Wrong Time, Wrong Place by Simon Kernick Page A

from the history books Tara had read as a child. The man frightened her. God, how he frightened her. His arms were thick and she could imagine him using them to throttle the life out of his victims.
    ‘Be strong,’ she told herself as she writhed around on the floor, acting like she was dying. All the time she could hear her heart beating in her chest, as the fear pumped through her.
    He was coming over. Bending down, saying something she didn’t understand. Looking at her with suspicion in his eyes.
    She could feel the brick in the small of her back. She rolled over, still moaning, her arm dropping out of sight, knowing this was it. Her chance.
    He grabbed her by the hair and pulled her round so she was facing him. ‘Bitch,’ he said. It was a word she recognised, because it was used so often by the men in the brothel.
    Then something changed in his eyes. Anger was replaced by lust, and she felt him roughly pulling her legs apart with a gloved hand, making weird moaning noises beneath his mask.
    That was the moment she grabbed the brick, sat up suddenly, and hit him on the side of the head.
    ‘Bitch!’ he howled a second time, his voice echoing around the tiny cell. He grabbed the hand holding the brick by the wrist, yanking it back painfully, his eyes burning with fury.
    Knowing she couldn’t afford to stop now, Tara kept up her attack, jabbing her forefinger into his left eye like a knife, feeling its soft fleshiness give way.
    This time he screamed in real pain, trying to twist his head away. At the same time, he relaxed his grip on her wrist.
    She pulled her arm free and struggled out from under him. The chain securing her ankle to the wall rattled angrily as she jumped to her feet. She hit him for a second time as he swayed on his knees, yelping in pain.
    The brick shattered into a dozen pieces, and for a moment Tara thought she’d failed. Her heart sank, but then the man grunted and fell on to his side, barely moving.
    Feeling a rush of excitement, she crouched down beside him and pulled the set of keys from his belt, praying that one would unlock the chain around her ankle.
    There must have been a dozen keys of various shapes and sizes, and the first one didn’t fit. Nor did the second.
    The guard was beginning to come round. He let out a moan, and one arm moved.
    Tara tried a third key, her hands shaking so much she could barely put it into the slot. Another wrong one.
    He was turning round now, one hand still over his injured eye, but the other one staring at her.
    Come on, come on .
    She tried a fourth key. It didn’t work.
    The man reached round behind his back. When his hand came back into view, Tara gasped and panic swept through her. He was holding a huge knife with a jagged blade. She’d seen hunters using knives like that to gut deer back in Kosovo.
    Willing herself to stay calm, trying desperately to forget that in the next few seconds shecould die, Tara tried another key. She slipped it into the lock with shaking hands. The lock clicked, and the metal clamp that had been painfully attached to her from the moment she’d first woken up in this place opened. Just at that moment, the guard lunged towards her with the knife. She jumped backwards, hitting the wall behind her. The tip of the blade came so close to her belly that she could almost feel it touching her.
    But with the chain removed from her, she suddenly felt a new surge of energy. Taking advantage of the fact that her attacker was still on his knees, she darted around him and leaped at the cell door. She flung it open and ran into the narrow, dimly-lit corridor outside.
    Tara had no idea where she was going but she could tell she was in some kind of basement area. The walls and floors were the same cold stone as the cell, the only light provided by a single bulb hanging down from the ceiling.
    To her right was a flight of steps, and she sprinted towards them. Her legs were stiff from lack of exercise, but sheer terror and a strong desire