Now the one on the right.
But this one was more cautious. This was the one who’d coshed him, Rufus reckoned. This one had the eyes of a thinker, he was not just a mound of dumb muscle. Rufus was on his feet now, crouching, still pinioned by the chair, tied to it, unable to straighten up. He turned sharply, hoping to hit the man with the chair, but it was only a glancing blow. The man reacted too quickly, bouncing back on his toes, just out of reach.
When Rufus looked over his shoulder a cosh had appeared in the man’s right hand and he was swinging it viciously. The other two men were still writhing helplessly on the floor in a sea of stinking fuel. Rufus edged away from the cosh until the chair hit the sink and he couldn’t go any further. If his arms hadn’t been tied, he could have sorted this fucker with his fists. Improvising fast, he jammed the chair legs over the rim of the sink and used the leverage to lift both legs, pistoning them out with all the strength he could muster.
He caught the man in the stomach.
The man doubled over, dropping the cosh, retching and trying to draw breath as he clutched at his belly.
Rufus unjammed the chair from the sink rim and kicked the man in the head, hard, while he was down. Then he propelled himself towards the window, launching himself at it head-first, chair and all.
He shot through the tattered drapes. Felt the impact as his head went through the glass, the rotten frame disintegrating under his weight. He hit the ground hard, with bits of broken window raining down all around him in the dry dirt. And still the fecking chair had him in its grip, though a couple of the legs had broken off in the fall. He looked wildly around him, blood dripping in his eyes so that he could barely see, knowing that he had to get clear before Big Don and his men recovered their wits.
Scrambling to his feet, bent double with his arms still strapped to the chair, he ran as best he could.
He could see the hotel through the trees, about five hundred yards away. They hadn’t even bothered to take him far, confident that they had him, that they would incinerate him in the old building in the woods and make their escape before anyone realized what had happened.
Expecting them to overtake him any minute, Rufus hobbled towards the driveway, hunched double under the chair’s weight, bleeding, sweating, and reeking of petrol. When he made it to the entrance he toppled through the door with a crash, causing the thin receptionist to leap to his feet, hands raised in alarm, face contorted in disgust at this bloody apparition messing up his nice clean hotel. He shot out from behind his desk to stop Rufus coming any further.