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

‘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.’

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.