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

‘You don’t know that.’

‘I do. The police will check the cameras. How can they not?’

‘I’m just trying to stay positive.’

‘There’s nothing to be positive about.’

I wish Adam wasn’t giving up hope because I’m only just hanging on to a thread of it myself. But I hate to admit that he is right. It seems that we are screwed.

‘What was their name?’ I ask as Adam takes a seat on the edge of the bed and stares out of the window as more rain begins to fall.

‘Who?’

‘The person you hit. What was their name?’

Adam takes a moment to answer, and I feel a little bad for even asking because he must be so torn up inside about taking another person’s life, but I’ve already put the question out there now.

‘Steven,’ Adam replies solemnly. ‘Steven Owen.’

I don’t know why but hearing a name to put to the body somehow makes it seem even more real than it already is. Steven Owen. No longer just a nameless piece of meat lying on the road. Now he has an identity.

A first name that his parents gave him.

A surname that ties him to the lineage of his family.

A lineage that is now forever tainted with tragedy.

I wonder if Steven had a wife and children. Maybe he was a Grandparent. But I daren’t ask. I don’t actually want to know, and I’m definitely not going to make Adam tell me. But he must know. I’m sure it was in the articles that he read. He must have been so distraught when he discovered them.

‘Come here,’ I say to Adam, reaching out towards him and pulling him closer to me.

He flops easily into my arms so that he is now lying on the bed before me, and I hold him like he is a wounded animal taking his last few breaths. While I’m battling plenty of my own anxieties right now, I can’t even begin to imagine what Adam is going through. How must it feel to read a news story about somebody being killed and knowing that it was you who was behind it?

‘Did you bring the papers back?’ I ask.

‘I threw them in the bin,’ he replies. ‘I just couldn’t look at them anymore.’ Then he buries his head into me, and I tell him that it is okay as I comfort him, even though I was hoping he hadn’t thrown them away. I wish there was a way for me to see the articles because I want to know more without having to ask Adam for the information, but there isn’t. No signal here means no chance of getting on the internet on my phone.

Thinking about my phone reminds me about the incident in the night when I lost my device only for Adam to say he had found it under the bed. My discovery that it was impossible for it to have gotten under the bed in the first place is still troubling me, but I feel like I can’t bring it up now with Adam like this. Instead, I allow my fragile husband to rest in my arms for a moment. I’ll bring it up later. Right now, we have more important things to discuss anyway.

‘What do we do?’ I ask as Adam sits up on the bed and wipes away a tear from his eye. He thinks he did it discreetly, but I noticed it.

‘I don’t know,’ he replies. ‘I honestly don’t know.’

I don’t know either, so I lie back on my pillow and gaze out at the raindrops running down the window.

‘How are you feeling?’ I hear Adam ask me, and I feel him take my hand in his.

‘I’m okay. I’m feeling a little better now.’

‘That’s good,’ he replies as he lies down on his own pillow beside me.

But that word seems ridiculous because nothing is good right now.

It will never be good again.

25

ADAM

Steven Owen. I’m quite pleased with myself for the name I decided to give to the non-existent person I ran over and killed two days ago. While it’s fake, the name does have special meaning to me. It’s a combination of my two favourite Liverpool players. Steven Gerrard and Michael Owen. I had to get my love of football into my masterplan somewhere.

I’m glad that Laura didn’t ask to know more details about the “victim,’ even though I’m prepared for it. Steven has an age (52), a profession (painter and decorator), and sadly he does have a family (wife and two teenage sons). I created the full fictional story of Steven Owen which I memorised and am able to recite on demand to my wife if necessary, but for now, Laura has no more questions, other than the most obvious and pressing one.

What do we do next?

Of course, I know the answer to that question, but I can hardly say it. Instead, I must keep up this whole charade a little longer. I have to mope around the cottage. I have to seem distressed and remorseful. And I also have to perfect my ‘thousand-yard stare’ as I look out of the window over the rain-swept hills. It’s the blank stare that is associated with soldiers after they have got back from war, and is caused by the fact that they have seen so many dreadful scenes during their life. I am doing my best to wear that same expression as much as possible whenever my wife looks in my direction because I too want to appear like someone who has seen terrible things that I am incapable of forgetting. Because I have. I’ve seen a man die right in front of me as he hit my car. Or at least that’s what is supposed to have happened.

Laura is still in bed, and I’m downstairs fixing her up another drink while I run over the home visit from the police in my mind. PC McGregor and PC Stone completed their ‘check’ in twenty minutes and didn’t seem to notice anything of