Within the Shadows by J.D MCG (book recommendations .TXT) 📗

inside the envelope. It was filled with photos taken from the distance of another crime scene. It was from when they found Freya, murdered in the car park. Someone had been watching them during the entire case. They knew where and when to take the photos.

'It's got to be Lily,' he shouted hysterically.

'Jacob, we need to talk,' Barnes said, looking at Ally's face for her reaction.

Ally glanced back at Barnes with a serious stare as she didn't want him to tell Jacob about what Lily asked. But that didn't stop Barnes.

'Okay,' Jacob replied. 'But what is this about?'

'We've just been trying to interview Lily, but she won’t talk to us. She wants to talk to you.'

Jacob's head lowered as he stared at the floor. His elbows rested on his legs, while his hands came together and interlocked his fingers.

'Why does she want to see me?' he asked.

'We don't know. Our best guess is she just wants to see you, maybe to explain why she did what she did,' Barnes explained his theory.

'You don't have to see her, Jacob. Not if you don't want to,' Ally tried to reassure him that he does have options available.

Jacob lifted his head and rose from his seat. 'I don’t want anything more to do with that woman. I'm sorry,' he said before leaving the room.

It was too emotional for him and it would open old wounds he'd tried so hard to seal. He'd tried his best to shut that vile person out of his life and feared that seeing her would be too painful and undo everything he'd done to forget about her.

Chapter 14

Jack Roberts had been on the run for over a week, ever since he'd knocked Jacob out and tied him to a chair in his living room. His pounding headache was becoming more and more intermittent. Not to mention, the pain was becoming increasingly worse with each passing day. Jack hadn't seen the mysterious man since being on the run, but the whispers still surrounded him, no matter where he was. Am I going insane?

'What do you want?' he yelled out, hoping the whispers would answer back, but they spoke quietly, enough for him to be unable to hear. 'Stop. Just stop whispering. You're driving me insane. I can't cope anymore,' he continued, before breaking down with his head in his hands, sobbing as many tears as he could let out.

'Stop resisting, Jack,' a voice spoke.

The voice was sinister, scratchy, and freaked Jack out, making him panic, not knowing who or where the voice was coming from.

'Who are you?' Jack asked.

'Look deep down and you'll find the answer you seek,' the voice replied.

He thought about what the voice had just said and took a moment to clear his mind. Jack spun around to take a look at his surroundings. How did I get here? He was in a rundown hotel room, with ripped wallpaper and damp seeping through the ceiling. The bed had seen better days, as well as the en-suite bathroom. As he rushed in there, he glanced at himself in the mirror. His eyes were black and bloodshot from the tiredness, but he couldn't recall where he'd been or what day it was.

Jack cupped his hands under the tap and collected a handful of water, pushing his face into it. The cold water on his face was refreshing and it cooled him down. For a moment he'd forgot about everything, but the voice spoke again.

'That's better, isn't it?'

Jack started to panic again, turning his head from side to side to see nothing. He was alone in the bathroom. He closed his eyes.

'It's all in my head. It's all in my head,' he kept repeating.

'You're half right,' said the scratchy voice.

Jack opened his eyes and saw the reflection in the mirror talking back to him. The image was of him but his face was disfigured. He jumped with fright and closed his eyes.

'It's not real. None of this is real.'

'You know it is, Jack. You know I've been looking out for you. You've just chosen not to believe it.'

'What do you want?' Jack asked the voice in his head.

'For you to stop resisting. I need you, but not in the driver’s seat.'

'This is my body and my mind, I'm not going to just give it so you can continue wreaking havoc,' Jack explained.

'Your wife was having it off with that man across the road. Not to mention, she was poisoning you. Now they've paid for what they did to you, all thanks to me,' the voice confessed.

'So you did that? With my body?' Jack started to wake up and realise that the police would know it was him.

'Yes. Then that detective got in the way...'

'What did you do to him?' Jack interrupted.

'I didn't kill him, don't worry.'

'So every time I blacked out, was that when you...'

'You're becoming quite the detective, Jack. Yes. Every time you fazed out, that's when I struck,' he laughed.

'Oh my god,' he cried out. 'The police are going to be all over me.'

Jack sprinted out of the bathroom, flicked open the blinds that hung over the window, and glanced down at the street below. He was nervous and unsure of when the police would show up to arrest him. It was quiet, not a sound could be heard, not a person in sight. He was safe for now.

Jacob had been helping with the search for Jack Roberts, but ran out of luck. Nobody had seen him for days. Jack had last been spotted withdrawing money from an ATM in the Birmingham city centre. Since then, he'd vanished into thin air and Jacob and the team had trouble trying to locate him.

Barnes and Ally were sat inside the briefing room with Jacob, updating each