The Hunt: ‘A great thriller...breathless all the way’ – LEE CHILD

She liked being hidden away below the radar, unknown, unseen, the shadow of a ghost.

But this part was always going to be this way.

She could see the helicopter further down the valley, sitting on a wide parking bay beside the road. Clouds of dust were whipped up by the rotors, swirling, dancing and spreading in complex and beautiful patterns. Through the dust she could just see the clumsy figures of the hunters, disembarked and already moving off onto the landscape. She glanced at the outcropping of rocks where Chris should have hidden. Beyond and above was wild country – his sort of territory, a place he was well used to. She only hoped he didn’t fuck up and get himself shot too soon.

A flash of memory jarred her. They came like this sometimes, especially if her mind was active, the thought of grief and revenge hot.

She was sitting on a rock on a mountainside, the view laid out before her beyond breathtaking. Adam was beside her. They’d been sharing a flagon of farmhouse cider that they’d bought from a local farmer – potent and cutting, quite vile, but it gave them a warm buzz that drew them even closer together. There were no roads, no houses, nothing manmade in sight. They were intruders here, and if Rose concentrated she could distance herself completely, be part of the landscape and understand just how wild this place really was.

She blinked and the memory faded, leaving behind the taste of foul cider on her tongue.

‘I hope you’re as good as I think,’ she muttered. If Chris got himself shot straight away, everything was fucked. And now she had revealed to the Trail that she was still alive.