Betrayal by J. Robert Janes Page A

corners of her eyes, two others stepped onto the road, one on either side of her, another man and a woman. ‘What is it you want with me?’ she asked, her voice leaping as she tried to be calm and not betray herself.
    Nolan touched the peak of his cap in deference. ‘A word, that’s all, m’am,’ the all so soft and melodious it went with the A of his m’am and was like the spilling of flour on a pastry cutting table.
    â€˜But not here,’ said the woman sharply. Grinning swiftly, darkly, this one clamped a cold, moist, pudgy hand firmly over her own right which held the bike pulled in tightly against a hip.
    It wasn’t Brenda Darcy but a suggestion of her, both in the coarseness of the face and lankness of the reddish brown hair. Sisters, then?
    The woman was probably four years younger than Nolan and there was a hardness to her sea-green eyes that could not be avoided. A chipped, upper left front tooth automatically drew a second glance for the whole half-corner had been knocked away at an angle of forty-five degrees and it lay next to a gap no woman would have wanted.
    â€˜Enough of this hanging about,’ said the other one who was at Mary’s left, he crowding her so closely she could smell the stale tobacco smoke on him.
    They rushed her into the woods—there was no time to object, only for Brenda Darcy’s words to come back. ‘You’re in it now, Mrs. Fraser. Don’t ever think you can get out!’
    Nolan, having leapt nimbly from the end of the bridge, was in the lead, then came the woman and lastly the other one who had a revolver jammed into the waistband of his trousers and had his hand on the seat of the bike, he pushing her and it along so that she was forced to run.
    The path only appeared at the crest of the first hill, she out of breath and feeling the ache in her chest, her heart hammering. They went down across a valley where the bracken and the gorse gave evidence of a former pasture. All too soon, though, they were climbing again, each of them looking back to make sure they’d not been followed; Mary looking back, too, to catch in the eyes of the man behind her the thought: You’re dead if you’ve betrayed us.
    Numbed by this thought, and still rushing along with the bike, they drove her up a steep rise and into another bit of woods only to take off suddenly at an angle to the left, Nolan turning aside so quickly the woman stepped on his heels and stumbled in her haste to follow. Again and again it was woods and hollows, dips and hills—once, though, a clear stretch of fields that were dotted with sheep, the perspiration streaming from her until at last, at another change of direction, they came to the edge of a clearing and the track of an even older road.
    â€˜You’re to go ahead now, Mrs. Fraser,’ said Nolan, turning at last to step back the few paces that had separated them.
    What was there in that look of his? An emptiness …
    â€˜You’ll find Padrick Darcy’s smithy but don’t be afraid. Just go inside with the bicycle and close the door. We’ll be along soon enough.’
    â€˜Don’t try anything funny,’ said the woman.
    â€˜How could I? I don’t even know where I am !’
    Nolan flashed her the grin of a towheaded urchin who had just got away with something, then nodded to the others and they were gone.
    Gone, leaving her here all alone in the middle of nowhere.
    A red squirrel scolded fiercely from among the limbs of a nearby oak, driving her away from the hill and down to the road. Water mint, bog cotton and lady’s tresses, now gone to seed, grew in the ditches among the holy grass. A jackdaw didn’t like the intrusion. A wren flitted nervously away, flying straight into the sweeping grey beard of an ancient hawthorn.
    Padrick Darcy’s cottage and shop had lain empty and abandoned for at least two decades. Both buildings were of that rough, flagged stone