Where There's A Will

Chapter Forty-Two

Lewis ignored the look directed at him by Crash as he headed up the stairs with water and a sandwich for Alice. He knew his partner didn't approve of what he was doing, and could feel his eyes boring into him, like drills searching for oil, but Lewis didn't let that deter him as he ascended.

It surprised him when he made it to the door of Alice's cell without Crash stopping him, either verbally or physically. Hurriedly he opened the door, so he could enter the room before Crash could decide to do something, and then nudged it shut with his foot once he was through. It banged shut loudly. He hadn't expected it to make so much noise and he gave a little jump; he recovered quickly and moved further into the room.

"How are you?" he asked as he approached Alice, who was sitting against the wall by the lamp. She was not as tense as she had been, but her eyes were red, suggesting she had been crying, and he felt a twinge of guilt.

Crash waited until Lewis had closed the bedroom door, then he turned away from the stairs and strode into the living room. He snatched up his mobile phone from the coffee table, and ground his teeth in frustration when the number he had dialled rang and rang without being answered. Disconnecting the call with an unnecessarily hard jab of one finger, he rang the number again, while keeping one ear pricked for any sign that Lewis was on his way back down; he didn't want his partner overhearing his phone call.

"Jim, it's Crash," he said, when the call was finally answered.

"I know who it is," Jim said irritably, resisting the urge to point out that the screen had shown him who was calling. "What d'you want? You're not supposed to call me unless there's an emergency." He was glad there was no-one around to overhear the call, it meant he didn't have to be careful about what he said.

"We've got a problem?" Crash told Jim. He knew his partner wasn't happy he was calling, but didn't care; if he had been allowed to do things his way, the problem wouldn't have arisen.

"What sort of problem?" Jim wanted to know. He comforted himself with the thought that he knew it couldn't be that the police were onto either Crash or Alice's location, he would almost certainly have heard about that before his partner.

"You mean aside from the one I warned you about right from the start?" Crashed hissed in a sharp voice, wanting to ensure his voice didn't carry up the stairs. "How about the fact that the little bitch made a break for it this morning; it's just as well I'm not a heavier sleeper, or she'd have got away, then we'd all be screwed, you most of all."

Jim knew that, he was well aware that he had, by far, the most to lose if they were caught, though he tried not to dwell on it. "How did she manage to make a break for it?" he wanted to know. "She's supposed to be locked up; you're not telling me she managed to get out of that room after I had you make it more secure."

"Not exactly," Crash temporised. "Lewis took her a sandwich and a bottle of water, and she took advantage, she ran from the room and locked him in; then she ran down the stairs and tried to get out of the house."

"Where the hell were you while this was going on? And what the hell was Lewis doing taking her a sandwich and a drink? Why didn't you stop him?"

Crash resented the questions, and the accusatory tone in which they were asked. Swallowing the urge to snap at the younger man, who he was aware had made it possible for him to make more money than he had ever dreamed of, he answered. "I was asleep on the sofa, Lewis made sure of that 'fore he went up to her room, 'cause I already had words with him 'bout it last night. He insisted we have to give Alice water, at the least, so she doesn't get ill or die." He gave a short bark of quickly suppressed laughter at that.

"Didn't you tell him that wasn't necessary?"

"What was I s'posed to say, that it didn't matter 'cause she's gonna be killed anyway. If I'd told him that, he'd have done somethin' stupid, like call the police, or try and rescue Alice, and bang goes ev'rythin'. We'd never have had this problem if you'd let me kill 'em both straight off."

"I told you why you couldn't do that," Jim reminded Crash. "We need to keep her alive until we've got the money, she's our insurance policy."

"I know, and we need Lewis 'cause his brains are gonna stop the cops followin' me tomorrow night when I get the ransom; 'cept we don't, he's already got his little gadget sorted, so we've got no more need for him."

Lewis froze on the stairs when he heard what Crash was saying in the living room; he felt as though he had just stepped under a freezing cold shower, while a lead weight settled in the pit of his stomach. He wanted to be sick. He couldn't believe what he was hearing.

A part of him wanted to storm down the rest of the stairs and confront his so-called partner, but he realised that would be a bad idea. If he confronted Crash, he would almost certainly be killed the moment he finished speaking, if not before, and that was something he wanted to avoid – he had no desire to be hurt, let alone killed. If he had thought it was a possibility, he never would have agreed to help kidnap Alice Keating, no matter how large a ransom they expected to get.

Straining his ears, he listened for whatever might be said next; he hoped to hear something positive, or at least something that might help him to save his life, and the life of the schoolgirl he had just left. What he heard made him realise he didn't have long to come up with a plan, which wasn't good news because he was someone who preferred to think his way fully through something before coming to a decision or a solution.

"Okay, okay," Crash said. "I won't do anything 'til we've got the money. Are there any problems on your end?" he asked.

Lewis didn't wait to hear anything more, he turned and headed back up the stairs as quietly as he could. He didn't want to let Crash know that his conversation had been overheard. When he reached the top of the stairs, he turned and made his way along the passage to the bathroom. The moment he had the door closed and locked behind him, he took out his mobile phone, and discovered the battery was dead. He couldn't believe he had forgotten to charge the phone before Crash collected him the previous morning – it was too late to do anything about it now.

With his phone dead, he couldn't call the police, which was the only solution he could think of right then.

Slumped against the door behind him, Lewis closed his eyes and tried to think. His current problem was like nothing he had ever had to deal with; normally, his problems consisted of trying to discover the most efficient coding for whatever aspect of a project he was working on, while keeping the processor and graphics rendering requirements as low as possible. The consequences of failure were, at worst, dismissal and damage to his reputation, not death, as he was currently facing.