Close To Embers (formerly known as Modern Love)

Chapter 16 - The Traitor

“Hmm… may be we can team up?” Megan suggested.

“Yeah, may be.” Frost said, her grin spreading.  “They live just outside Memphis so I’m sure they’ll be more than happy to help.”

“What do you say we get this show on the road?” Jesse said, followed by an angry Jack, Uncle and Mason.

“Don’t tell them a thing.” Megan hissed in Nikita’s ear.  “We don’t want her to know that we’re on to her.”

“How stupid do you think I look?”

RUTH

“How much longer do you think you’ll be?”

Ruth listened to Shroud’s telephone conversation as her body healed itself from another battering.  She’d lost a sense of time now.  Had it just been a couple of hours since she was brought down here, or had it been more than that?  She kept slipping in and out of consciousness so much that she wasn’t sure if it was even the same day anymore.

Ruth gave another painful sob as Lola put a new knife into her right shoulder.

“She’s teaching her a lesson.” Shroud was saying before he started shouting, “I know exactly what she’s capable of!  But she’s had her chance and she used it to attack us.  Now she’s going to know what it means to piss me off!”  he sighed then carried on in his usual nonchalance.  “Very well, I’ll see you when you get here.”

“Where is she?” Lola asked.

“She wouldn’t say, just a few hours.”

“James, the closer her friends get here…”

“I know, Lola!”

“Why doesn’t she just kill them all now?”

“Well, she doesn’t want to kill them all for starters.”

“Why not?”

“She doesn’t want to believe that the Rice girl is responsible for her sisters’ death and she’s also taken a liking to that Cooley boy.”

That was it for Ruth.  She might not have been fully healed yet but her strength was already slowly returning and along with it her fighting spirit, the one that had kept her and her friends alive so far.  Before she knew it she’d broken free of her bonds and the little wooden chair, she’d sat on, broke to pieces as it shattered against the wall, knocking out the mystery man who always stood behind her out of sight.  He was no one important; she’d seen him in Mama’s files in passing.  Just another renegade out to exact revenge.

Lola went down easily with a single back handed blow to the head.  Shroud had another knife at the ready but so did Ruth as she took the one that Lola had just put through her right shoulder.  It was coated in blood.  Shroud tried to block his pregnant wife’s body from further damage and pounced forward at the ready with his knife.

Ruth wasn’t strong enough to take him on in a real fight, not yet any way.  She sidestepped his attack and knocked him out with the butt of her knife.  After that Ruth floundered her way upstairs, the feeble sounds of the mystery man stirring awake behind her.

At the top of the stairs was a white wooden door, she opened it up and locked it behind her, although it wouldn’t take much, a good kick maybe, to get it open.  Ruth recognised the gleaming kitchen right away – they were at the Sutton manor, not far from Megan’s apartment.  She only needed a distraction to get off this property without any of the guards stopping her.  As luck would have it, there were no guards tonight.

Her cell had gone unnoticed and remained in her back jeans pocket.  Frost couldn’t be trusted and she needed to warn them.  Should she call them?  No, a text would suffice surely.