‘I don’t think you have it in you.’
Chloe held his eye, knowing he saw straight through her attempts at heroics. This man had seen her at her weakest, at her most exposed. He knew her. He knew he still had her exactly where he wanted her.
‘Let me go,’ Chloe said, knowing the words would be pointless. ‘Let me go now and I can make sure you’re given mitigating circumstances. You’ll go to prison for what you’ve done, but I can make sure you get a lesser sentence.’ She caught her breath as the words tripped over one another. It still seemed so impossible that this man who she had known for so long and had trusted so unquestioningly was a murderer. He stepped further into the room, and she lashed across the air between them with the knife.
‘Get the fuck away from me,’ she screamed, tears now betraying her fear.
He studied her with dark eyes; eyes where she had once found comfort. How could she have got him so wrong? She had believed she could trust him with the things she had entrusted with no one else since Luke had died.
‘Or you’ll what?’ Adam said, raising his hands in mock surrender and taking a step backwards, away from her. ‘You’ll kill me?’ He took another step back and sat down on the closed lid of the toilet seat. ‘Go ahead. Only, then you’ll never find out the truth about what happened to Emily.’
Chapter Seventy-One
Alex ran an Internet search for the property to which Adam’s mobile had been traced. It was a small, one-bedroom cottage in the village of Colwinston, seven miles north of Marcross. It was advertised on just one website; not one of the more popular holiday home search sites but a page on a tourism site dedicated to the local area. The description of the property boasted beautiful rural scenery and an idyllic location free from any neighbours.
She stopped reading and looked up from the iPad. The bastard had planned this, had probably been planning it for a while. He had chosen somewhere they wouldn’t be seen. Somewhere they wouldn’t be heard.
They were just a few miles away now, but the distance seemed impossible and time felt as though it was dragging its feet, once again not on their side.
She tried to make a map in her mind of the moves Adam might have taken to get Chloe into the van. It would have been so easy to do: the lane at the back of the building was accessible to vehicles and Chloe’s flat was on the ground floor of the last house on the row of terraces. The lane at the side was wide enough for a vehicle to access, and Chloe’s back gate was at the side of the house, giving it total privacy from the neighbours. All Adam had needed to do was carry her from the door to the van: a distance of only four metres. There wouldn’t have been time or opportunity for anyone to have seen him, especially not at that time of the evening.
A voice on the radio alerted her attention. One of the other cars had already arrived there. Alex leaned forward, putting a hand on the side of the driver’s seat.
‘Do not approach the property,’ she said. ‘Wait for armed backup.’
She turned and looked at Harry, who gave her a nod. She knew that, were she there alone, she would likely do the stupid thing and barge straight in, heedless of the possible consequences for both herself and Chloe. But she wasn’t there yet. One officer in danger was one too many. She wasn’t going to jeopardise anyone else’s safety, not unless it was her own.
‘There’s a vehicle outside the property,’ one of the voices on the end of the radio told them. ‘A white van. No plates.’
Alex glanced again at Harry. She imagined his thoughts were in that moment a mirror of hers.
Chloe was smart, Alex tried to reassure herself. She would keep him talking, try to stall him.
Sitting back and pushing her head against the seat, Alex closed her eyes for a moment. She was fooling herself. Chloe was facing the worst kind of horror imaginable. She knew what that man had done to two other women. She knew everything he was capable of. Given what she knew – having had the images of Lola’s and Sarah’s bodies imprinted on her brain – any sense of rational thought, any former courage, was certain to escape her.
Alex opened her eyes and focused on the darkened world outside the window. Don’t give up, she muttered to the glass, as though somewhere, wherever she was and whatever was happening to her, Chloe might hear her.
Chapter Seventy-Two
The knife was shaking in her hands. His words echoed in the small room, bouncing off the stone walls and deafening her. She didn’t want to hear them. She didn’t want to believe them. Chloe had thought he had used her past to weaken her, to push her life off balance. She hadn’t once considered he actually knew something.
He didn’t, she thought, holding his stare as he looked up at her. He didn’t know a thing. He was trying to put her off, trying to weaken her once more. The more she tried to believe that, the more she was able to stifle the sounds his words still made.
‘Don’t look so surprised,’ he said. ‘You always knew your brother didn’t kill her.’
A sob escaped Chloe’s throat, half-strangled. She felt tears coursing streaks down her cheeks, but she no longer cared if he was witness to them. Why was he doing this to her? What had she done to deserve any of this? What had Emily done?
She moved her focus to the knife, willing it to steady. She would use it. If he moved now, she would use it. She wouldn’t think twice about what she was doing.
‘You’re lying.’
He gave her a sad smile. ‘Easier to believe that, isn’t it? A bit like poor Luke, really. He didn’t want to believe the truth either.’
Chloe felt her jaw tighten, the drugs that had earlier rendered her face immobile now beginning to wear off. She clenched her teeth.
‘Emily didn’t want to be with him, did she? She told him, but poor little Luke didn’t want to believe it.’
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’
He was bluffing, she thought. It would have been so easy for him to gain the details surrounding the night of her death: they had been splashed across the papers and all over the Internet. Everyone had known that Emily had apparently tried to end her relationship with Luke that evening. It was the reason the police had decided him responsible for her murder.
‘She was so excited. She couldn’t wait to tell me that she’d dumped him. Couldn’t wait to tell me that we could be together.’
Chloe felt the floor of the bathroom give way beneath her feet. Her body tilted to the side, as if drunk. The words seemed to circle her, tangling, making no sense.
‘No,’ she said, with a quick shake of the head.
Adam nodded. ‘We only see what we choose to, don’t we, Chloe? She thought I actually wanted her. That little slag. Now why would I have wanted to go anywhere near that?’