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He walked in small circles around the blackened garden, his decimated sanctuary. His shed was gone in a bomb of smoke. The petrol had done its job on his car out front too, but the next blast hadn’t been strong enough to dint the outer walls. He regretted ever learning how to make bombs with fertiliser.

‘Why can’t we just leave now?’ he said. ‘Why do you have to destroy everything?’

‘Evidence, idiot,’ she snarled. ‘If we’re to disappear again, to start over, we can’t leave clues. We’ve done it before. We can do it again.’

‘I’m tired of running. Tired of killing for you.’

‘Want me to put you out of your misery? I can easily do it.’

‘Like you did to John Morgan?’

‘He was too clever for his own good,’ she snarled. ‘He knew what he was doing with Gordon. A man with only daughters needs a surrogate son. A man who disowned his first daughter. Bastard.’

‘But why kill John?’

‘Because I couldn’t risk that he knew about me and Aneta.’

‘No one knew?—’

‘Collins knew. Morgan was in rehab where Aneta worked and he was close to Collins, ergo… Use your brain, if you have one. They had to be dealt with.’

‘You got them good and proper.’

‘Yes, but that fucker Collins survived the fire.’

‘By killing Aneta we should have ended any threat from him.’

‘You should have seen his face when I told him how I starved and abused her for a year, and he thinking she’d returned to Poland. I’ll treasure his look of incredulity for the rest of my life.’

‘What are we going to do with the others? We can’t take them with us.’

‘We will take Shannon to care for Magenta and Aaron. But I’ve something very unpleasant planned for Diana.’

‘You killed her daughter, is that not enough?’

‘ You killed her, you fool. You couldn’t even do that right. I wanted her alive. You’re such a hindrance. Maybe you need to die too.’

He worried that he’d said too much. He thought he’d mastered the art of keeping his true thoughts suppressed in front of her. ‘You need me. You’ve always needed me.’

‘No I don’t. Since those horrible things were done to me, since he raped me when I was only sixteen years old, I’ve needed no one. I have to use people to get me what I want. How else do you think I got you registered on that escort site and pointed you to those I wanted? I paid Cathy in the Right One office to allow me access to the database. I forced Irene to give you a job at Cuan so you could report back to me. I have manipulation down to a fine art.’ She paused. Her face took on the darkness that terrified him more than if she held a knife in her hand. ‘And you know what? I don’t need you any more.’

‘You need me to kill the woman.’ He turned to look at Diana trussed up like a turkey on a chair behind them.

‘I will take pleasure in watching you end her useless life. She colluded with Gordon to take my child away from me and?—’

‘You agreed to it all,’ Diana said, the tape loosened on her lips. ‘You said you didn’t want her growing up to remind you of Gordon Collins.’

‘Shut up, woman.’

‘You were going to burn her alive!’

‘I said shut up!’

‘If you’re going to kill me, do it now. I can’t bear to listen to your lies any longer.’

‘You will suffer first. Perhaps you’d like to see your grandson in pain as you die. Fetch him for me.’ She pushed him and he staggered from the room.

He didn’t like this. She was supposed to love him. But did she even know how to love? She’d taken everything from him, from everyone. And he’d been complicit. A weakling. Was now the time to stand up to her? But fear burrowed its way deep into his groin and he almost cried out.

As he made his way to the room where they held the children, he wondered if he should just keep walking. Out the front door. Out the gates. Up the lane. Across the fields. Keep going until he had put enough distance between them to feel safe for once in his life.

At the front door, he hesitated, long enough to hear a crash and two gunshots from somewhere behind him. Where had she got a gun from?

He backed away from the door without unlocking it.

Something was very wrong.

Both knees of her jeans were torn and she’d ripped her jacket sleeve up to her shoulder, but Lottie had succeeded in climbing the wall despite the cumbersome Kevlar vest. A fallen tree, its trunk rotting, had given her the leg-up she’d needed. The crows had departed in a flurry of noise, but she was masked by a multitude of branches that swept low over the wall.

A car was on fire towards the front of the house and some sort of shed smouldered at the rear wall. The scene confirmed that she was in the right place. Someone was trying to cover their tracks while getting ready to escape.

Dropping down the other side of the wall, she heard sirens in the distance. She lay flat on her stomach and crab-crawled across the slabbed ground towards a solid back door. Rising, she glanced in through a darkened window. A slit at the bottom of the blinds revealed what she’d suspected.

At the door, she found there was no handle, only a lock for a key. She pushed, but it was secure. She fired two shots at the lock and kicked the door in, crying out with the pain shooting through her foot before ignoring it. The next door was easier to kick in, and she flew through it into the nightmare scene.

‘Drop the knife, Charlie.’

‘Like hell I will.’

Charlie Lennon, still dressed in her designer jeans, her shirt creased and stained with sweat and smoke, stood behind a tied up Diana Nolan, holding a knife to her throat. The skin had already been nicked and a trickle of blood ran down Diana’s neck. Her eyes were wide with terror, and though she was bound, her right knee bounced uncontrollably.

Lottie forced herself to stay calm. ‘You’ve nothing left to gain by killing another woman. Especially with a witness present.’

‘I killed no woman, you delusional bitch.’

How many times had Lottie been called delusional in her life? The word pulsed red-raw anger through her veins and she propelled herself across the space and hit Charlie in the side of her head with her gun before the woman could react. She drew back her arm to thrash her again, but stopped. Charlie was knocked out. Not dead. Pity.

‘You okay, Diana?’ She bent to untie the rope.

‘Leave me. He’s gone to get Aaron. Find him.’

Taking handcuffs from her belt, she secured Charlie’s hands behind her back and left her lying on the floor as the woman moaned, regaining consciousness.

She listened at the internal door. All was quiet. Too quiet.

She depressed the handle just as the door opened, knocking her back across the kitchen. Banging her head against the corner of a cupboard, she slid to the ground. She heard Diana scream as a tidal wave of darkness crushed her and she gave herself up to the darkness.