The America Ground (The Forensic Genealogist Series Book 3) by Nathan Dylan Goodwin

Author:Nathan Dylan Goodwin [Goodwin, Nathan Dylan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-09-01T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

The silver BMW bumped along some kind of long dirt track, which caused the driver to curse as he swerved erratically to avoid the potholes. Aside from his occasional outburst of aggravation, the journey so far had been quite quiet. As they had accelerated away from the archive, Morton had quickly thought about the kinds of questions that Juliette and the police would ask him—assuming that he wasn’t being led to his death—when he got home. The first question that they would ask would be about the men who had captured him and he had already failed on that count. Thuggish men in jeans. Early thirties. That was his description of them so far. Then the police would ask where he was taken, so he tried to plot the journey in his mind as best he could, attempting to keep count of the turns and the approximate time spent on each stretch of road. But it was a hopeless task: they had been driving for a good half an hour now and, after leaving the dual carriageway, they had taken a multitude of turnings and roundabouts that had disorientated him completely.

The car slowed and Morton felt from the way that the two men either side of him were growing twitchy that they were now approaching their destination.

Sure enough, the car drew to a halt and the engine was turned off.

Morton tried to control his breathing. He knew that whatever was about to happen next relied on him remaining calm. The feeling that he had strips of barbed wire lining his stomach intensified as fear began to grip him.

The doors either side of him opened and the two men jumped out. A rush of warm air, laced with the faintest farmyard whiffs, blew into the car and Morton knew at once that they were somewhere in the countryside: he had been deliberately bundled off into the middle of nowhere.

‘Tell Kevin we’re here,’ one of the men called, before Morton became aware of his presence beside him in the car. ‘Out,’ he ordered.

Morton blindly shuffled across the back seat as best he could and tried to swivel his feet out onto the ground, but instead caught them on the bottom of the doorframe and tumbled out, unable as he was to break his fall. He landed awkwardly, his right shoulder taking the brunt of the impact. He winced and bit his lip to avoid crying out.

The men around him laughed and then one of them grabbed his right bicep and yanked him onto his feet. ‘Walk,’ he instructed, shoving Morton forwards.

Morton followed the sound of the men striding in front of him, listening intently for any clues that might help to determine his location. But for the crunching of gravel under the men’s marching feet and some distant birdsong, there were no other sounds.

The footfall of the men suddenly changed. They slowed and the surface on which they walked altered. It was now harder, quieter.

Then he realised that the temperature had dropped and the acoustics around him had also changed: he was now inside a building.

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