The Hunt: ‘A great thriller...breathless all the way’ – LEE CHILD

He heard a knock from somewhere beyond the kitchen door.

Holding his breath, Chris put the mug down slowly, mouth slightly open, listening hard. The heating was off now, though the boiler was still warming the water. But he hadn’t recognised the sound.

It came once more, definitely an impact of some sort. His phone showed nothing so he turned it face-down again. Taking the knife from his belt and holding it down by his side, he walked through into the corridor beyond the kitchen door. Ahead of him the front door was still closed, and there was no sign of movement elsewhere.

Studio, he thought. To his right a shorter corridor led beneath the staircase to another door, beyond which their converted garage had become his business studio. It was a good size, with computer station, an old-fashioned drawing board, walls lined with pictures displaying his designs, and an informal area for clients with leather sofa and coffee machine. Nothing extravagant, but comfortable. And now there was someone there.

He thought about edging through the door, moving cautiously, carefully. But that’s what they expected of him.

And he was angry.

Gripping the knife hard by his side he surged forward, shoved the door open and stepped quickly into the studio.

Something tripped him, he fell, one hand out to break his fall, the other twisted painfully as the knife was stripped from his grasp. He struck the timber flooring and tried to roll. A weight bore down on him, trapping him on his side with one arm crushed beneath his body, the other pressed between him and the person attacking him.

Chris kicked and writhed. A hand clamped down hard across his mouth. Another held his own knife against his throat.

He strained his neck and looked up into the woman’s face. She looked hard, unflustered, and totally in control.

‘I’m here to help,’ she whispered. ‘If you want to live past the next twenty-four hours and see your family again, do everything I say.’ She sat up and slowly took her hand from his mouth.

‘Who … ?’ he asked.

‘I’m the one that got away. My name’s Rose.’

Chapter Four

just begun

She crept to the door into his studio and crouched beside it, peering out beneath the stairwell and into the hallway. Chris respected poise, economy of motion, litheness, but there was something else about the way this woman moved that disturbed him. Something inhuman. She moved like an animal, and like an animal she seemed ready to strike. She held the knife she’d taken from him as an extension of her arm, aimed forward, ready to slice and stab. Her movements were soundless, and he searched for her shadow. He was happy to find it.

‘What are you going to … ?’ he began, and she was back to him between blinks, hand pressed against his mouth once again, eyes wide, head shaking once. She didn’t need to speak. The threat was palpable, radiating from her in powerful waves, even though she made no hint that she wished to hurt him.

She went to the door again and crept out, until she could look both ways along the hallway – left to the kitchen, right towards the front door. Then she came back and crouched in the doorway. She wore black jeans, a casual jacket with bulging pockets, walking boots. Her dark hair was tied in a ponytail, businesslike, impossible to tell its length. She might have been attractive, once.

‘Who are you?’ he asked.

‘I told you. Rose.’

‘But what … ?’

‘Shut up.’ She held up one hand, head cocked, not looking at him. ‘There’s no time now.’

Chris glanced at his phone. The timer said nine minutes.

‘Just listen,’ she said. ‘I’m here to help. I only found out they were going for you yesterday morning. But it was long enough to plan and prepare. They’ll be coming in to get you soon, and then we’ll be leaving. You understand?’

‘No,’ Chris said. ‘My wife. My girls.’

‘We’ll get to them.’ She tried to smile. It was a sickly expression.

‘Where are they?’ he asked.

‘Not sure.’ An economy of words, and they explained nothing.

‘Why are they doing this?’

‘You’re an easy target.’

He was shivering again. His clothing was soaked with sweat, his body now trying to cool down. ‘I need to go to the police.’

‘No!’ she said, looking back at him again. ‘You can’t even try to do that, or they’ll just kill your family and move on.’

‘You’re not one of them?’

She glared at him. ‘Are you stupid?’

‘No, not stupid. I’m normal. I’m just a normal person doing normal things, and now my family are—’

The front door opened. Chris heard the familiar sound of the handle depressing, the catch sliding, and then the sigh as the door’s draught-proofing seal broke. It was so recognisable that Chris muttered, ‘Terri?’ before the door slammed and heavy footsteps marched along the tiled hallway.

‘We’re early!’ a voice called. Chris recognised it as belonging to the man from earlier, the same man who’d threatened to have his wife and children executed if he called the police. ‘Sorry for the delay. Traffic’s terrible.’ The man chuckled to himself, completely confident and in command.

Chris frowned at Rose and raised his hands, but she turned her back on him and flowed forwards, through the studio door, beneath the staircase and towards the hallway. But if you go that way you’ll end up— Chris thought, and then every thought was sliced off by what happened next.

‘So, where are you hiding?’ the man asked.

Chris saw him appear past Rose, framed through the doorway beneath the staircase. Rose stood from her crouch. The man’s eyes went wide and he reacted immediately, left arm coming up in a defensive gesture while his right hand delved into his jacket. But he had been too confident of Chris’s confusion and fear, too sure of himself.

The sound the knife made when it stuck in his neck was horrible. He seemed to growl, and blood bubbled at his throat, splashing the air and pattering down on the hall tiles. He took his hand from within his jacket and Rose knocked something aside—

—a gun, has he really got a gun?—

—sending it clattering out of sight.

Rose grabbed the man’s polo shirt collar with her left hand and held him steady as she tugged with her right hand, once, twice, hefty jerks of her arm and shoulder pulling the knife out through his throat. His eyes remained wide, tongue squirming in his mouth as he started to slump.

Rose staggered backwards into Chris’s studio, dragging the dying man with her. His blood was flowing. Not just dripping, but gushing from the dreadful wound, splashing on the floor and sending Rose slipping, shoving the man aside as she fell onto her back. Even as she hit the floor she hardly made a noise, but was up again in a second, kneeling on the man’s back and grabbing him by the hair, pulling, his head moving back much too far as the wound gaped and he bled out.

Chris closed his eyes, but the sight could not be unseen.

‘Don’t faint,’ she said.

The man was still making wet, coughing noises, feet scraping slowly at the floor as he tried to propel himself out of his killer’s grasp.

Chris turned away and stared at his drawing desk. There were plans of a new house sitting there right now, his client’s list of suggested amendments pinned above it. The client was a sixty-year-old man, someone who’d seen the world and made good money, and who now was settling down for retirement with his gorgeous forty-something wife. A good man. Great stories. I wonder if he’s ever seen anything like this, Chris thought, and then he realised that Rose was hissing at him.

‘Now, for fuck’s sake! We don’t have long!’

‘What?’ He turned, propping himself on his desk so that he didn’t slump to the floor. There was so much blood. Could there really be so much inside a human body? He’d bought that rug with Terri on holiday in Egypt, and now it was ruined.

‘I said go through there.’ She nodded through the door at the hallway, where blood was spattered on the floor and sprayed in one artful arc across the apple-white wall. ‘Stand facing the front door. When they come in, just wait there and let them come to you.’

‘No,’ Chris said, shaking his head. ‘I can’t just stand there and let them attack me.’

‘They’re not going to attack you! They want to take you. Do as I say or I’m out of here now, and I’ll leave you with this.’ She stood and kicked the corpse’s head at her feet. It moved too loosely on the neck, and Chris had a crazy, shocking image of it rolling across the floor, grinning up at him as the mouth gasped for air.

‘Okay,’ he said. He didn’t know who she was, why she’d arrived, how she’d even got in without them seeing. But right then, he didn’t want her to go. Not because he thought she could protect him, but because she had answers. She knew what was going on. ‘But my family … ’ He nodded down at the body.

‘What’s started can’t be stopped,’ she said. She seemed excited, pumped, displaying emotion for the first time. ‘No going back now, Chris.’

‘You know my name.’

She rolled her eyes and shoved him towards the door into the hall. But not too hard. It would have been easy to slip on so much blood.

He could smell it as he walked, a rich, warm odour. His feet splashed in it. Pausing at the door, he thought about removing his running shoes to prevent walking blood through the house. But he giggled instead, an hysterical outburst that burned at his eyes and filled his throat. He reached for the door frame, and even before Rose whispered from behind him he was composing himself, taking deep breaths through his mouth.

‘Hurry!’ She was closer than he thought, following him silently. He could almost feel her breath on the back of his neck. She can help me, he thought, but at the same time he realised that helping was not part of her agenda. She was here for something else.

Chris stepped into the hallway and turned to look along at the front door, and there were already shadows moving beyond the frosted glass.

‘One step back,’ Rose said. ‘And don’t look at me. I’m not here. I’m a shadow. Got it?’

He nodded, mouth suddenly too dry to speak.

‘If you give me away, we’re both dead. And then your family—’

‘I get it!’ he said. From the corner of his eye he saw Rose relax beneath the staircase, almost melting into the shadows there. She was motionless and silent. She’s not there, he thought, taking in deep breaths once again. The dead guy’s not there. I’m here on my own, just waiting.

For what, he was about to find out.

The front door opened. A man entered, and Chris recognised him from the car he’d seen parked along the street. He was tall, heavily built, the sort of man Terri might call a ‘honey’ while smiling at Chris and squeezing his hand. His sweet wife, always reassuring him that he was the one and only. He carried an Adidas kit bag slung over one shoulder.

A woman crowded in behind him. Black, much shorter, thin, wearing heavy-framed glasses and a casual sports jacket that might have cost a week’s income from Chris’s company, she was laughing as if at a joke. They seemed so casual with what they were doing. So confident.

They both saw Chris standing there and barely paid him any attention. Honey shrugged the bag from his shoulder. Glasses shut the door behind her, still chuckling and shaking her head. The joke must have been really funny.

‘Where’s Ed?’ Honey asked. When he looked at Chris his smile remained, but his voice was ice-cold, his manner suddenly threatening. He could break Chris across one knee while still smoothing his hair with his other hand.

But Rose? Chris wasn’t sure about her.

‘Making coffee,’ Chris said, pleased at his answer. Honey nodded, and Glasses rolled her eyes. It seemed Chris wasn’t the only one with a caffeine habit.

Honey dropped the bag and kicked it along the hall. ‘Right, there’s stuff in there you need to … ’ His voice trailed off. He’d watched the bag sliding, looked beyond it, and seen the dark spatters of blood speckling the tiles by Chris’s feet.

The sudden silence was heavy and loaded, and behind him Glasses was already tugging something bulky from her jacket.

‘He says do you want sugar?’ Chris said, and Honey looked up at him, frowning.

‘Huh?’

Rose flowed from the shadows beneath the stairs, shouldering Chris against the wall and throwing the bloodied knife underarm. It struck Honey in the chest. He grunted, swiping at the knife with his right hand. The blade dropped and clattered to the floor, and a bloom of blood spread across his shirt.

‘You,’ Honey said. Behind him, Glasses raised the object she’d pulled from her jacket.

Rose shot her once in the face. The glass behind her shattered and she fell against the door, her spectacles sliding down her nose and resting on the ruin of her right cheek.

The gunshot was incredibly loud and made the second shot sound much more muffled. Honey staggered back a step, stood on Glasses’ hand where she was sprawled against the closed door, and then moved forward in a sudden lurch. There was a hole in his chest, another spot of blood rapidly growing close to where the knife had wounded him.

‘You!’ He shouted this time, and Chris barely heard. His hearing had been blasted away by the gunshots, and now a heavy, high whine seemed to ricochet inside his head.

Rose crouched and fired again, raising the gun up at a forty-five-degree angle and then falling to one side as Honey slouched on top of her. His outstretched hand clawed down Chris’s chest where he was pressed to the wall.

Chris saw the exit wounds on the man’s back, ragged tears in his jacket. He was dead when he hit the floor.

Rose pulled her leg from beneath the body and stood, pointing the gun back and forth between Glasses and Honey.

Chris was slowly shaking his head. It felt heavy, and when Rose spoke to him it was like hearing a voice underwater. Daddy smells of poo, Megs had said to him last time they went swimming, both of them dropping beneath the surface at the deep end and seeing if they could understand each other.

‘ … out of here now!’ Rose said from a distance. She stood on the dead man like he wasn’t a human being at all – and shoved Chris back against the wall. ‘Really. Now! We have minutes, so we’ve got to go!’

‘You killed them,’ Chris said. His voice was incredibly loud inside his own head, as if he was the only real thing here. Perhaps that was it. Rose and the corpses were only nightmares.

She grabbed the Adidas bag at Chris’s feet and pushed it against his chest, then knelt and started going through the dead man’s pockets.

Chris watched. He couldn’t think of anything else to do. She was efficient and quick, and in moments she had a set of car keys and a phone in her left hand. In her right, she still carried her gun.

‘Will there be more of them?’ he asked, looking at the damaged, blood-spattered front door.

‘Plenty,’ she said. And then she grinned with delight. ‘I’ve only just begun.’

Chapter Five

three

I’ve only just begun. But in truth she had started all this years ago.

She’d spent a long time imagining what it would be like to exact some sort of revenge. At night, in between nightmares about her family’s final moments, and during the day when she strove to better prepare herself for what was to come, she would dream: pointing a gun and pulling the trigger; running them down with a car; tying them up and setting them on fire; slashing out with a knife. So many ways to kill those of the Trail who had killed everything about her, and sometimes she lost herself for hours picturing their deaths.

And they had recognised her. That had been a surprise, although she supposed that they were always looking for her.

But in truth it was nothing like she’d expected. She had felt not one sliver of regret when she killed, but neither had she felt a flush of satisfaction, nor the much sought-after contentment she had been expecting. Their blood still stained her hands and clothing, but it was as if she had watched someone else do the killing.

She put her hand to her mouth and tasted blood.

‘Are there more outside?’ That Chris Sheen wasn’t a gibbering wreck was something she could only be grateful for. But perhaps his reaction was a skewed echo of her own. She didn’t feel shocked or even pleased, maybe because her mind might be shielding her from events.

She wished it wouldn’t. Now that her revenge had begun, she wanted to experience every joyous moment.

‘Not here, not right now,’ she said. ‘Shut up and follow me.’

‘But my family will—’

‘Shut up!’ She pressed her finger against his lips. He flinched from the stickiness of their blood. ‘Follow … me.’

She looked at the phone she’d taken from the first dead man. The home screen was a picture of two little children, and she stared at their faces, frozen, swallowed away into memory. Her own children had been that young, and would never be older. He has a family. He has kids. How someone like him could have been anything like her, Rose could not conceive. She shook her head to dislodge the confusion. It was useless to her, and she was determined to keep her mind in the moment. She’d spent too long living in the past, and the future she so desired was here and now. This was everything she had been waiting for.

Chris touched her shoulder. She blinked rapidly for a second or two, then nodded at him.

‘Quick,’ she said. ‘And quiet.’ She headed back into the study and crossed to the French doors. She’d come in that way, and it would be quieter to leave that way, too. She picked up the loaded backpack she’d left just inside the door, slung it over her shoulder, then rested her hand on the door handle.

Neighbours would have likely heard the gunshots, but most of them would have no idea what they were. A car backfiring, someone hammering, a TV turned up too loud; for people living in Cardiff, and especially in nice neighbourhoods like this, the first thought at such a sound would never be, Gun! That would change when the bodies were found.

But as she slipped from the doors and looked across the front garden, Rose realised that things might not be so simple. When she’d shot the woman, the glass in the front door had shattered. And now across the street there were several people gathered around a car, examining a hole in one of its side windows.

They’d still not immediately think of guns and bullets. Their minds wouldn’t work that way. But it meant that she and Chris didn’t have long.

He followed behind her, close and quiet. That was good. She needed him more than he needed her, but she’d never tell him that.

As they approached the open gates at the end of the short driveway, she pressed the button on the key fob. A little way along the street, a white BMW’s lights flashed twice.

A couple of the people examining the damaged car looked up. One of them smiled and raised his hand to Chris, then his expression fell a little when he saw Rose.

‘Morning!’ Rose said. ‘Lovely morning.’

‘Yes, lovely,’ the man said uncertainly.

‘Don’t look at him or say a word,’ she whispered. She led Chris along the pavement to the BMW, climbed into the driver’s seat, dropped the backpack in the passenger footwell, and watched him get in beside her. He still had the kit bag clasped to his chest. Taking the gun from her pocket, she placed it between her legs on the seat. Then she checked the phone again.

‘They’ve seen my front door,’ Chris said.

‘Doesn’t matter.’ She scrolled through the contacts list. There were only half a dozen names registered. She smiled when she saw the photos beside two names. And then she saw other faces, knew them, hated them all over again. ‘Here they are,’ she said.

‘Who?’

‘The Trail.’

‘What’s that?’

She glanced across at Chris, sitting confused and scared and still shocked numb beside her. He didn’t need to know, not yet. Not until they got away from here and were closing on their destination.

Her destination. Because from this moment forward, she was taking charge.

She started the car and pulled away, making a three-point turn so that they didn’t have to pass Chris’s neighbours. Heading off along his street, she saw parents starting to leave home with kids. The school run. She missed that. She missed everything. For a moment her mind drifted again, flitting back to memories she could do nothing to temper and which seemed to become richer over time. Sometimes they were more real than her reality.

Your memories will be your downfall, Holt had said to her in Italy. You let the past distract you so much that it blurs your present. But memories were all she had left, and she never tried too hard to lose them.

‘How many people have you killed?’ Chris asked.

‘Three.’ Their dying expressions already felt familiar.

The phone in the door pocket beside her trilled. She didn’t answer. As soon as it rang off she knew that the alarm would be raised. They’re starting to panic, she thought. I can feel that. I can sense it. And she could. She knew the Trail so well – had lived and breathed them for the past three years – that their thoughts were hers, their emotions and actions so tied into her existence that she might as well have been monitoring their individual heartbeats, their pulses.

They wouldn’t yet know she was here or who she was. But soon.

‘Where are we going? You need to let me out, now. Let me go.’ Chris’s voice shimmered with panic. ‘You leave, I won’t say anything. Got to get out!’ He tried the door handle, but she’d clicked on the central locking.

Rose checked ahead. They’d pulled onto a small commercial street with a few shops on both sides, and the road was wide, not too busy.

‘Stop the car!’ He grabbed for the steering wheel. Rose nodded across at Chris’s window, eyes going wide. When he looked, she launched a fast, accurate punch at his temple. His head jerked sideways and struck the window, and he emitted a long, low groan, slumping in his seat. His eyelids fluttered.

She’d learned the theory, but had never done that before.

Rose checked the mirrors and looked ahead. No one had seen. And if someone did notice him now, he was sleeping on his way to work, that was all.

She could imagine the heat of the Trail’s networks buzzing with consternation. The phone rang again.

This time she answered.

Chapter Six

please

Gemma had no idea why they hadn’t blindfolded her as well. Maybe they needed a witness to what was happening, needed one of them to see just how serious this woman was. Or perhaps they just assumed she’d be no trouble.

Right then, they were correct. She was so scared, she seriously doubted she could even stand.

‘Please,’ Megs said.

‘Will you shut her up?’ the woman muttered. She’d said the same thing a dozen times, tone of voice hardly changing, but Gemma felt the air charging. Danger hung heavy. Violence simmered.

‘Megs, you need to keep quiet,’ their mother said.

Gemma’s heart hammered, vision blurred. She had never been so terrified, and she wished she could hold her little sister and make her feel better. The comfort would go both ways. But Megs was tied in a kneeling position next to their mum’s right leg, and Gemma herself was also tied, next to her mother’s left leg and with thin, strong ropes holding her against the van’s wooden seat. Her mother was on the seat, the two of them on the floor, all so close but with little comfort to be had.