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

Yeah.

But when he glanced into the large family bathroom and saw the shower curtain on the floor, its plastic hooks strewn across the tiles along with scattered pot pourri, bath dry but for the splash of blood across one side and the smear across the wall beside the shower head, he knew that everything had changed.

His vision and senses became focused, sharpened by fear for his family and the surrealness of this moment. He saw things he might not have otherwise noticed. The bathroom window was closed, and Terri always opened it first thing in the morning. Megs’ sleep teddy – the one cuddly toy she couldn’t get into bed without – was propped behind the bathroom door on the laundry basket. The shower power supply was on but the curtain, splayed across the floor with one end up on the toilet seat, was dry.

Blood.

Gemma tried shaving her legs, cut herself. Terri panicked, took her to hospital. But that just didn’t add up. She’d have taken her phone, and he always took his mobile when he went for a run, always! He frantically dug it from his waist bag and checked, but there were no missed calls, no emails.

Breathing heavier now, he smelled coffee again.

He ran downstairs, trying to blink away the image of blood. Splashed on the bath. Smeared on the wall, as if someone had it on their hand, reaching for purchase as they fell from the bath (or were pulled, maybe they were pulled) and took the shower curtain with them.

He ran past the still-empty living room and barged the kitchen door aside. It struck the door stop and bounced back at him, and he shoved it open again, blocking it with his foot, not making any sense of what he saw, because what he’d expected to see was his family sitting at the small table eating breakfast, Gemma perhaps with a bandage on her hand and looking sorry for herself.

Coffee. Terri hated coffee.

There was a man leaning casually against a kitchen cupboard beside the back door. The door was ajar, a small fingerprint of blood on the UPVC jamb. The man was holding a mug, the one from a Yorkie Easter egg that Chris’s mum still insisted on buying him every Easter, much to his secret delight. The man watched Chris while taking another long sip of coffee. He raised his eyebrows in greeting.

‘Who are you?’ Chris asked.

The man lowered the mug and swallowed. ‘Good coffee. Ethiopian. You ever been there?’

‘No, I … who are you?’

The stranger put the mug on the worktop beside him and picked up a phone. He wore a nice polo shirt, chinos, well-polished boots. He reminded Chris of the guy he’d seen sitting in the car at the end of the street, and that connection suddenly seemed all too real.

‘Where are my family? What are you doing here?’ Chris’s attention kept flitting to the open back door, that dab of blood. He was filled with a sudden, utter dread. His legs felt weak. His bladder relaxed.

The man looked at his watch, glanced at the phone screen, and sighed. ‘Stay in the house. Don’t go out. Don’t call the police, or your wife and children will be executed. I’ll be in touch.’ Then he turned and opened the back door.

‘Wait!’ Chris said, darting across the kitchen for the man, reaching, fingertips brushing the fine cotton of his polo shirt before the intruder turned fluidly and stood, motionless. He stared at Chris, his eyes empty, face blank and terrifying.

‘I’ll be in touch,’ he said again. He exuded danger in waves. Chris took one step back, and the man left and closed the back door behind him.

Terrified, shaking, alone, Chris waited for whatever might come next.

Chapter Two (#ud1915dbd-74a0-59c7-a83e-f6f10a277af6)

chosen (#ud1915dbd-74a0-59c7-a83e-f6f10a277af6)

Rose screamed herself awake, sprang upright on the uncomfortable bed and pressed one hand against her chest, feeling her thundering heart and assuring herself that she was still alive. Sweat had dampened her vest and underclothes. She’d kicked the blanket off during the night. The musty confines of the caravan were sliced by sheets of dawn sunlight shining through broken blinds, and birds sang cheerfully outside, as if her husband and three children had never been tied up and slaughtered in some dark, dank basement.

The familiar flood of reality rushed in, and Rose groaned at the awfulness of it all. Sometimes in sleep there was escape, and occasionally in dreams she enjoyed some form of vicarious peace. But not this past night. The memory of what she had found was so vivid and fresh that it was like discovering the scene all over again. Four years had passed, but most nights she found her dead family afresh.

Already the nightmare was dissipating, leaving brash images scorched into her memory. Adam, his eyes as wide and empty as the vicious gash in his throat. And her three children – Molly, Isaac, Alex – lying dead where she had not been able to protect them, hold them, whisper motherly words into their ears. She always remembered that, however hard she tried to forget.

She used the cramped toilet and dressed quickly, pausing now and then to glance from the windows. New habits persisted. It was dangerous to ever believe herself safe.

Outside, all was peaceful. The field where her caravan was parked remained empty right now – the farmer said he would be introducing some sheep in the next few weeks – and the grass was long, shimmering slightly in the morning breeze, jewelled with dew. The windows gave her good views in each direction, and she’d be able to see anyone approaching. Down the sloping field was the farm, still and silent this early in the morning. East lay the orchard, fruit-heavy trees dipping low limbs across the landscape. And to the north, a family of foxes played close to the hedge bordering the field and a woodland beyond, young cubs leaping, rolling, snapping at each other like puppies. She was always pleased to see them. If someone was close by, the foxes wouldn’t be anywhere in sight.

Rose went through her morning exercise routine. One hundred press-ups, sit-ups and crunches, along with chin-ups, planks, and squats. Her body had grown lithe and lean. The exertion kick-fired her metabolism and got her blood pumping, and the distraction steered her away from her horrible dreams. For a time, at least.

After eating a breakfast of fruit and yoghurt she pulled the pistol from beneath the mattress and tucked it into her belt.

She brewed coffee and switched on her laptop. The caravan was small and basic but suited her needs perfectly. She’d bought a new fridge and decent bedding, but the van’s outside was as mouldy and worn-looking as when she’d first seen it. Five hundred pounds and it was hers. The farmer took a chunk of cash from her each week for ground rent and silence, and he was happy to ask no questions. That was fine. She never stayed in one place for more than a few weeks.

Drinking strong coffee, humming quietly, she started scanning her usual news sites. But the memory of her nightmare was strong. She closed her eyes and breathed in coffee fumes, because every time she thought of her family the grief was rich, deep, and sometimes crippling. She dreaded forgetting them, though sometimes remembering was almost too much.

But her dreams and memories fed her fury. She knew that her current existence was a form of self-imposed limbo, and everything she did now would lead to an eventual resolution. Perhaps then she could lay her nightmares to rest, and true grieving could begin.

There was no news that drew her attention today. The usual political infighting, celebrity inconseque‌ntialities, far-away conflicts. She looked for murders or unexplained deaths. She sought news on kidnappings and shootings, unidentified bodies found strangely mutilated in city or countryside. Anything that might lead to the Trail.

As usual, nothing.

But something felt different today. Her nightmare clung on, and even though she had found nothing obvious on the net, perhaps today was the day to check again.

Rose gulped down the rest of her coffee in one and then opened a new browsing window.

She didn’t like doing this too often. She accessed the net via a proxy server in London, had a rolling defence protocol that would lock her out at the first sign of being tracked, used no identifying markers or traceable elements, yet she knew that they had far more expertise at their disposal than her. Rose liked to amuse herself by thinking about some of the online contacts she’d made and how much stuff she had access to that would give the heads of the CIA and MI5 panic attacks. But accessing the Trail’s own network was like dipping her toe into a river of alligators. It was only so long before she was noticed and they came for her.

She would only allow that to happen on her own terms.

She slipped by several firewalls and surfed communications she could not yet decipher. It was pretty standard traffic that she’d seen before, so she withdrew and re-entered under another address, creating an avatar that would easily be mistaken as a particularly intrusive trollbot, if anyone noticed it at all. Most trollbots’ aims were to spread viruses or collect information. Hers was simply to observe. She’d given it a variety of source links which flickered and rolled every three seconds – a sex-drug site; a Nigerian billionaire with money to get out of the country; a guaranteed tip to increase cock size. She hoped that, draped in the paraphernalia of a million other trolls, hers was all but invisible.

While her laptop worked, she made more coffee. It was her one vice, and had been for three years.

For almost a year after escaping the Trail and finding Adam and her children murdered, she’d drowned herself deep in London’s underworld. Her first thought had been to go to the police, but even then the shadow of the Trail remained over her, and the promises of harm they had levelled against her extended family and friends had felt even more real. They had proven themselves sickeningly brutal.

Then came the revelation that she was wanted for her family’s slaying. In a way, that was the worst abuse of all – the way they had framed her, made a mockery of her love and grief. A madness had taken her. A blazing fury and a smothering grief. It was incomprehensible how quickly she had changed from a family woman with a good job and a nice house to … someone else. And so she had cut her hair, dyed what was left, and submerged herself in the chaos of the capital. It was ironic that she went to so much effort disguising herself when in truth she was already lost.

Those shadowy places were more about the people than the locations – lost, dispossessed, cast adrift by society, or fallen by the wayside of their own volition. No one had seemed interested in her, and she had taken notice of no one. Occasionally she worried about being recognised, though in truth grief had changed her more than a haircut and new clothes ever could. She was a hollow person, and her body projected that physically. Sunken cheeks, stick-like limbs, deep eyes like pools of dark ink.

London had been an ideal place to hide, and to drink. Every day, every night, alcohol absorbed and obsessed her, becoming her whole world. When the memories threatened to surface she drank some more to smother them, and if she ever approached sobriety, another bottle of cheap vodka swept her away again. Abandoned buildings and squats had provided places for her to sleep, and if in a drunken haze she lost her way, there were always the shadowy spaces beneath bridges or in rubbish-strewn alleyways. She was one woman in a city whose lifeblood was anonymity, and time and place lost all meaning. The moment of change when she’d found her family was a deep, wide chasm in her life. Sometimes she stood on the edge and tried to look back, but it was too far to see clearly. So she remained on the other side, wallowing in the guilt of survival and letting alcohol smother her across this new, barren land.

Seeing a member of the Trail had changed everything.

Rose had stumbled into the woman outside the Apollo Theatre one rainy, cold November evening. She’d been wandering through Soho searching for one of her familiar sleeping places, a deserted, boarded-up pub accessed through a broken back window. Many of the dispossessed knew that place. It stank of piss and booze, echoed with drug-fuelled mumblings and occasional cries of wretchedness, pleasure or pain. But that night Rose’s befuddled sense of direction had failed her, and she’d emerged into the bright lights and bustle of Shaftesbury Avenue.

The lights had been blinding. Disorientated, she’d turned to make her way back into the shadows. People had parted to let her by, protecting themselves with space and muttered words of distaste. All but this woman. Rose had walked right into her, and many times since she’d wondered whether it had been orchestrated. Had the woman recognised her in that instant and engineered their collision? Had she been looking for her?

The last time Rose had seen her, she’d been standing beside a Range Rover somewhere in London’s Docklands smiling broadly as a man told Rose to run.

As the heat of recognition grew quickly in Rose’s mind, she saw that it had already settled in the woman’s eyes. Grin, Rose thought, because that’s how she had thought of the woman since that first meeting, in nightmares and booze-fuelled fantasies of revenge. Grin, you’re Grin, and I’ll wipe that name from your face.

Grin was smartly dressed, short and thin, strong. Her auburn hair was cut in an attractive bob, her skin smooth and relatively unlined even though she was perhaps fifty years old. She looked nice, like anyone’s mother. But Rose knew her secret.

Grin had smiled and reached slowly, casually into her raincoat pocket.