight of the underside of her breast. The bruises seemed to outline her ribs like a ladder up her body, he followed them round to her back which had fainter signs of discolouration. She dropped the t-shirt and looked at him expectantly. “Go on, say it.” She prompted him, her voice stronger this time. 

“Say what?” His felt weaker, even to his own ear.

“I told you so. You were right, after all. You knew you would be.” She said bitterly. He didn't respond. Instead he held open his arms, half expecting her to turn away from him after the anger he’d directed at her over previous weeks. Her bottom lip wobbled again and she stepped into his embrace. She held herself together for longer than he thought she would, but after a couple of seconds he felt her shoulders shake as she sobbed into his chest. He held her long after she'd stopped crying, waiting for her to let go first which she only did once her breathing had recovered.