Trust Me - T.M. Logan Page 0,122

finished off what he started a year ago while she lies helpless in bed.

I push open the door to the white room.

Zoe’s here, her head turned slightly to the side, wires and machines and clean white sheets, the monitor next to her bed still beeping its slow and steady rhythm, her body somewhere between life and death. No wounds, no sign of injury. She seems the same as she was yesterday.

‘I have to take Mia away from here,’ I say, standing by her bed. ‘I’m sorry, Zoe.’

If there was a way of taking her with us, I would. But she needs the machines, she needs this room. I check the machine’s monitor. Her pulse seems regular, no alarms or warning messages. The police will be here soon and—

A reflection in the glass of the monitor. Movement. A flash of something in the garden behind me. A figure?

I turn, dropping into a crouch by the bed to scan the windows that give out onto the lawn, cold creeping over my skin. My phone rings in my pocket and I flinch in alarm, laying the shotgun on the floor to snatch it up with my free hand, still clutching Mia in the other.

Stuart’s number shows on the display.

‘Ellen.’ His voice is tight with worry. ‘Where are you?’

‘I’m here, at The Grange, you have to get everybody here as fast as—’

‘I told you to stay at the hotel!’ It’s almost a shout. ‘We diverted the team, we had a strong positive sighting on the target but it turned into nothing.’

‘He shot them both, Stuart.’

There is a stunned silence before he replies. ‘Who? What are you talking about?’

‘Gerald Clifton’s dead.’ I take a shuddering breath. ‘And Angela’s in a bad way, she needs paramedics here right now, I called an ambulance but they need to hurry.’

‘Ellen,’ he whispers, ‘you need to listen to me and this time you need to do what I tell you. You have to trust me. Can you do that?’

‘Yes.’

‘We’ve got a new trace on Holt, he’s just switched his phone on again and we’ve been able to triangulate the signal. Ellen, listen to me very carefully: he’s there. He’s still in the house. You have to get out. Now.’

65

I creep through the house, shushing Mia on my shoulder, freezing at every sound, my eyes scanning every door and window we pass by. The name drumming in my head with every step, over and over again. Detective Sergeant Nathan Holt. I have this powerful sense that he is watching me, stalking me, ready to strike when we’re within sight of escape. The keys to the Mercedes estate are in a bowl by the front door: it has a car seat for Mia and it’s faster and bigger than my Citroën. I sprint out onto the drive feeling horribly exposed, tear open the rear door, strap her in and scoot around to jump into the driver’s seat in front. Every moment I’m expecting to hear the crunch of gravel, an angry shout, a gunshot.

Go.

It’s only as I’m accelerating down the drive in a spray of gravel that I realise the black saloon car parked there earlier has gone. But I don’t have the headspace for that right now, I’ve promised Stuart I’ll drive straight to police HQ without stopping and meet him there. He texts telling me he’ll meet me in the visitor’s car park, that I shouldn’t stop for anything or anyone, and I send a thumbs-up in reply.

The urge to put my foot to the floor is strong, to let the big Mercedes engine rip and get there as fast as possible. But I’m acutely aware of Mia strapped into her car seat next to me, a new vulnerability in traffic that has me second-guessing every other driver in case they’re going too fast or coming too close. I keep looking over at Mia to check she’s OK in the bulky rear-facing seat, but she seems quite content to suck on a corner of her cloth and gaze out of the window at the dark clouds racing by.

Relief starts to ease through me as I leave the Buckinghamshire countryside behind and hit the outskirts of London, the comforting familiarity of city streets and buildings and people, of safety in numbers. I have kept my promise to Kathryn.

Safe now. Safe now.

As I’m coming into Pinner I pull up at a red traffic light and my phone buzzes with a new message from an unrecognised number.

Remember the abandoned studio complex? Go