The Innocent Girl by Alex Coombs

Author:Alex Coombs [Coombs, Alex]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Boldwood Books

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He opened the kitchen door and slipped inside. He saw the tips of her fingers on the door jamb. It was now or never. He ran for the open door of the fridge.

His original plan was to throw all his weight at the door and send it smashing into her outstretched fingers, breaking them all. He’d forgotten about the wet floor. As he reached the metal of the door, his foot slipped beneath him and he skidded, depriving himself of momentum. The noise from the compressor inside the fridge was extremely loud, but Hanlon must have been aware of something subliminally because she straightened her arm fractionally, so that when the heavy door slammed to, it struck her just above the wrist of her right hand.

The force of the blow fractured the bone with an immediate, agonizing pain. Hanlon snatched her arm back in an unthinking, automatic reaction and as soon as her hand was out of the way, there was a loud click as the fridge door slammed. Then she heard a dry scraping noise as he forced the steel of the cylindrical-shaped knife sharpener he’d picked up from the wall-mounted rack through the metal bracket designed to take a padlock, so the fridge and its contents could be secured. Hanlon was locked in.

The fridge’s internal temperature stabilized, the compressor cut out, and she could hear the rattle of the fly chain and the metal clang of the bar that operated the kitchen fire doors leading to the yard, as he let himself out.

She was alive, but trapped. She clutched her injured arm to her chest with her left hand and her eyes narrowed with the pain. But that was only the initial shock. Then a second wave of agony broke over her and she felt her knees buckle beneath her.

She nearly blacked out with the pain. A wave of nausea crashed over her. It was the kind of pain you felt deep down inside your gut, in the pit of your stomach. She sat down heavily on a sack of Yukon Gold potatoes, trying to control her breathing.

Blood was trickling through the fingers coiled around the wrist and she rested her forearm on her knees as she carefully let go and assessed the damage. The skin was already rising like bread dough as the swelling increased, and each beat of her heart amplified the pain as the blood was forced through the constricted vessels.

She suddenly shivered violently from the cold. Hanlon was wearing the grey silk dress and it had short sleeves. Fine for a hot, summer’s night; not so good as fridge wear.

She watched the goosebumps rising on her arms. She could see a temperature gauge on the wall opposite, telling her it was six degrees. It had been twenty-two Celsius outside when she’d parked her car.

She wondered how long it would take them to find her.

However soon it was, it was going to feel like a long, long time.

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