Page 47 of 59 Minutes

FRANKIE

The girl has disappeared around the kink in the road.

From the front of the truck, a few metres away, comes another groan.

The driver is alive but in what condition?

Frankie shuffles around and climbs into the passenger seat of the Mercedes beside Otis, ducking out of view – she hopes – from the truck.

Is Ashley going to climb out and find her?

What will he do to them? He can’t make it anywhere in his truck, that’s smashed to pieces.

And Otis’s car is no use. Ashley didn’t look in shape to run back to the village.

Maybe he’ll just kill her and Otis, because he has no other options. Because he’s a fucking animal.

She waits, holding Otis’s limp hand and counting to ten but then carrying on to twenty. Nothing. No more sound, no movement. She thinks of that great gash on Ashley’s head, all the blood. Surely he’s not capable …

The mist has nearly gone now. How quickly it’s disappeared after causing all that trouble. She climbs out carefully, head still thick with pain, body still shaking, and looks around. The vehicles are wedged against a muddy, tree-lined bank on a narrow lane, in the apex of a gentle bend.

She knows what lies in the direction they came, and it’s all too far away.

Instead, her throbbing eyes follow the curve of the road in the other direction.

The road not yet travelled. She paces around the corner a little way, looking behind her constantly in case Ashley has followed or somehow Otis has sprung to life or the girl has come back. But nothing happens.

She takes another corner, and another, and a third. And there, ahead by maybe a hundred metres, sits a building with smoke coming from its chimney. She looks behind her, the car and truck blocked by curves in the road, and she looks ahead. Shelter.

She rushes back to the car as fast as she can manage through the pain that is getting worse in her head and her body, her cold, unprotected feet. Otis is still unconscious, his pulse still far too fast.

‘Otis, I’ve found somewhere we can go but we need to get there right now.’

He doesn’t react. She pulls his arm, shakes it, kisses his face, sweeps his hair out of his eyes, jiggles his knee with her hand and then grabs both shoulders and shakes him so hard she worries she’ll break something. Nothing works.

She has thirteen minutes. Thirteen minutes to get to that building, convince them to help her get Otis and carry him back inside too.

That has to be enough time, they have to agree to help.

They have to. But to make sure of it, Frankie creeps silently towards the truck.

Ashley is still in the driver’s seat and as she opens the passenger seat door, he groans again.

But his eyes are closed and he doesn’t move, even as she carefully reaches into the footwell and pulls out the gun.