I need to get out of here before they come back. I need to walk away from this. Leave all of it, go home. Run. Then Mark and I can call the police. We’ll explain everything. At this stage I don’t care what the consequences of that may be. We can work that out later; maybe we can bargain with the information we have. Either way, we need police protection now. I don’t want to end up like the Sharpes.
But then I remember Mark’s text. He is on his way. Where? Here? But how can he know where I am? How can he know I’m here, in Norfolk? I thought he might work out what I was up to once he got home, but how can he know it’s happening here? I rack my brain and then I remember. It’s so simple. About three years ago I lost my mobile phone after a night out, and when I got a new phone Mark installed a phone finder app for me so we could track the new one if I ever lost it. All he needed to do was open up my laptop at home and click on the app. And bing, there I am.
And he’s on his way here to meet me right now. Thank God.
We’ll ring the police as soon as he gets here, and he should be here soon, very soon. And then it hits me. He won’t be coming here. He’ll be going to wherever my phone is. Oh my God. He’ll be going straight to them.
I have to stop him. I have to get to where they are before he does. I have to warn him or he’ll walk right into it. I need to save him. This is all my fault.
I shake the bathroom door, hard this time. I’m trapped and I hear myself let out a muted whimper of frustration. I peer through the empty keyhole. The key’s not on the outside either. No key to poke out of the lock onto the floor and pull under the door like they do in the movies. Patrick has tossed it or taken it. I look up at the window in the door. The intricately engraved birds of paradise frozen in song above me.
I rise clumsily to my feet as the bathroom spins sickeningly around me. I wait for the burst of dizziness to pass.
I grab a thick hotel towel off the rail and wrap it around the ceramic soap dish. Hopefully the noise won’t wake anyone. I turn on the shower to muffle the sound, just in case.
A rain of glass smashes and patters across the bathroom tiles and the plush carpet of the bedroom. Shards pepper across my cheeks and my hair. I turn off the shower and hold my breath, listen. I hear nothing. No doors open along the corridor, no voices. I drag the bathroom garbage pail over to the door and step carefully onto it, laying another towel over the jagged window frame to protect myself from cuts. Then I clamber as quickly as I can through the shattered window, back into the main room. As expected, my mobile phone is gone. Ignoring the fresh cut I’ve opened on my arm, I run to the bedside phone to call Mark, to warn him. But then I stop. I can’t call Mark. His number is in my iPhone. I don’t know it by heart. Modern technology. I don’t even know my husband’s phone number. I wish more than anything I had memorized it. But I haven’t. So, I can’t call him. I can’t warn him. The only way I can reach Mark now is to go to the buried USB coordinates myself. I need to go there, find Mark, and warn him before it’s too late. I need to stop him from following my phone right into the middle of all this, right into danger.
I scan the room. My rucksack is gone. Dammit. But it’s something else that makes me pause. The safe door is open and the safe empty. This throws me. That’s where the Glock was. It’s gone. How did Patrick know the code? But of course, I always use the same code. I use the code we have at home, one that is so easy to figure out it’s laughable. Mark’s birthday. Maybe Patrick did come to our house that day. Either way, somehow he knew Mark’s date of birth; he must have gone through the obvious choices and then struck gold. And now I have no gun. I have no gun, no phone, no plan.
There’s broken glass on the carpet. There’s blood on the bedspread. We’ve made quite a mess in here; I’ll have to clean it up at some point but right now I don’t have time. The clock on the bedside cabinet reads 4:18. It will go off in twelve minutes. I slam the off button and toss it onto the bed. I’ll need to take it with me; it’s the only way I’ve got of telling the time now.
In the mirror, the top left corner of my forehead on the hairline is red, swollen, crusted with black. For a second, feeling overwhelmed, I think about calling the police. Sending them to the woods. But I need to get Mark away from there first. I don’t want him caught in the chaos of police gunfire.
Instead I dress hastily, jam shoes on, then pull on the beanie hat that will cover the rest of the mess Patrick has made of my head.
Twelve minutes later I silently lift the latch on the front entrance of the hotel. The Do Not Disturb sign left hanging on the door to my highly incriminating room is the only thing between me and police interference. It will take me an hour to get to that spot in the woods, and I have no phone to call Mark, or Eddie, or anyone else who might help, no GPS to guide me, and no plan of what I’ll do when or if I get there. Just one simple thought: Save Mark.
It’s still dark outside. My breath fogs in the air. Five A.M. is already the sort of hour that prompts you to question your life choices. This morning, that feeling is particularly apt. I really have made bad choices in my life, but at least now that I know that, I’m in a position to rectify them.
With no phone or watch, I have to rely on the little plastic alarm clock. If I run, it should halve my time. I run. I run for a long time.
At 5:43 I start to panic. I’ve made my way as far as the tiny layby on the B road. I must have passed the spot and missed it. I head back into the forest.
At 5:57 I hear voices. They’re coming from the right, about a hundred yards away over a sloped area. I drop to my knees and crawl up the slope to the top of the incline and peek over. In the clearing, two figures stand talking. No conflict. No guns in sight.
I can’t make out the figures in the predawn light but I listen. I inch closer, desperate to remain hidden even as the leaves and forest debris crunch beneath my weight. The voices are clearer now, but something stops me short.
That voice. I know it. I love it. It’s Mark. Mark is here already. I want to leap up, charge into the clearing and into his arms. If he’s in danger, we’ll face it together.
But something stops me.
His tone.
His voice is cautious, businesslike. He’s clearly doing what he’s told. I’m too late. Shit. He must have run into them, trying to find me. They’re making him help them find the USB. I slide farther along the ridge. In the thin light I see that Mark and another man are now down on their knees, scraping at the forest floor, leather gloves brushing through leaves, scrabbling soil. The second man has read the notes on my phone, he knows I buried the USB, and now he’s making Mark help him look for it. He has both sets of coordinates; it’s only a matter of minutes before they find it. Shit. I need to think of some way to get Mark out of this.