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.