Саманта Сильвер - Barking Up The Wrong Tree

“About a month. GPS makes it a lot easier than it used to be.”

“But if you were so careful, how did Andrea find out about you? And I found out too, just now. Surely you can’t expect to continue this forever.”

“Andrea was too nosy for her own good. She would always be looking out her curtains at the street, glaring at this house, like she knew we were in it. Then one day she was walking past when Boss got scared and let out a bark. She came to the front of the house, and started looking inside the shutters. She went home, but I knew she wasn’t going to give up. I was going to take her out right then and there, but then that stupid niece of hers showed up. At least when the girl left I was able to follow Andrea by pretending to walk Boss. That was all the time I needed.”

So it hadn’t been Kelly after all. Sophie was going to be so disappointed. If she ever heard about this, that was.

“It’s just too bad you had to get involved too,” Gareth said.

“There are people who know I’m here,” I tried. “They’re waiting for me to come back home. When I don’t, they’re going to come looking for me.”

Gareth gave me that cold smile again. “Nice try, but I saw you coming. I know you weren’t planning on coming to this house, and why would you be in the creepy old house that no one ever goes to? No, they’ll narrow it down to this neighbourhood, but no one will ever find your body. Especially since it’s not going to leave by the front door.”

A shiver ran up my spine as Gareth spoke so casually about my death, like it was just another day in the life of the drug dealer. I had to keep him talking. My only chance was to distract him and try and run away. If I could make it out the front door, maybe I had a chance of screaming loudly enough to get the neighbours to notice. Although Boss would definitely be able to catch me in that time.

“Was Boss really poisoned in the park?” I asked. “Or was it here?”

“One of my idiot runners left his stash out and Boss got into it,” Gareth told me. “Now, come on. Get up. It’s time to go.”

“What are we doing?” I asked, my heartrate instantly flying up to a record high.

“You’re going to walk through the tunnel, and we’re going to meet a truck there. I’ve already texted a friend to meet us. It’ll be easier to kill you out there rather than have to drag your body through the tunnel.”

I felt like I was going to puke.

Chapter 19

Now I was well and truly out of options. It was one thing to be in the house near where I was supposed to be, it was entirely another to be taken through a tunnel to a highway half a mile away on the other side of a forest.

Gareth took the gun back out and motioned with it for me to get up. I did, slowly. I walked over towards the hole in the floor, where the floorboards had been removed. There was a small metal ladder leading down past the crawl space and into the underground tunnel. I began to walk down. After all, I didn’t have any other choice.

Gareth followed after me, and I couldn’t help but notice that he left Boss at the house. It was just me and him now. And the gun, of course.

When Gareth had originally mentioned a tunnel, I had imagined a small hole that a person could kind of crawl through on their hands and knees, an iphone flashlight lighting the way as the drug runners dragged along bags of cocaine to the waiting mule and his truck.

I was dead wrong.

The tunnel was easily five and a half feet tall, I only just barely had to stoop to fit under it. A diesel-powered generator hummed at the bottom, linked to a series of cheap lightbulbs that ran along the length of the ground, as well as up to the light in the house. This was actually a lot bigger, and a lot more sophisticated than I had expected. Even the walls were relatively evenly dug out. I looked around, trying to find something, anything, that might help me escape.

After all, this was my last chance. The further I went into the tunnel with Gareth, the worse my chances of coming out alive.

“Walk,” he ordered, and I slowly started to make my way through the tunnel. There was nothing else, just the dirt and the lights. I walked away from the lights and made my way towards the wall. The dirt was crumbly and loose. At least that was something. Maybe I could grab a handful and throw it in his face. But I knew that would only stop him for a second, and he had a gun. Although at this point, trying something and risking getting shot was almost certainly a better option than not doing anything and definitely getting shot.

Suddenly, a memory from my childhood came flooding back to me. It was Christmas, and Charlotte was trying to set up a string of cheap Christmas lights to put on the tree. Charlotte being Charlotte, she sat on the floor meticulously untangling the Gordian knot of strings that somehow developed from a year in storage. I was on the couch reading a book, when suddenly Sophie came rushing in, excited about something, I couldn’t remember what anymore. She paid so little attention to what she was doing that she ran over one of the lights, and as soon as she smashed the bulb, the whole string went out. Charlotte cried for about two hours, it seemed like.

I looked at the cord connecting the bulbs together. It looked cheap, flimsy. It looked like the type that might go out completely if I smashed a bulb.

We were about fifty yards away from the house now. I was all too aware that I had a very limited amount of time to make my move before it was going to be too late.

I counted down from ten to prepare myself.

Ten, nine, eight.

Oh God, this was dangerous.

Seven, six, five.

What if it doesn’t work? No, I couldn’t think about that.

Four, three, two, one.

Now.

In one fluid move I stomped on one of the lightbulbs, at the same time as I grabbed a handful of dirt from the wall and threw it into Gareth’s face. I heard him cry out, but I’d shoved my way past him and was headed back towards the entrance.

A shot rang out suddenly, and adrenaline pumped through my body even faster than before. A couple seconds later, when there was still no pain, I figured the bullet must have missed.

I was running back as fast as I could in the dark, one hand against the side of the wall to guide me, the other in front of me so I didn’t run headlong into the ladder when I got to it. I was too scared to listen to see if Gareth was coming behind me, but I assumed he was.

When my hand finally hit the cold metal of the ladder, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Now all I had to deal with was a one hundred pound German Shepherd. Easy, right?

Scampering up the ladder as fast as I could, I grabbed it and tried to hoist it up after me, but as I was pulling it up I felt something else tugging it back down. Damn, it must have been Gareth. I knew that was a fight I couldn’t win, and besides, with Boss somewhere, I didn’t want to hang around. I dropped the ladder and began to run, hearing a low growl coming from somewhere behind me.

I ran towards the front door, hoping against all hope that I wasn’t going to run headlong into a wall I couldn’t see and knock myself out. It had only been about thirty feet away when I had come in. I could make thirty feet before Boss found me.

Of course, what would happen when I got outside was a whole different story, but there was no time to think about that now.

When I reached forward and felt the door handle, I was so happy I could almost cry. I burst out the front door, slammed the door behind me, to the sound of ferocious barking from an angry dog behind it. I ran to the gate and darted out into the street before I noticed the sight in front of me.

Running up the street towards me, their guns drawn, were Chief Gary and Taylor, Sophie’s boyfriend. Sophie was coming up behind him with Sprinkles, looking anxious.