Contents

About the Book

About the Author

Also by Simon Kernick

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six

Chapter Twenty-seven

Chapter Twenty-eight

Chapter Twenty-nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-one

Chapter Thirty-two

Chapter Thirty-three

Chapter Thirty-four

Chapter Thirty-five

Chapter Thirty-six

Chapter Thirty-seven

Chapter Thirty-eight

Chapter Thirty-nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-one

Chapter Forty-two

Chapter Forty-three

Chapter Forty-four

Chapter Forty-five

Chapter Forty-six

Chapter Forty-seven

Chapter Forty-eight

Chapter Forty-nine

Chapter Fifty

Chapter Fifty-one

Chapter Fifty-two

Chapter Fifty-three

Chapter Fifty-four

Chapter Fifty-five

Chapter Fifty-six

Copyright

About the Book

ONE WITNESS

You’re on a trip with your family, miles from anywhere. A shot rings out – and your whole life changes in an instant.

ONE SECRET

A woman is racing towards you, chased by three gunmen. Although you don’t know it, she harbours a deadly secret. She’s in terrible danger. And now you are too.

NO ESCAPE

You’re running, terrified, desperate to find safety.

You know that the men hunting you have killed before.

And if they catch you, you’ll be next . . .

About the Author

Simon Kernick is one of Britain’s most exciting thriller writers. He arrived on the crime writing scene with his highly acclaimed debut novel The Business of Dying, the story of a corrupt cop moonlighting as a hitman. Simon’s big breakthrough came with his novel Relentless which was the biggest selling thriller of 2007. His most recent crime thrillers include The Last Ten Seconds, The Payback, Siege and Ultimatum.

Simon talks both on and off the record to members of the Met’s Special Branch and the Anti-Terrorist Branch and the Serious and Organised Crime Agency, so he gets to hear first hand what actually happens in the dark and murky underbelly of UK crime.

To find out more about his thrillers, visit

www.simonkernick.com;

www.facebook.com/SimonKernick;

www.twitter.com/simonkernick

Also by Simon Kernick

The Business of Dying

The Murder Exchange

The Crime Trade

A Good Day to Die

Relentless

Severed

Deadline

Target

The Last 10 Seconds

The Payback

Siege

Ultimatum

Wrong Time, Wrong Place

Stay Alive

Simon Kernick

For my daughters, Amy and Rachel

One

21 days ago

AMANDA ROWAN HAD just stepped inside her front door, a shopping bag containing a pair of new shoes in one hand, her keys in the other, when she heard a sound that stopped her dead.

It was a faint, sudden gasp. Like air escaping from a tyre. Coming from somewhere upstairs.

Amanda listened intently, but all that came back at her was thick silence, interspersed with the ticking of the grandfather clock further down the hallway and, for a few seconds, she wondered if she’d imagined it.

The lights were on all over the house, and her husband’s Porsche was in the driveway, which meant he was home. He shouldn’t have been. He was supposed to be away on business in Manchester until the following afternoon. She’d seen him leave in the car early that morning, and had even spoken to him three hours earlier, just as he was about to go off to a client dinner. Except he hadn’t been going to a client dinner, because his car was here, two hundred miles away from Manchester.

Something had brought him back home early. And she knew exactly what it was.

George had been having an affair for months now. She’d found out about it purely by accident a few weeks earlier. One evening he’d forgotten to sign out of his Hotmail account on one of the two iPads they had in the house, and when she’d picked it up and tried to log into her own account, a long list of messages to George from an Annie Mac – a woman she’d never heard of – with subject titles like ‘I need you, darling’ and ‘Missing you desperately’, had appeared. Feeling numb, but not altogether surprised, Amanda had opened the first one and read it through. She didn’t need to read through any of the others. She got the gist.

Even so, it still rankled that he was so blasé about the whole thing that he’d bring his lover back here to the marital home. Maybe it had been her who’d made that strange noise, although it hadn’t sounded like anything she’d associate with lovemaking.

Amanda put down the shopping bag and closed the door quietly. Like her husband, she wasn’t meant to be coming back tonight. She’d arranged to stay overnight in London at her dad’s house, but her dad was a cantankerous old sod, and they’d had one of their inevitable arguments. Rather than let his angry barbs wash over her, as she usually did on the few occasions she visited him, Amanda had lost her temper, stormed out the door with a curse for a goodbye, and driven straight home.

It was weird though. No music was playing in the house, and the TV wasn’t on, which wasn’t like George. He needed background noise.

Upstairs, one of the floorboards creaked. Someone was creeping around up there and, even though she knew who it would be, Amanda tensed. That’s what happened when you lived in a three-hundred-year-old cottage in the middle of the woods, she thought. She loved this place. It had character, beauty, and desperately needed solitude, but it was also only a few miles from the M3, and barely an hour from the bright lights of London. And yet at night, when the only sounds were the hooting of owls, and the occasional drone of aircraft passing high overhead, it made her feel vulnerable. Especially without George’s background noise.

A floorboard creaked again. It was coming from one of the bedrooms. Amanda frowned. George was a big man who’d usually downed a bottle of red wine by this time of night, regardless of who he was with, and he tended to make a lot of noise moving about, even when he was trying to be quiet. He also had an irritating habit of loudly clearing his throat, especially when he’d had a drink.

But the creaking had stopped, and there was nothing coming from up there now.

The obvious conclusion was that he was trying to hide, because he knew he’d done something wrong. Like bringing his lover home while his wife was away.

Amanda stood in the hallway. Her heart was beating loudly and her mouth was dry. She wasn’t the sort of person who enjoyed furious confrontation. She preferred just to walk away when things went wrong. And she’d already lost her temper once tonight.


Перейти на страницу:
Изменить размер шрифта: