Page 64 of Runner 13

Adrienne

It’s the only thing my mind can think of. I’ve done it – through delirium and pain, through literal hell and back, I’ve made it. I’ve crossed his finishing line. I deserve those answers and I want them now.

Stella shakes her head.

She’s really going to deny me now? She’s saying something, but I’m not taking it in.

Someone grabs me by the arm – it’s Henry.

He keeps pushing me towards cameras, towards people who want to clap me on the back, congratulate me, find out what I’ve been through.

A medic is on my other side, wanting to take me for a check.

I know I need one. Badly. The bandage round my arm is cemented to my skin with blood, my joints are swollen and painful, my lips are tight and my mouth bone dry from dehydration.

But I wave them off. I have one target. My vision is fully tunnelled.

I know what I want. And I’m not stopping until I get it.

‘Well?’ I ask Stella again.

She won’t give me a straight answer. ‘Adri, I don’t know what he promised you …’

‘The footage. I want to know who was driving the car that almost killed my son. LK 1X XFG .’

Stella’s eyes widen. She knows.

Those podcast guys – Mac and Jason – are behind her. Jason is looking worse for wear, but he’s alive. I reach out a hand to steady myself. My stomach lurches and I feel like I’m going to be sick. I take a deep breath. ‘So?’ I ask.

‘You didn’t finish,’ says Stella, at least wincing when she says it. She knows how unfair it is.

‘I turned on my beacon to save Hiroko. I think I did enough to earn my answers.’

Her silence is deafening.

It’s Jason who breaks it. ‘Hang on, repeat that number plate again.’

I do what he asks. I don’t think I’ll forget the number for as long as I live.

He frowns. ‘I know who was driving that car. It’s the same one that was parked outside Coach Glenn’s house the morning he died. It was rented to a Luke Halverson.’

‘Luke Halverson.’ I say the name like a talisman. But it doesn’t mean anything to me. ‘Who is that?’

Jason shakes his head. ‘I wasn’t able to find out anything about him, except that he had an American passport.’

‘Right. A tourist. That’s what the police said. Although they wouldn’t give me his name.’ I feel the last of my energy seep from this final pin burst. I deflate like a balloon.

‘I know who Luke is,’ Stella says.

‘You do?’

‘It’s Dad’s real name. Luke Halverson is Boones,’ she says.

I blink. Boones had been driving the car?

Oh my God … I’d accepted an invitation from the very man I’d been afraid of these past seven years.

The one who’d caused me to give up my career, my passion.

I’d walked straight into his domain. I think of the bullet flying towards me.

Of the fall that killed Steve. Of the miles I had run, how hard I had pushed my body.

When he had been the one who had hurt Ethan all along.

He was the threat I feared.

But why?

I have to ask him.

Jason looks as shocked as I feel, his eyes wide. This is a mystery he’s been chewing on for so long; he’s almost as invested as I am.

Almost.

‘Did Boones know Coach Glenn then?’ Jason asks Stella.

‘No.’

‘So why would he go and see him? Why would he kill him?’

I blink. Jason thinks Boones killed Coach Glenn? Then the pieces fall together for me. I suddenly remember my conversation with Matt. Someone else had visited Glenn after me. Boones.

‘Because of Yasmin,’ Stella answers. ‘Yasmin was my half-sister.’ She glances at me and I give the smallest nod.

‘She was the one Glenn attacked in Ibiza. Not Adrienne. Dad figured it out after she took her own life. He’s always been perceptive that way.

He was so angry. He flew to the UK to confront him.

Or … that’s what I thought anyway. It turned out to be more than that. ’

I stare at Stella. ‘Then why would your father go after Ethan?’

‘Because he thought you’d been a part of it. Luring Yasmin there, inviting her for him to take advantage of.’

‘Never!’ I say, fiercely, horrified that Boones would make that assumption.

‘We know that, Adri. I think, deep down, he knew that too.’ She swallows, her hands trembling as they reach for mine. ‘I’m sorry for what he did. For what it almost cost you.’

‘It’s not your fault. But, Stella, the world is owed the truth. We need to tell them what a monster Glenn was. For Yasmin. For justice.’

To my relief she nods. ‘I’m with you.’

I take a deep breath in and count to four, holding it, then exhaling for four.

When it settles, I let it go. All of it.

I glance at Jason and Mac – it’s like I can see their minds working, going into overdrive.

The truth will come out and I’m sure they’ll play a part in it.

I might not like it but I got my answers, like Boones promised. It’s what I came for.

And yet what I’m leaving with is so much more. Irrefutable proof that I can and I did.

Runner 13. A curse for some. But for me?

Time will tell.

The race might be over. But the rest of my life is just beginning.