T.J. Lebbon - The Family Man - An edge-of-your-seat read that you won’t be able to put down

With Holt it was … fun. He didn’t need the money, and she could not even convince herself that he did those things to be closer to her, or to protect and help her.

She truly believed he enjoyed it.

By the time she reached the lake she was sweating heavily, panting, and her legs were burning. She turned left and followed the path along the shore, leaping a fallen tree, skirting around an area where the bank had collapsed into the water, arriving eventually at the small silt beach. The ground here was hard, the water having receded several feet due to the blazing hot summer they were still experiencing. Dropping onto the compacted sand, she kicked off her trainers and stared across the lake.

The other side was two hundred metres away, heavily wooded and rising beyond into a series of low hills. She’d circled the lake a dozen times before, a tough eight mile run that necessitated passing through several private properties. She was never seen or heard. Now, a group of kids larked on the shore and in the water directly across from her. Music was playing, a sibilant hiss, and they were jumping in from a tree that stretched out across the lake. Their laughter and delighted screams seemed to come from so far away.

Rose waded into the water, still in shorts and vest, and felt the slick bed closing around her feet. She jumped forward and went under, and after surfacing she turned on her back and floated. With her ears below the surface the world was silent, cool, consisting of nothing but a burning sky. She drifted there for a while. Hardly moved. Listened to her breathing, the gentle pop of water in her ears, her world for now so close around her that nothing else seemed to exist.

Molly, her sweet daughter, jumps into the pool, laughing as she surfaces, splashing Rose where she sits reading a book.

Rose rolled onto her front and started swimming. She breathed every three strokes, keeping her eyes closed underwater. Swimming was her least favourite exercise, partly because of the pain in her right arm, but mainly because she did not feel totally in control. She never went far. Fifteen minutes of hard swimming and she left the lake, enjoying the coolness across her skin as the sun dried the water. Even before she was fully dry she slipped her trainers on and started running again, heading along the shore towards the eastern tip of the lake, and the small footbridge that crossed the narrow river that fed it.

She’d already decided what she had to do. It was too easy for Holt to dismiss her on the phone, and it had been six weeks since they’d seen each other face to face.

It took another hour to complete her run and return.

She showered quickly, and as she was crossing the spare room where she kept her clothing and kit, she caught sight of herself in the wardrobe mirror. Even now she sometimes surprised herself. She paused and stared at the stranger staring back. Thinner than she’d ever been, leaner, stronger, she was also so far removed from the mother and wife who had let grief suck her into a well of alcoholic despair. Not a single drop of alcohol had passed her lips for over five years. Sometimes, the despair remained.

Even her dead husband, Adam, would have difficulty recognising her now. Her hair was shorter than it had ever been, spiked and dyed blonde. She wore green-tinted contact lenses. Her face was drawn, cheeks hollowed, and she’d lost every ounce of the fat that had given her what he’d called cherub cheeks. Laughter lines remained at the corners of her mouth and eyes, the scars of old smiles. Her left ear was pierced three times, and she wore a stud in her nose.

It was a diamond. She thought such luxury amusing.

She still carried the tattoo on her thigh. She’d had it because the woman who’d killed her family had it, visiting the same tattooist to glean what information she could. Laser treatment had never occurred to her. It was small, and would only be seen by those looking closely enough. Since her husband Adam, no one had.

She dressed in her cycling kit, locked up, and hit the road.

An hour later, approaching the small caravan that Holt had taken for himself, she was struck once again by how deserted it seemed. Holt fostered such an image, but she braked and paused by the small gate into the field, shielding her eyes and scanning the caravan and its surroundings. There were no signs of life.

She carried her bike across the ridged field. Its crop had already been harvested, leaving only sharp stubble.

‘It’s me!’ she called. It was unnecessary. He’d already know who was there.

The door was locked. She knocked, using their code. Two knocks, five, one. No answer.

‘John?’ He was John Williams. She was Jane Smith. In public, on the phone, anywhere.

Convinced that she was alone, she took out her bike’s toolkit and flicked open the small knife. It took fifty seconds to pick the caravan’s lock. She was out of practice. It was something she’d feared when they decided to settle for a few months, that they would become rusty, complacent, soft.

Door unlocked, she opened it a crack and peered through. The failsafe he used when he was inside was disconnected. Anyone breaking in when he was in residence would take a shotgun blast to the face.

Inside, she could already see that he’d left in a rush. Anger coursed through her. He wouldn’t have changed his mind so quickly, that was for sure, and even as she’d called him he must have been packing and preparing to leave.

‘Holt, you bloody prick!’ she muttered. Whenever she thought she was getting close to knowing him, she realised he was more of an enigma than ever.

She couldn’t help feeling hurt. He’d seen the reports and chosen to go on his own, not with her. They’d never really been a team, but she liked to think they had become friends, working together a few times since taking down the Trail’s UK cell. She trusted him as much as she would ever trust anyone again. She believed in him.

He’d lied to her, left without her, and that smarted.

A small note was propped on the table, beside an empty water bottle. Changed my mind , it said.

‘Yeah. Right. Bastard.’ She sighed and sat outside the caravan, looking across the fields at the farmstead in the distance, and the sweeping patterns the breeze made in dozens of acres of crops.

It took only a couple of minutes to convince herself that she had to follow.

For the final few normal hours of her life, Emma followed a familiar routine.

‘Hurry up, you’ll be late for school!’

‘Okay, Mum.’

She stood at the bottom of the stairs, listening to Daisy humming along to something on her iPod. Every school morning was the same, and every morning her daughter was out of the door with seconds to spare. It was only her second week back in school following the summer holidays, but it seemed that this final year in primary school would be the same.

‘Come on! I’ve got to get ready myself, yet.’

‘Chill pill, Mum.’ Daisy appeared at the top of the stairs. Short and slight like Emma, but also possessing her mother’s athletic build and love of sports, Dom always said that Daisy was going to be a heartbreaker.