‘I won’t,’ hissed Ash, redoubling her efforts to dig out the bolt, even though she knew it wouldn’t do any good. ‘I swear it. I won’t.’
The dogs, and there were at least two of them, were getting closer. Ash could hear their progress up the hill. She knew that they’d be on them at any moment. Ash had to make a decision. Did she stay here with Tracy and suffer the consequences, or did she try to save herself?
She looked at Tracy.
Tracy looked back, her face crumpled in the moonlight, because she knew what Ash was going to do. What she had no choice but to do.
Ash had always told herself that she wouldn’t be able to live without Nick. That if anything happened to him she’d want to die too, because life without him would be meaningless. But when it came down to it, that was bullshit. She wanted to live. To see the world. To watch the sun set. To smell the flowers. To make the most of everything out there that she’d previously taken for granted.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, and jumped to her feet. ‘Please forgive me.’
Tracy let out a howl of terror so intense and painful that for a moment it even silenced the dogs. Ash couldn’t bear to look at her. She knew that she was sentencing an innocent woman to death. But what else could she do?
Ash took off at a sprint, keeping hold of her emotions, focusing her mind and watching the ground closely for any sign of another trap. There’d be a time for mourning, and for guilt, later. Right now she had to do what it took to survive. She was hugely thankful that she’d invested so much time and effort in keeping herself in shape. There was no way she’d be able to outrun dogs, but they’d be delayed for a short time at least with Tracy, and there were ways and means of putting them off her scent. As she ran, she pulled off the fleece she’d been wearing all day. She kept it down by her side, looking out for a good place to drop it.
A scream pierced the cool night air, shrill and terrible as it echoed through the trees.
And then it abruptly stopped. Cut off in midstride.
Ash knew that it meant Tracy was dead, and that they’d be after her now.
She dropped the fleece and changed direction.
7
They killed the girl quickly. Stuart picked her up from behind, held her steady, and then cut her throat in one swift movement, while Rory held the dogs and watched, shaking his head.
‘This is a big problem,’ he said. ‘We’re going to get a lot of shit for this. Eastern European whores are ten a penny, they don’t get missed. But these are tourists. The boss is going to be mighty pissed off.’
‘We’ve just got to make sure they disappear,’ said Stuart, stepping away from the girl as she twitched on the ground. The mantrap round her leg made a scratching sound against the soil.
That, thought Rory, was the problem with his younger brother. He didn’t realise that you couldn’t just kill your way out of trouble. You had to plan it. ‘You fucked up, Stuart. Don’t ever do that again.’
‘I won’t. The little bitch tricked me, but it was a one-off.’
Rory gave a curt nod. ‘It better be.’
In the five years they’d been guarding the whores who were delivered to the estate, they’d never once had a problem. The girls tended to be young and they were usually too scared and confused even to think of escape, which was just the way it should be. Rory prided himself on his ability to run things smoothly, but they’d grown far too complacent lately. He hadn’t even been there today when the girl got out. Then Stuart had totally messed up by delaying it a good ten minutes before he called him, which had given her the chance to cover some distance. Just their luck, she ran into what must have been the only bunch of tourists for twenty miles.
The tourists had to die in order to protect the secret. Rory had to make sure it didn’t get out into the wider world. If anyone else had made that kind of mistake, Rory wouldn’t have hesitated to put him in the ground with all the other bodies from the last five years. But Stuart was family, and you didn’t do that to family.
On the ground, the girl stopped twitching. Stuart gave her a kick just to check that she was dead, although with half her head hanging off she was always going to be.
Rory let out a deep breath, and looked into the wall of trees ahead. ‘Three down, one to go. Let’s find her and then we can go home for the night.’
He released the dogs, watching as they tore off into the darkness. Then he pulled out his knife, stepped over the girl’s corpse, and headed after them.
8
Only when her lungs felt close to bursting did Ash finally slow down to a walk.
It felt like she’d come a long way but she’d seen no break in the forest. It seemed to be going on for ever. Behind her, in the distance, she could still hear the dogs barking, but it sounded like they’d stopped. She guessed that they’d found her fleece. Since then she’d yanked off her bra from beneath her T-shirt and hung that from a branch, before changing direction again. She was doing everything she could think of to put the dogs off her trail.
But she couldn’t keep removing items of clothing. She didn’t have enough of them. And as soon as she stopped doing it, the dogs would be on her. Ash was going to have to come up with a different plan because the people hunting her were clearly determined.
The naked girl who’d run into them earlier was obviously connected to some kind of criminal activity. She was possibly even a criminal herself. Ash now regretted the fact that they’d stopped to help her. If they’d just sent her on her way and kept walking, like it was nothing to do with them (which it hadn’t been), none of this would have happened. They could have been sitting round a warm fire, enjoying a glass of wine and the cold meat and salad supper Ash had brought up with her from London. Guy could have wittered on about what a fantastic place Singapore was to do business in. Tracy could have bored them all talking about her massages and her tennis and her cocktail hours on the balcony of some sundrenched hotel. And she and Nick could have exchanged knowing glances and dreamed of ripping each other’s clothes off as soon as they hit the bedroom.
Oh God, Nick.
It was all gone. Everything. The most shocking thing was how quickly it had all happened. It couldn’t have been more much than an hour since they’d been walking along the ridge towards home, with just the wild scenery for company. Now the lives of the three people she’d shared the day with were over. The man she’d been married to for seven years had been snatched away from her in the blink of an eye by another man he’d never met before, and never done a thing to. There hadn’t even been a chance for her to hold him in her arms and say goodbye.
Ash felt the tears sting her cheeks. That murdering bastard. If only he knew what he’d done. But he didn’t. He didn’t know and he didn’t care. And it was certain that he, and whoever else he was with, wanted to do exactly the same thing to her too.
The barking was getting closer again, and by the sound of it the dogs were moving fast. They’d probably be heading for the abandoned bra, but Ash couldn’t rely on that fact. She needed to keep moving and hope that she came across a house, or farm, or anywhere she could summon help. It wasn’t much of a plan, but the alternative was climbing a tree, and that wasn’t going to work either.
Still panting from all the running she’d done already, she set off again, picking up speed, trying to work out whether she should get rid of her T-shirt next, or one of her socks.
The barking was still coming towards her, and it was getting closer.
She accelerated, going as fast as she could. The forest was beginning to open out now with more space between the trees and fewer bushes to hide behind. The treetops had thinned out too, making it lighter and easier for Ash to be spotted. She looked up, silently cursing the moon, then looked back down, watching out for traps.