Miss No One - Mark Ayre (top 10 most read books in the world txt) 📗

Mum would’ve hit the roof if she’d known her youngest child had a King novel. Paul would have been sleeping in the garden. Violet would have been unable to sit for a week.

Abbie hadn't been involved, but mum would have found a reason to smack her as well. Her mother was like that.

Since Violet's death, Abbie had read the book multiple times. By now, fifteen or more years after its purchase, The Stand was holding up about as well as the post-apocalyptic world depicted within its pages. Abbie no longer dared read the volume. She could never take the risk with something so precious.

Precious to her, at least.

Whenever she removed it from the pillowcase, she did so as a devout monk might remove the holy grail from its box, were he ever to find it.

Abbie would place the book beside her. She would lay a hand upon it.

Closing her eyes, she would talk to her sister.

Abbie didn't believe in an afterlife. Didn't believe her sister was somewhere beyond the stars, listening. Nor did she care. When she touched the book, she felt connected to her precious Violet. The book never failed to bring her little sister's face to the front of Abbie mind.

The book gave her strength.

Bobby was smart. He saw what Abbie needed. If only he'd been brave enough to say it.

Abbie was an idiot. Bobby shouldn't have had to tell her. She should have known.

She should never have left it.

When she closed her eyes, she could no longer conjure her sister's face or hear her laugh.

This was upsetting, but it also made Abbie feel silly. After all, the book was a book. There was no reason its absence should prevent Abbie remembering any feature of her beautiful sister.

But it did, so Abbie was without those memories until she returned home, when this was all over.

If she returned home.

Stay safe. Come back to me.

Leaning forward, Abbie put her head in her hands. Unable to recall her sister and desperate to escape Bobby's final words (for the time being, she hoped), Abbie was instead dragged back to the dead woman on the stairs, the dead man around the side of the dealership. They were cruel people. Both carried guns and wanted to kill Abbie. Ending their lives had saved Abbie’s, but others’ as well. All the people Smoker’s crew would have gone on to hurt or kill.

Still, it made her gut churn.

This bench wasn't helping. Sitting in the peaceful night air was always going to lead to self-torment. Her ankle didn't hurt enough for a distraction. Only moving on would help, searching for the little girl she had described to Christine.

As ever, the clock was ticking. The minute hand had just passed two in the morning. At best, Abbie had another forty-six hours to save the child.

In other words, not a moment to waste.

Abbie rose. Her ankle protested, but she ignored it. Let it hurt. At some point, she would have to sleep; her foot would get a chance to rest then.

Not before.

Still limping, unable to stop herself, Abbie left the bench and wound her way along a weaving path that cut the park's primary green in two. She didn't have to worry about where she was going. That wasn't how this worked. She had no idea why she suffered the dreams that led her to these new places, surrounded by these new faces. Dangerous situations, almost without exception. If it was a higher power, they weren't going to leave Abbie high and dry. They always ensured she found her way to the people she needed to meet to save whoever she had come to save.

Abbie had been walking through the park for a little over 90 seconds when she spotted someone.

She had been thinking about Christine. The younger woman who had fled when Abbie told her to run and who, so far as Abbie knew, had escaped.

Abbie expected to see the woman again, though she didn't know where or when their next meeting would take place. Whenever and wherever it was, Abbie had questions for the blonde when they reunited.

For example, she needed to know more about the recently deceased Davesh. Christine spoke of cut and shuts and stolen cars imported from Europe, but Abbie guessed there was more to it than that. Smoker and the gang had arrived bearing guns and with business on the mind. Someone else had murdered the dealership owner. Why was he so important? What had he been up to?

And what had driven Christine to become involved in the first place?

These thoughts were jumbled in her head, jostling for space with other considerations. For one, what would Smoker do next? Would he return to HQ to face his boss's wrath? Would he flee the town of his crime and never return? That would be ideal.

Or would he stay close, sit and stew over what had happened at the dealership? Would he hole up somewhere and spend his time thinking about Abbie?

Over the past few years, many men and women had spent significant quantities of time thinking about Abbie. Sadly, most of them had been plotting her murder, relatively few considering how pretty she was and wondering how they might pluck up the courage to ask her on a date.

Finally, there was the boss himself. Baldie had mentioned him. The whole gang had lived in the shadow of fear for their paymaster.

Orion. An unusual name, but no doubt multiple dangerous criminals in the country went by that moniker.

Abbie only knew of one.

Could it be him...?

Only time would tell. Something else to ask Christine, though Abbie didn't expect the vigilante to know anything about this particular crook.

Abbie was trying to untangle these thoughts. Each one went in a different box and was assigned a priority. She was trying to put them in some kind of order when she saw a brick block some twenty metres from the path she walked.

The park, as a whole, was an attractive, peaceful place. The block was ugly. Squat, with one door in