One wrong turn, p.25
One Wrong Turn, page 25
I stopped, almost falling.
Lila bawled in my arms.
My stomach dropped.
I was standing at the crumbling edge of a pit.
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We were in a small clearing. An oval of dark sky was visible through the treetops just above. My sight had adjusted a little more to the gloom now. And what I was looking down at sent shudders through my heart.
The pit in front of me was a large hole in the ground. It was about waist deep, and it was several metres long and several metres wide. The earth inside it was dense and compacted with the frayed and fractured ends of tree roots poking through. It emitted a dank, cave-like aroma, as if it had been recently dug. A tarpaulin had been spread out in the base.
Then I noticed the shovel that was propped in one of the mounds of loose earth by the sides of the hole. The pickaxe that was nearby.
Vines of fear snaked up out of the ground, writhing around my ankles and legs, moving up past my torso, wrapping around my throat and slipping inside my mouth.
Breaths shuddered from my lungs.
This wasn’t a pit.
It was an open grave.
Lila was still crying, although now that I’d stopped running, her cries had become a little less insistent, a little more uncertain. I cradled her tightly, patting her back, hushing her and bouncing her until her cries began to peter out into little hiccups of unease.
I looked behind me, my heart thrashing wildly. I hadn’t been found yet, but I could hear noises. The snap of twigs, the crunch of leaves.
‘Shh, Lila. Quiet.’
I rocked her some more. I kissed her head. She trembled and quivered, then mewled and snuggled into me.
‘Shh, that’s better. We’re OK. We’re going to be OK.’
Then I looked back at the pit and everything slammed in at me at once. Lila seemed to become so much more delicate in my arms. My fear was so much worse.
Collette and Jason had planned for this. For all of it.
They’d known Paul and Samantha would come to Cornwall because they’d known they would go to Samantha’s parents for money. And after they’d taken Lila, they’d had five days to prepare.
Five days to hunker down in a cabin in the middle of nowhere.
Five days to dig a shallow grave in the woods.
None of what Collette had told Paul was true. She hadn’t killed Samantha because their car had broken down. She was always going to kill Samantha. Only the location of Samantha’s death had changed.
And there was never going to be any way out of this for Paul, either. He would never be paid his share of the money. He wasn’t going to receive a false ID or make a fresh start in another country with Lila. Right from the very beginning, Collette’s plan had always been to kill his entire family and bury them here.
One shallow grave.
Three victims.
The only thing that had changed tonight was that I had taken Samantha’s place.
Let’s get her outside.
Because Jason had known there was a space in the woods for me. Collette had kept me alive to drive here because she’d known they could bury me where I’d never be found. And they’d both understood it was easier to have Paul walk out here with me, rather than killing him at the cabin and dragging his body through the trees.
All of this streaked through my mind in an instant, followed by one much more pressing thought.
Hide.
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Ben
A febrile dread pushed through Ben’s veins as the phone battery dropped to 1 per cent. He stared wildly through his one good eye at the empty road ahead.
‘What about the money?’ Julian Parsons asked him.
Ben’s heart withered. ‘I don’t know anything about any money.’
‘My wife gave Samantha some money. A lot of money. In cash. She put it in Lila’s baby bag. She thought I didn’t know, but I did.’
There was something in the way he said it. Something that gave Ben his first, faint tug of hope.
‘They had a baby changing bag with them,’ Ben said quickly. ‘And a suitcase.’
‘We have a dog. Pippa. She’s getting on in years and her hearing isn’t so good—’
‘Mr Parsons! Please. This battery is about to go any second now.’
‘Yes, yes, I’m sorry. What I’m trying to explain is that I bought a gadget for Pippa’s collar. It tracks her in case she wanders off. Well, I took the device from her collar and I hid it amid the money. It connects to an app on my phone.’
Ben inhaled too fast, snatching for the road map. He flattened it on the steering wheel, illuminating it with the ambient light from the phone screen.
‘Mr Parsons,’ he said, poring over the map, ‘are you saying you can tell me where they are?’
‘Possibly, yes. But I’ll need a moment to check.’
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I could hear more noises behind me. Heavy footfall. Reaching down to my side, I made a grab for the shovel, then limped for the cover of the trees.
My ankle was hot and tender. The wound to my forearm was alive with pain. The cut on my head wept and stung.
I stumbled on, holding Lila tightly, continuing to hush her as she nuzzled into my chest.
Prickles across my scalp and back.
How close were they?
What could they see?
Leaving the open grave behind me, I made for an area to my left where the trees were packed more tightly together. Blundering through them, I pushed aside branches, searching for a hiding place. A large fallen trunk was lying crossways on the ground.
My heart cantered as I shuffled behind a moss-clad tree and—
‘Wait!’
I dropped to the forest floor at the sound, cushioning Lila as best I could. She made a slight, startled noise, then quietened again. I set the shovel aside and wrapped her in my
arms, holding her close, cupping her head, rocking her, soothing her.
‘Hush,’ I whispered. ‘Hush.’
Icy sweat trickled into my eyes.
Lila wriggled and squirmed in my arms. She rotated her head from side to side, wrinkled her nose, kicked with a foot.
No.
It was cold in the woods. Most of Lila’s body was still under her blanket, but she’d be feeling the drop in temperature. She didn’t have a hat on. I didn’t know how long I could keep her subdued.
Raising my head by a tiny fraction, I peered between branches and leaves towards the gloomy clearing.
Paul was standing next to Collette. They were both holding torches.
No, not torches. The light wasn’t bright enough. They were using the torch apps on their mobile phones.
‘What is this?’ Paul asked. He was sweeping his torch around the big hole in the ground. ‘Why is this here?’
Collette didn’t answer him. She was clutching her phone in her bandaged hand, the gun in her right fist.
I couldn’t see Jason at all.
‘Abi!’ Collette shouted, tipping back her head, her voice very loud.
Birds cawed and scattered.
Lila burbled softly.
Silence followed.
I ducked and stayed very low, stroking Lila’s head. The fallen log in front of me was large and decayed, smelling of mud and mould. A faint, bluish wash of torchlight sprinkled the foliage close by, then moved on.
‘You need to show yourself, Abi. Come out, and everything will be OK.’
It wouldn’t be. I knew that.
I bit my lip and stared down at Lila as she wriggled and stretched.
‘Seriously,’ Paul said to Collette. ‘What is going on here?’
I think he knew. I think he had to know. But maybe his psyche craved another explanation.
‘Paul,’ Collette began, ‘why don’t we just park that discussion for a second and focus on finding Abi and Lila, OK?’
‘But this hole. It’s—’
Lila opened her mouth and sighed.
My heart seized.
Blood rushed in my ears.
It wasn’t a loud noise, but in the cathedral silence of the woods it didn’t need to be.
My arms became deadened around Lila as I raised my head and stared towards Paul and Collette just as they turned to face me, their torch lights shining directly in my face, dazzling me.
My body jammed. I couldn’t move.
‘Lila?’ Paul called.
His voice fractured as he took first one step towards me, then two, then three.
The moment he started to run, he swung his torch aside very briefly, just enough for my sight to clear so that I could see the dark shape of Collette stepping up behind him, raising her arm as if to point at his back.
‘No!’ I shouted, but it was too late.
There was a shattering bang and Paul collapsed in a heap on the ground.
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I saw Paul fall but I didn’t process what had happened.
Not immediately.
It seemed to take too many seconds for my brain to assemble the sequence of events. One moment Paul was coming towards me, shouting for Lila, the next he was down on the ground and Lila was yelping and crying and screeching.
I’d seen the spark.
The bang had been enormous.
Paul wasn’t moving.
And suddenly my brain kicked in again. My synapses flared and ignited.
Collette was stepping closer to Paul’s body with her gun aimed down at his back.
A pause.
And then she shot him again.
I jolted, staring, frozen in horror as Lila’s screams went up another notch.
Then Collette raised her gun again and aimed it my way, framing me in the glow of her torch beam.
But she didn’t shoot.
Why?
A rustling behind me. The crack of a branch being trodden on. A soggy, laboured breath.
Jason.
My heart clenched.
A pulse of sheer terror exploded through me.
I set Lila down, grabbed for the shovel next to me, rose to my feet and twisted and swung.
The blade of the shovel clattered through foliage, slowing my momentum.
But not by much.
Jason was there and he was looming, a massive, shadowy shape with the bloody strip of duct tape bulging on his neck.
For a fraction of a second.
Until the blade of the shovel connected with his face and he howled and fell backwards, clutching his hands to his nose and mouth, rolling around on the ground like a man on fire who was trying to put himself out.
But by then I’d dropped the shovel and I was bending down to pick Lila up as she wriggled and shrieked. Her face was contorted. Her eyes and nose and lips were wet and glistening.
I turned my head as Jason screamed and swore behind me.
Collette had me pinned with her torch light.
A fast second.
Then I dived forwards over Lila to shield her with my body as another gunshot ripped through the air.
A nearby tree trunk exploded with a thunk and a puff of splinters.
Lila was crying, squirming, flailing.
Raising my head, I saw Collette was crouched forwards, reloading her gun.
I lifted Lila’s tiny body along with her blanket, then I held her to me, cradling her head, and I ran.
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Or hobbled.
My ankle was weak and tender. I almost went down.
Boosting Lila in my arms, I hurtled back in the direction of the cabin in a desperate shuffle, my bad foot dragging alongside me, scuffing through the leaves and detritus on the forest floor.
Lila was screeching close to my ear, a writhing, soggy bundle of heat. Behind me, Jason was venting a series of hoarse, agonized moans.
My breath hitched. I fought back a sob.
Cupping Lila’s head, I stuck my elbow out in front of me to protect her from any more wayward branches.
Collette yelled something. I wasn’t sure what she said, because Lila’s cries were too shrill.
I refused to look back. I didn’t want to see Jason get up, or how close Collette was to me.
Torchlight flickered around us. It wasn’t bright. It didn’t penetrate very far. It was just a brief, milky wash of light.
‘It’s OK,’ I told Lila. ‘I’ve got you.’
It didn’t help.
She was wailing and crying with abandon.
‘Come back!’
Now I did hear Collette, but her voice sounded further away than I’d imagined. Perhaps she’d stopped to help Jason.
Lila cried even louder. I hated how distressed she was. She didn’t know it, but she’d lost both her parents tonight.
I cradled her tighter, thinking of the child that was growing inside me, how precious they both were.
My body ached. I was exhausted and scared and sure I was about to die.
Light spilled up ahead.
Through the tree trunks and foliage, I could see the glimmer of the festoon lights again.
‘Nearly there.’
It hurt to breathe.
Another bang.
The gunshot echoed off the spruce and pines.
My heart spasmed as if it had been shocked by a defibrillator.
I streaked onwards, hobbling out through the trees and onto the gravel driveway, kicking up sprays of stones.
I didn’t look at the cabin as I traversed the sloping driveway. I kept my focus locked on my car.
The boot was still open. So were all the passenger doors.
I hobbled on, feeling horribly exposed. I was in the open, in the light. My entire body seemed to throb with the manic beating of my heart. Lila was bawling as if she wanted us to be found.
Hurrying around the front of the car, I dropped into the driver’s seat, cradling Lila to me as I pushed down on the clutch with a bloom of pain from my ankle, already planning in my mind how I would swing the car around in a hurry, speed back to the gate.
I reached for the keys I’d left in the ignition and—
Something was wrong.
Something had changed.
The keys were gone.
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Collette stepped out from the trees by the cabin, pushing branches away from her face, her gun arm fully extended. I stared at her through the open passenger door of my car, watching in horror as a sneer formed on her face.
‘Missing something?’
She must have pocketed her phone. As I watched her, she tossed something to me with her bandaged hand. A looping, underhand throw. A shard of metal caught the light from the festoon bulbs as my car keys arced and twirled through the air, landing on the gravel between us.
A lure.
A trap.
Because I needed the keys to start the car, but if I went for them, she would shoot me.
And if I didn’t go for the keys?
I looked from her to the cabin, desperation tugging at me. I couldn’t get in there now and there was nowhere to hide if I did.
Lila cried on, although her cries were becoming gradually more hiccupy and uncertain again. She must have been exhausted. I shifted her to my right side, away from Collette. She reached up to me for comfort, and I took her little fist in mine, feeling a pang deep inside. Looking down at her, I understood the weight and the burden of failing to keep her safe.
I was so very tired.
‘Come out,’ Collette said. ‘Bring Lila with you.’
I shook my head. I felt the tears start to come.
Then the trees behind Collette rustled and trembled, and Jason stumbled out with his hands clasped to his nose and mouth. When he lowered them, I could see that his face was a mess. His nose was mush. His jaw and neck were filmed in dark blood. He gargled and spat a bloody stream on the ground, then levelled his gaze at me, his eyes seething, pressing one hand to the taped wound on his neck.
‘You have nowhere to go,’ Collette called.
My body shook and trembled uncontrollably. I held Lila even tighter.
Think.
Do something.
I could run.
I could try running.
But not with my ankle. It was terribly sore. It had swollen so badly it felt like it would barely fit in my shoe.
Glancing to my right, I stared past the sloping gravel at the open fields veering downwards into darkness. They would offer me no cover. And Jason would chase me down easily. Right now, he looked like he wanted to do that very much. And once he got to me, he would tear me apart.
Lila gurgled, reaching out with her other hand and tugging at my hair, almost as if she was trying to nudge me into making my choice.
My stupid car.
My stupid keys.
Collette took several steps closer, toeing them with her foot.
‘We’ll let you carry Lila back through the trees. You can bring her back to Paul.’
I thought about it.
It was almost tempting, in a way.
If I did as she was suggesting – if she let me do it – I’d be giving Lila time. A little more time. Maybe if I was brave enough, I could provide her with some comfort before it was all over. Maybe that was something worth doing.
‘Well?’ Collette tipped her head to one side. There was that same dark light in her eyes again, a slight upward curl to her lips. It chilled me to think she was picturing what would happen when we got back to Paul and the open grave. ‘Are you ready?’
No, I thought.
I wasn’t ready.
Life comes at you fast. There’s so much you can’t be ready for.
Two miscarriages. A breakdown. A pregnancy. A terrible, traumatic night.
And I definitely wasn’t ready to reach down to my side and let off the handbrake, but I did it anyway.
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The brakes groaned and released. My car immediately rolled forwards. Gravel popped and cracked under the tyres.
‘You stupid bitch!’ Collette shrieked.
Jason started running.
I thrust my right leg out and kicked hard off the sloping ground. With the gearstick in neutral, the car quickly gathered momentum, picking up speed. I kicked twice more, my heart lurching, my foot slipping behind me, then I grabbed the steering wheel with my left hand, cradling Lila in my right arm. I knew it wasn’t safe to drive without her strapped into her car seat, but I didn’t have a choice.
