The Cupid Touch

The Cupid Touch Chapter 29 - When Things are Starting to Go Wrong...

 My hands were shaking like some kind of frightened animal as I dialled Joe's number. I told myself I was just buying time while I thought my way out of this. I told myself I wasn't betraying him, because he already knew that they had me.

It didn't matter what I told myself. I felt like Judas as the single ring went through to his cell-phone. He picked up quickly enough that I knew he'd been waiting with his thumb on the button.

"Helena." His voice didn't sound like him. It sounded at once harsher, and more vulnerable. It sounded like they'd already done something terrible to him before they'd even touched him.

"Joe, I'm sorry." I wanted to say it first, while I had the chance. I was sorry. Heart-achingly sorry. If I'd made it through security, he could have picked them off one by one using a power they didn't know he had. He would be safe.

"Don't say that. Are you all right?"

"Yes. Yes, but they say - they say they have Axel too. That he came back. Brandon said he needed him and..."

There wasn't a lot else to say about it. I knew he would want to smack Axel in the face as much as I did; and that he had known Brandon was a waste of space. None of it needed saying between us.

There were two hurried breaths into the mouthpiece, breaths I could almost feel on my skin, and then he said, "OK. You believe them?"

I glanced up at Mr. Jeroniri, the boy with the laptop, and then said, "Yes, I do."

"What do they want?"

"For you to go to an address." The boy drug-lord passed a piece of paper across the table, with a scratchy handwritten note. It was an industrial unit off the Interstate. Out of town, and out of the way. I could hear the fear in my voice as I read it out to him. "Mr. Jeroniri wants you to know that he will bring me and your brother there, and that we'll be free to go in exchange for you coming to talk to him."

"I guess he's heard what a good conversationalist I am," Joe-Moe said, and I gave a half-desperate laugh.

"I guess he has. He says that you have his word that he will release us if you arrive there and hand yourself over, and that his word means a great deal to him."

"I'm assuming there are lots of conditions about not bringing the cops, or anyone else."

"Yes."

I didn't need to say that it hadn't surprised me. Or that I was scared.

"It'll be ok," he said, quietly. I could feel my eyes stinging. There was none of the certainty in his voice that he'd had about us, and our future together. He was as scared as I was.

"Of course it will," I said, lying as hard in return. And then, quickly, as I could see the bald guy holding his hand out for my cell-phone, "I did miss you. I do miss you. You can have a million texts by way of apology. Just..."

I broke off, because I couldn't say in front of the listening men, Just live. Please, please, just live.

He gave a gentle but hoarse laugh into my ear.

"I'll take that. Tell them I'm on my way."

"I will."

After I hung up, I had to close my eyes and squeeze my hands into fists for a moment just to stop the fear and the sadness taking over. I felt the phone being tugged out of my hand by the bald guy, and fought the urge to clutch onto it, just because it was my one contact with Joe.

"Has he agreed?" Jeroniri asked.

I nodded, and with an effort opened my eyes again. "He says he's on his way."