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

Published by Avon an imprint of

HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street,

London, SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2016

This ebook edition 2016

Copyright © Tim Lebbon 2016

Cover design © Headdesign 2016

Tim Lebbon asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008122911

Ebook Edition © August 2016 ISBN: 9780008122928

Version: 2016-07-04

‘A pacy thriller that had me on the edge of my seat!’

Sun

‘A great thriller … breathless all the way.’

Lee Child

‘A breakout new voice in thrillers.’

Sarah Pinborough

‘Cleverly executed and full of suspense.’

My Weekly

‘The plot is fast moving and keeps you on the edge of your seat all the way through.’

Crime Book Club

‘The pace of plotting and the well-realised location of the rugged and hostile terrain of Snowdonia add to the feel of a tension fuelled thriller.’

Crime Fiction Lover

‘Guaranteed to get your heart pounding.’

Crooks on Books

For Pic

‘The battle line between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.’

– Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise for The Hunt

Dedication

Epigraph

Author’s Note

Chapter One: The Space Between Breaths

Chapter Two: One Thing

Chapter Three: Dangerous

Chapter Four: Not You

Chapter Five: Loony Tunes

Chapter Six: Pillbox

Chapter Seven: A Quiet Life

Chapter Eight: Manson Eyes

Chapter Nine: Soft Bitch

Chapter Ten: Attenshun

Chapter Eleven: Carry on

Chapter Twelve: Nothing Would Happen

Chapter Thirteen: Bluebells

Chapter Fourteen: Little Things

Chapter Fifteen: Windy Miller

Chapter Sixteen: Splinters

Chapter Seventeen: Jane Smith

Chapter Eighteen: Rocks

Chapter Nineteen: Cat

Chapter Twenty: The Team

Chapter Twenty-One: Hired Help

Chapter Twenty-Two: Night Watch

Chapter Twenty-Three: Gone

Chapter Twenty-Four: On the Move

Chapter Twenty-Five: Amateurs

Chapter Twenty-Six: Tumble

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Superglue

Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Hottest Day

Chapter Twenty-Nine: One More Scar

Chapter Thirty: Trouble

Chapter Thirty-One: Armed Response

Chapter Thirty-Two: Option Three

Chapter Thirty-Three: Stacked Odds

Chapter Thirty-Four: The Beach

Chapter Thirty-Five: The Hollow Woman

Chapter Thirty-Six: Surprise

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About the Author

By the Same Author

About the Publisher

Author’s Note:Some of the towns and locations in this novel exist in real life. In fact, I live very close to Usk and Abergavenny and they’re both very beautiful places. I have also visited Brusvily in France many times, and it is equally lovely. But I’ve taken the monstrous liberty of changing things about these places to suit the novel – layout, landscape, the names of shops and pubs. It’s a terrible indulgence, and I beg your forgiveness.

When it regained consciousness, he had already glued its mouth shut.

This excited him. It was like locking the life inside, not letting it bleed out. Usually there was some sort of leakage as something died beneath his hands – blood, breath, tears. This already felt different. He decided that he would use the glue again.

He turned away as it started to twist and moan. The bindings were tight, and he knew that there was no chance of it working its way free. Not in the short time it had left. But for a moment he wanted to observe unseen, not meet its gaze. He liked the power this gave him.

Circling around behind the chair, he paused to watch. Perhaps it could smell him. It could certainly hear him, because his breathing was deep and heavy, calm. But now that it could no longer see him, the panic was deeper, the desperation more divine.

He watched for a while, coughing once, uttering a long, low whistle, excited at how these sounds affected its behaviour – a pause, and then more frantic efforts to break free.

He glanced around the room. The house was old and abandoned, everything neat and ordered but layered with years of dust, perhaps the home of a dead person with no relatives. It was out of time, and he was confident that he would not be interrupted. The traditional life represented here by a bulky TV, a table for dinner, and family photographs, was not his life.

Far from it.

A loud snort drew his attention back to his victim. Blood and mucus shot from its broken nose, and then it breathed more easily.

He closed slowly from behind, and then pounced.

Moving with confidence, he pulled its head back against the high-backed chair, pressed the tube’s nozzle into one nostril, and squirted the superglue inside.

Then he dropped the tube and squeezed its nose shut.

As it squirmed and tensed, attempting to writhe from side to side against the ropes, its strength surprised him. He had to pull back hard, tipping the chair onto its two rear legs. But it didn’t take long.

After a minute he let the chair drop back onto all fours. The impact on the hardwood floor had the sound of finality. Retrieving the tube of glue, he moved around to face it for the last time.

Its right nostril was closed, deformed. Its eyes were wide and desperate, issuing pleas that it knew would not be answered.

He could see that realisation in its eyes – there was no hope, and the only future remaining was the space between this breath and its last. That pleased him. Its panic was his fuel.

Pressing its head back against the chair, he heard the sudden inhalation that would feed those final few seconds. He squirted glue into its open nostril. Squeezed the nose shut. Looked into its eyes.

‘Shhh,’ he said.

But even then, he did not smile.

It was the downhills that scared Dom the most.

He’d once read that cycling defines the man, and as he mounted the brow of the hill and followed Andy down into the first curve of the big descent, he couldn’t help but agree.