Page 165 of Good Girl, Bad Blood

Meet me at the farmhouse at 11

: )

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I’ll be there.

Thirty-Nine

Backlit by the moon, the abandoned farmhouse glowed silver around its ragged edges, the light piercing through its cracks and crevices and the holes upstairs where the windows once were.

Pip stood about sixty feet back from the house, hidden inside a small huddle of trees on the other side of the road. She watched the old building, trying not to flinch when the wind hissed through the leaves, her mind creating words out of the voiceless sounds.

Her phone lit up, vibrating in her hand. Ravi’s number on the screen.

‘Yeah?’ she said quietly as she picked up.

‘We’re parked down the street,’ Ravi said, in a hushed tone. ‘Stanley just walked out the front door. He’s getting in his car.’ Pip listened as Ravi moved his mouth away from the phone, whispering unheard things to Connor beside him. ‘OK, he’s just driven past. He’s on his way to you.’

‘Got it,’ she said, her fingers tensing around the phone. ‘You two get inside as fast as you can.’

‘On our way,’ Ravi replied, over the sound of a car door quietly closing.

Pip listened to his and Connor’s feet on the pavement, up the front path, her heart beating in time with their hurried steps.

‘No, there’s no spare key under the mat,’ Ravi said, to both her and Connor. ‘Let’s go round the back, before anyone sees us.’

Ravi’s breath crackled down the line as he and Connor circled the small house, two miles away from her but under the very same moon.

A rattling sound.

‘Back door’s locked,’ Pip heard Connor say, faintly.

‘Yeah but the lock’s right there by the handle,’ said Ravi. ‘If I break the window, I can reach in and unlock it.’

‘Do it quietly,’ said Pip.

Rustles and grunts down the phone as Ravi removed his jacket and wrapped it around his fist. She heard a thump, and then another, followed by the pitter-patter of broken glass.

‘Don’t cut yourself,’ Connor said.

Pip listened to Ravi’s heavy breath as he strained.

A click.

A creaking sound.

‘OK, we’re in,’ he whispered.

She heard one of them crunching against the fallen glass as they stepped inside – and that’s when two yellow eyes blinked open into the night at her end. Headlights, growing as they sped along Old Farm Road towards her.

‘He’s here.’ Pip lowered her voice below the wind as a black car turned up Sycamore Road, wheels churning against the gravel until the car ground to a halt off the side of the road. Pip had left hers further up Old Farm Road, so Stanley wouldn’t see it.

‘Stay low,’ Ravi told her.

The car door swung open and Stanley Forbes stepped out, his white shirt clawing the darkness away. His brown hair fell unkempt into his face, hiding it in shadows as he shut the door and turned towards the glowing farmhouse.

‘OK he’s in,’ Pip said, as Stanley entered through the gaping front entrance, stepping into the darkness beyond.