The Forgotten Holocaust (Ben Hope, Book 10)

The Forgotten Holocaust (Ben Hope, Book 10) Read Free Page A

Book: The Forgotten Holocaust (Ben Hope, Book 10) Read Free
Author: Scott Mariani
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across from the cabin, just a pale outline under the shadows of the trees. She could hear their low voices. They were turning. Heading back. They were going to see her.
    She ducked into the dark bushes just in time and crouched there, holding her breath, petrified that the slightest rustle would betray her presence. One of the men walked by so close that she could smell the minty odour on his breath, like gum. It was the one with the ponytail. He paused, seemed to stiffen like an animal when it senses something. Through the leaves she could see his face half-lit by the moon and the glow from the cabin. The gleam of his eyes.
    ‘What is it, Billy Bob?’ the other one said.
    The one called Billy Bob stood still, so close that Erin could have reached out of the bushes and touched him.
    ‘Nuthin’,’ Billy Bob said, and walked on.
    Angela’s husband had zipped himself up and was strolling back towards the cabin, complaining in a loud voice about the goddamn mess. The other two exchanged glances. The one called Billy Bob grinned. They followed him back inside.
    And Erin clambered out of her hiding place in the bushes and ran like she’d never run before.

Chapter Two
    The Galway coast
    Republic of Ireland
    Two days later
    It was cold for the time of year, and the steady breeze from the sea made him turn up the collar of his old leather jacket. The pale early evening sun was beginning to drop lower over the Atlantic horizon, casting his shadow long and dark over the empty, pebbly beach as he walked.
    Ben Hope was alone out here, and glad to be. He walked slowly, because he had nowhere in particular to go. He didn’t even know why he’d come to this place. Now and then he paused in his step to stare out to sea, as if somehow the iron-grey ocean would give him the answers he was looking for.
    He had lived here once. Spent many hours standing in this very spot, watching the waves roll in and crash against the rocks. It seemed a long time ago now. Just as he had in the old days, he bent and scooped up a handful of pebbles from the stony beach to fling into the surf. He watched them disappear one by one in the hissing foam.
    ‘Fuck it,’ he muttered to himself after the last pebble was gone. He turned his back on the water and started making his way towards the big house.
    As he got closer, he paused again and gazed at it. The Victorian building stood perched on rock overlooking the long, curved stretch of its own private beach. He knew the house very well indeed, as it had once belonged to him. But he’d been away long enough to have forgotten just how large and imposing it looked.
    It’d always been too big for him, just one guy rattling around with only his elderly, harried, ever-fussing housekeeper for company. In any case, he’d been away so often that it had felt more like a base than a proper home. The roving, spartan existence of a freelance kidnap rescue specialist had often seemed hard to distinguish from the harsh military life he’d known before that.
    The house looked different now, and even though he’d expected it to, it gave him a strange pang to see how it had changed.
    Funny, he thought: when the place had been his, he hadn’t cared much for it, never thinking about it on his frequent travels around the world; but now he could feel a creeping sense of nostalgia.
    Stupid
. What am I doing here? he asked himself once again.
    Where the pebbly beach ended, stone steps led up towards the back of the house. The iron safety railing was new. Health and safety regulations, he guessed. So was the large conservatory that the new owners had added where the sea-facing terrace used to be. The dropping sun reflected in its glass panes.
    Ben walked around the side of the house, along a neat path that hadn’t been there during his time. At the front of the house, he stopped and looked up. Of all the unfamiliar additions to his former home, the most striking was the sign over the front door that said ‘Pebble Beach

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