Under the horse cart sat a young girl in a blood stained dress, holding onto a goat for dear life. She had no idea that the German soldier had seen her, and Purdue saw how her bloodshot eyes stared at the burning bodies on the pile a slight distance from her. There was no way he was going to sit idly by and watch anymore. It was time for him to escape, and he hoped that the girl could read English.
The night was here and the flames only illuminated the terror of the town even more. Fallen buildings smoldered while the Germans laughed and bragged about their ransacking. Purdue caught his breath when he saw that the girl was watching him. He did not want her to associate him with the evil men he came with. He gestured for her to be quiet before he slipped up behind the soldier, the very man who was chuckling about him to his colleagues earlier that day. As the man reached the horse cart Purdue leapt. As he fell on the soldier he grabbed the hunting knife, hoping that the element of surprise would be to his advantage.
Purdue had never been one for violence, something he always left up to his bodyguards, but this called for a fight. The knife slipped from the soldier’s hand into his and, without sparing a moment, Purdue drew the blade deep through the skin across his opponent’s throat. He dropped his little note for the girl to find. As the soldier fell, Purdue dropped the little note for the girl to find.
With one last glance to the appalling result of his misinformation, Purdue fled with a heavy heart, hoping that the god he did not believe in would forgive him… because he himself never would.
Chapter 26
Sam woke up in a daze. His eyes felt thick and his head throbbed, but the worst of it was the agony of a pulled muscle between his neck and shoulder where a hefty blow had rendered him unconscious before. His face distorted in pain, but he made sure that he did not make a sound. So many times before he had been in a situation like this that it had almost become normal. As his memory returned gradually he remembered the promise of a good beer and the nervous butler who, it turned out, was not anxious about the lightning after all.
“Bastard,” Sam whispered, recalling Healy’s betrayal.
In the dark of his surroundings Sam took his time to test the restraints he probably had wrapped around his ankles and wrists. But to his surprise he found that he was not bound at all. He could see nothing, but he could smell new carpets and a whiff of perfume. With a groan of effort Sam sat and tightened his abs to sit up, but his head instantly pounded with a sharp sting he could not endure and he quickly returned to his old position. The mattress he was lying on was soft, but the perfumed air had him worried about what was lying next to him.
He wondered how long he had been here, wherever here was, and then he thought of the ladies waiting for him in Lyon. It would be terrible if Healy had the same hostility planned for them that he had for Sam, for some reason. Sam shook his head to get rid of the ringing in his ears. Voices came from far off. One was male, the other female. He recognized the female voice.
“Penny?” he frowned. “What the hell…?”
They drew nearer. Sam rolled gently off the bed as not to be pummeled by the deadly headache again. On his knees on the thick carpet he inched himself closer to the sound of the muffled voices. By a few more paces on his knees, keeping his body low to the ground, Sam reached a corner that hugged his frame comfortably. From there he could hear them better.
“Please tell me you did not kill him in front of everyone,” Penny said.
“Bitch,” Sam whispered in disbelief of the woman he thought was just a professional who needed his services.
“Sam Cleave is a celebrity, you know,” she told the man. “We can never be associated with his death, Christian! Nobody should even find him, actually.”
“Who the hell is Christian?” Sam whispered.
“My dear, you are too hasty in your judgment,” Christian Foster reminded her. “I did not kill him. I do not wish to kill him until we know for sure that he is the man you are looking for.”
“I like this Christian bloke,” Sam nodded to himself, trying to remember if he had ever encountered someone by that name before, someone he could have vexed into doing this to him. He had no idea why he had been kidnapped or why Penny Richards wanted him dead. He had not done anything to justify her wrath, as far as he could tell.
“Listen to me,” she said, “he is the man we are looking for. He was the last person to see Albert Tägtgren alive. Who else would have killed him?”
Sam gasped. “Tägtgren is dead?”
“I don’t know,” Foster said. “I just think we should interrogate the journalist before we just make away with him. See what he has, what he knows. If we are satisfied that he is guilty, even by association, I will make him disappear forever.”
‘The phone call,’ Sam thought. ‘He wanted to kick my ass for something.’
“Alright, see if you can find out where he is staying at the moment so that we can confiscate his gear. Once we have checked all the footage we will know for sure if he edited out anything important before sending it to me. He cannot know about the Tesla Experiment or our competition will have us by the short and curly’s, do you understand?” Penny instructed.
Sam tried to make sense of it. Now he understood why the Cornwall Institute hired him. But he still could not figure out who made Tägtgren believe that Sam had spilled his secret to anyone. Someone had to have seen them together; someone who knew what they did. That was the person who probably killed Tägtgren for telling Sam. ‘Penny knew, from what she just said,’ he reckoned. ‘Healy also knows about the Tesla Experiment and I know how underhanded he is now.’
Perplexed, Sam sat in the dark room with his hands on his wet hair. The warmth of his palms soothed his headache as he listened to the two in the next room. When he had enough strength he stood up against the wall to feel for a light switch, but found nothing but smooth paint under his probing fingers. In the back of his mind Sam knew that he had to escape as soon as he was able. Whatever his enormous captor had in mind, he had Jenner Manor in his sights next and Healy was definitely not going to protect Lydia and Nina anymore.
“Find out from Healy if he can obtain Sam Cleave’s equipment without being discovered,” Penny told Foster. “You can use the phone in my office. It has a scrambler so that we cannot be found by any tracers.”
“Alright. I’ll be back shortly,” he agreed, leaving her alone in the adjacent room. Now was the opportune time for Sam to act. Penny by herself would be no problem to subdue, but once the big brute returned it would be virtually impossible to make an escape before Healy got to Lydia and Nina.
Sam used his entire bodyweight to thump against the wall where he was crouched before. He knew the sound would provoke Penny to investigate. Every time Sam hurled himself against the wall, he moaned from the sharp shooting pain in his head and the strain on his traps. But a little pain was nothing to bear in comparison of what would happen to him if he waited to be questioned — and likely get killed.
Now he truly realized why Lydia was so adamant on using Purdue to help her with the Tesla Experiment. It was obvious that she could not trust anyone else who knew about it. Penny was quiet, listening for the irregular bangs in the room where she told Foster to leave Sam Cleave. She could hear him whimpering in agony, and she did not want him to attempt anything stupid to keep her from finding out what he knew. Her own husband committed suicide for fear of having his secrets discovered years ago, so such measures were the first to surface in her reasoning with the sounds of pain she could hear in the next room.