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

at all like the man who ran through the front door of our home only a few nights ago and blurted out that he had accidentally killed a guy with his car. Now, he seems like somebody who is waiting patiently for something.

But what?

Adam walks through the doorway and sees me sitting on the bed beside the discarded newspaper. He has a bottle of beer in his left hand and his mobile phone in the other. It’s the mobile phone he forgot to take with him when we went into the village earlier. Was it a genuine mistake? Or did he leave it behind on purpose?

‘Anything interesting in the paper?’ Adam asks me as he takes a seat on the other side of the bed.

‘There’s nothing about Steven Owen and the hunt for his killer, if that’s what you mean,’ I reply, and I watch his face closely for his reaction. But there is none. At least not one that gives away what he is thinking. Instead, he just takes a swig from his bottle while spinning the phone around in his other hand.

‘That’s good. Maybe you were right about the police not looking at the CCTV footage on the lane. Maybe they aren’t going to be looking for me, after all.’

‘Maybe,’ I reply, but I’m not as happy about that prospect as I once was. Why is Adam so chilled out?

Anybody would think he is on holiday with the way he is swigging his beer.

‘I say we give it another day or two then if there’s nothing else, we can go back home.’

I’m stunned by Adam’s suggestion.

‘You think we could do that?’

‘Like you said, there’s nothing in the newspapers now to suggest the police are looking for us. Maybe I did get lucky, after all.’

I wish he wouldn’t refer to himself as lucky. A poor man is dead because of him.

‘So maybe we can go home,’ Adam says. ‘Wouldn’t that be nice?’

I listen to the words coming out of my husband’s mouth, but I’m trying not to read too much into them. One minute he is saying it’s too risky for us to go into the village, the next he is talking about us going home. Something doesn’t feel right about this, and the longer this goes on, the more I am beginning to think that. So far, a lot of things have happened, but Adam has always had an explanation for every single one of them.

Except my phone.

‘Did you have a look at my mobile?’ I ask him as he finishes his beer and stands up to leave the room again.

‘Yeah. I can’t see anything wrong with it,’ he replies as he heads for the doorway. ‘I’m not sure what the problem is.’

Just like the TV.  

Then he leaves the room, and I’m left sitting on the edge of the bed wondering why Adam is being the way he is.

Nonchalant. Unflustered.

Carefree.

He is not behaving like he was a couple of days ago. He is not behaving like the man who begged me to run away with him, nor is he behaving like a man who killed somebody and is worrying about spending the next ten years in a prison cell.  All of which is leading me to believe that he is not behaving like that because he is not really that man.

I wonder if he has lied to me.

I wonder if it’s not him who is in trouble at all here.

I wonder if it is me.

42

ADAM

It’s time for bed. Laura is already under the duvet, and I’ll be joining her shortly, but first I need to go around the cottage and make sure the usual things are in order before I do.

Close the curtains. Turn the lights off. Lock the front door.

I tick off the first two items on my list quite quickly, but I stop before doing the third. That’s because I won’t actually be locking the front door tonight.

I need it to stay unlocked.

I need to leave it open for our visitors.

A quick check on my watch tells me that they should be with us within two hours, which gives Laura and I more than enough time to close our eyes and get some rest. But it won’t be long until we are disturbed by a noise in the night and go downstairs to investigate. That will be the point when Laura finds out the real reason why I brought her here.

She is in for one hell of a surprise.

I can’t wait to see her face when she discovers what I have done. I wonder if she will be impressed with all the work I have put in over the last few days. I doubt it. She’ll be too busy begging for her life, as she should. But begging won’t work. Nothing will now.

The only thing that will end her misery and suffering tonight will be a swift death.

I’d love to keep daydreaming about all the fun that is to come, but I need to finish up my tasks so I can get to bed. I feel like a kid on Christmas Eve waiting for Santa to visit, but it’s just like parents say to their kids; “he won’t come unless you go to sleep.” So that is what I need to do. I need to go to sleep. That way, when I wake up, just like an excited child, all my dreams will have come true.

I reach the front door and fiddle with the lock to make it sound like I have actually done something with it just in case my wife is listening, though I doubt she is. She’s probably reading that newspaper article again, the one I know she has been reading whenever I’ve not been in the same room as her. It’s the article about Bradley’s disappearance. I read it myself earlier when Laura was in the shower. It says exactly what I wanted it to say. The man is missing, but nobody knows what happened to