The Hunt Read Free Page B

In that time, she had hidden away and managed to scratch two numbers into her arm with a shard of broken glass.
    Then she had ditched the phone in a trash-filled alley and fled. She’d somehow gathered herself, suffering a terrible couple of days of relative sobriety. She’d retrieved the necessary documentation and money she’d once hidden, at the time barely believing she would ever use it again. Italy was somewhere Adam had always wanted to visit with their kids, and it had seemed far enough away from London, remote enough, to lose herself once again.
    That chance meeting in a city of millions had allowed the dormant seed of an idea to sprout. Revenge. And later, in the Italian heat, alcohol hiding her once more, she’d traced and retraced those healing scars on her forearm. Numbers that might lead to something else, like a code to discovery.
    But even in Italy she had not been able to drag herself from the depths. She’d tried again and again, spending a day sobering up, but quickly following those brief moments of sick reality with long periods of even heavier drinking and deeper oblivion. She so wanted to find some way back. She dreamed of Grin’s face opening beneath her pounding fists, a heavy rock, a wielded knife. But even approaching reality allowed the true, awful memories to flood back in.
    She had been unable to find the strength to handle that. Not until Holt.
    The laptop chimed.
    Rose poured a new mug of strong coffee and sat down at the small table. Lifting the mug to her lips, she paused and stared down at the screen.
    One of the inboxes she monitored had received a new email. It was only the fifth time in three years that such a mail had been sent and received. It was still marked in bold. Unread.
    ‘They’ve chosen another one.’ She sat back for a moment, stunned, chilled even through the rush of warm coffee. She knew that if she opened this email and read it, and they discovered it had been seen and read, everything might fall apart. The Trail would abandon their systems and networks and build again from the ground up, and she would lose everything she’d been working on, and hoping for, since bringing herself back to the world.
    But the content of this email
was
everything. She could open it, screen-grab it, and mark it as unread again in a matter of moments.
    She did not hesitate for a second before risking it all.

Chapter Three
fifty minutes
    Don’t call the police, or your wife and children will be executed.
    Chris stood motionless for a while, leaning against the sink and staring across the kitchen at the pinboard beside the fridge. There were photos on there, tickets for a show they were going to see in a few weeks, a couple of forms to fill out for a trip Gemma was going on with Scouts. Some discount coupons for the local cinema. A few of Terri’s hair bobbles tied together.
    Had the man really said that?
    Chris closed his eyes and the world swam. He remembered the words coming from the man’s mouth – how they’d sounded, the shape of his lips, the dreadful meaning – yet he still doubted.
    He took in a few deep breaths and smelled the coffee.
His
coffee, that the intruder had brewed.
    He took the phone from his pocket and placed it on the worktop. As he stared at it, it rang.
    Grabbing the phone, dropping it, watching it hit the floor and break, case going one way and phone the other, Chris let out a hopeless cry. He went to his knees and picked it up – still ringing, not broken – and stroked the screen to unlock.
    That voice again, cool and calm and inviting no discussion. ‘Fifty minutes. Be ready.’ Chris stood again, holding the phone in both hands.
Fifty minutes. Be ready
. Fifty minutes until what?
    The back door was closed now, but he could still see the bloody smear drying on the jamb.
    Everything but his family suddenly felt so distant. His work, their friends, his hobbies, all so far away from what was happening here and now. This was so surreal that his mind had