around seventy grand each year. Nice, but nothing spectacular. Nothing that would attract the attention of the sort of people who could do this.
Take his family, threaten his siblings and friends. Carry guns. Use his own tech against him.
He put his phone screen-down on the kitchen worktop and paced the kitchen again. He was sweating again now, chilled from his long run. He’d always had something of a vivid imagination, and now and then he’d written ideas down with the intention of one day writing a book. Terri had been encouraging, but it had never gone much beyond a few pages of notes and several tentative first chapters. Once, out on a long run, he’d imagined the end of the world. Running the barely used public footpaths across the top of a local range of hills, he’d lost himself for a few miles daydreaming about what would happen if he got home from the run and everything had changed. His family, friends, neighbours, associates, all gone. Turn on the TV … white noise. Nothing on the radio. Leave home and everything is normal, return two hours later and find he’s the only man left alive.
Now, that had happened. His whole world had changed, and unless he did precisely as instructed, they would end it. He didn’t know what they wanted. But in less than twenty minutes he would find out.
Chris couldn’t keep still. He walked back and forth, looking down at his phone every few seconds and waiting for it to make a noise. If the Black Sabbath song ‘Paranoid’ rang out it would be Jake calling him back to offer help. A whistle would be an email. A double-ping would be a text, perhaps from one of his siblings if they had a chance to secretly get in touch, tell him they were with him, they were doing their best. He picked it up and turned it over, checking the screen anyway in case he hadn’t heard. But there were no messages, emails, or missed calls.
He didn’t want to call his elderly mother. Not after what Angie had said, and Jake. He didn’t want to know.
Landline, he thought. I could contact the police that way. But that would be stupid. Whatever their reasons for doing this, they’d planned it in detail. They’d have the landline covered. Bugged, perhaps, if what he saw in movies was true. It was far too risky.
He paused by the chopping board and leaned back against the kitchen units. Eighteen minutes.
He made himself a drink. Tea, lots of sugar. As a teenager he’d always laughed at his parents whenever their first reaction to a crisis was to make tea, but as he’d grown older he’d come to recognise its calming properties. It wasn’t anything chemical, he thought, nor was it the warmth. It was distraction. Waiting for the water to boil, stirring the tea bag, adding the milk, watching the tea darken, all these took time. But he couldn’t distract himself from this.
He glanced up and saw the knife block. Six knives, all of them sharp. Terri had spent over a hundred quid on them, and he’d expressed his doubt that they were worth the money. But they were good knives that had kept their keenness over time.
Without pausing to scare himself out of it, he grabbed a medium-sized knife and slipped it into the waist of his running trousers, dropping his sweaty shirt over the handle with one hand as he picked up his mug with the other.
He turned and breathed across the hot tea, steam filming his eyes and warming his skin. The knife was cold against his hip. And just what the fuck am I going to do with that? he thought, trying to imagine himself plunging it into someone’s stomach. He almost puked.
‘I’m ready,’ he said. ‘No need to hang about.’ The phone said fourteen minutes.
Slowly, he sipped at the hot tea and managed to convince himself that everything would be fine. If they’d planned to harm him or his family they’d have done so by now. They wanted something of him, though he couldn’t imagine what. He’d made no enemies in life that he could think of. He’d always been fair in business. He and Terri led a boringly normal life in many ways – loyal to each other, adoring of their children. He vented any need for excitement through his running, triathlons, mountain racing. There are worse mid-life crises, Terri said to him sometimes when he signed up for another extreme race.
Chris closed his eyes and breathed in the tea fumes, but found nothing approaching calmness. He felt like crying at the memory of seeing his family like that, taken somewhere unknown, bound and gagged. It had been a woman guarding them, but he couldn’t help imagining how vulnerable they were to the men involved in this, too. Terri in what she called her comfy clothing, unconsciously attractive. Gemma, awkward and pretty, just developing into womanhood. Little Megs.
He opened his eyes, furious, and swigged at his tea. On the fridge door facing him, held on by magnets, were several drawings by Megs, a few money-off coupons for their local supermarket, and a twenty-pound note. Gemma had been due to go to the cinema with her friends that evening.
He heard a knock from somewhere beyond the kitchen door.
Holding his breath, Chris put the mug down slowly, mouth slightly open, listening hard. The heating was off now, though the boiler was still warming the water. But he hadn’t recognised the sound.
It came once more, definitely an impact of some sort. His phone showed nothing so he turned it face-down again. Taking the knife from his belt and holding it down by his side, he walked through into the corridor beyond the kitchen door. Ahead of him the front door was still closed, and there was no sign of movement elsewhere.
Studio, he thought. To his right a shorter corridor led beneath the staircase to another door, beyond which their converted garage had become his business studio. It was a good size, with computer station, an old-fashioned drawing board, walls lined with pictures displaying his designs, and an informal area for clients with leather sofa and coffee machine. Nothing extravagant, but comfortable. And now there was someone there.
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,