T.J. Lebbon - The Hunt - ‘A great thriller...breathless all the way’ – LEE CHILD

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.’

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.