Run Away With Me : A fast-paced psychological thriller by Daniel Hurst (free e novels TXT) 📗

give me a sorry expression before turning to look through the windscreen and driving me on towards the police station. I stare out of the window as we drive, at all of the faces of the neighbours who are looking at me and pitying my situation. It’s only as we reach the end of the street that I finally see somebody who I recognise.

It’s the man standing with his arms around another woman as she cradles a baby boy.

I feel like I know the boy. Is it Samuel? I’m not sure. But I definitely know who the man is.

It’s Adam.

And he is laughing at me.

20

LAURA

I wake up with a gasp, but I can’t see anything. It’s pitch black. Not a speck of light in the room.

I reach out beside me to where Adam should be, but the bed is empty to my touch. Then I scramble for my phone on the bedside table. I can use the torch on that.

But my device seems to be missing too. I could have sworn it was there when I closed my eyes.

Am I still asleep?

Am I still dreaming?

The sound of the creaking floorboard nearby tells me that I am awake because I recognise it as the one that makes the sound whenever somebody walks over it on their way back from the bathroom. It must be Adam. Sure enough, two seconds later, the bedroom door opens and brings in a little light, and I relax when I see my husband staring back at me.

‘Are you okay?’ he asks with a concerned look on his face.

‘Where have you been?’ I say with a slight level of anger to my voice.

‘The bathroom,’ he replies. ‘Where do you think I’ve been?’

I let out a deep breath. I’m calming down a little now. It’s dark because it’s the middle of the night. Adam was gone because he was on the toilet. There is nothing to worry about.

‘Have you seen my phone?’ I ask, turning to look at the bedside table.

‘No. I thought it was next to the bed,’ Adam replies as he closes the door.

‘Don’t shut it! I can’t see anything!’ I cry, and he quickly opens it again, allowing the moonlight from the window in the hallway to at least give me a chance of seeing what I’m doing.

‘It’s not here. I can’t find it,’ I say, and I’m not sure why I’m so desperate, but I am.

‘It must be,’ Adam mutters, and the casual tone of his voice is extremely irritating to me as I continue to look for it unsuccessfully.

‘Will you turn the light on?’ I ask as I pull back the duvet and swing my legs out of bed, determined to locate my mobile now and not a second later.

‘It’s one o’clock in the morning,’ Adam replies.

‘I don’t care!’ I hiss back, and Adam knows better than to say anything else when I am like this. He quickly reaches out for the switch on the wall, and the room is suddenly flooded with light.

The sudden brightness causes me to squint my eyes until they adjust, but they quickly do and now I am fully awake. Adam seems annoyed that he is too, and I see him watching me as I rummage around in the empty bed looking for my phone in case it is underneath the sheets somewhere.

‘I guess we’re up then,’ Adam says with a sigh as he rubs his eyes.

‘Help me find my phone and we can go back to sleep quicker,’ I tell him, and he begrudgingly agrees because he joins me at the bed and starts looking too.

I’m not sure why I feel so anxious to know where my phone is. It’s not as if I can use it anyway with the lack of signal here. But there was something about the dream I just had that makes me feel desperate to be reunited with the one device that makes me feel as if I’m not completely losing all association with my former life. After all, I only need to walk down to the main road and get a signal again to be reconnected to the outside world, and that’s what I plan to do tomorrow, although I haven’t told Adam about that yet. That’s because I don’t want him to tell me that it’s a bad idea for me to be out of the cottage and at risk of being seen by somebody driving past. He seems to think it is okay for him to go into the village and take that risk but not me, which is annoying, but I’m not arguing with him because I can’t handle an argument now. All I need to do is wait for him to go into the village again, which he will do shortly, and then I will be free to get out and go in search of a signal.

But I can’t do that if I can’t find my damn phone.

‘I don’t understand how you could have lost it,’ Adam says as he huffs and puffs beside me.

‘Neither do I,’ I reply curtly, and while I don’t suspect that he has hidden it from me, I am confused as to how it could have vanished from the bedside table. It was definitely there when I went to sleep because I always keep my phone next to me when I’m in bed, even if I can’t use it. That means if it’s gone then there is only one real explanation. Adam must have moved it. But why would he do that?

I’m just about to ask him when he suddenly holds something up in front of me.

It’s my phone.

‘It was under the bed,’ Adam tells me, shaking his head.

‘How did it get down there?’ I query as he hands the device to me, but my husband doesn’t seem in the mood to entertain theories. He is already back over at the light switch by the door.

‘Can we go back to sleep now?’ he asks,