‘You know nothing!’ Kim raged. ‘Samuel should have been mine! Mine and Josh’s, nothers. We were meant to have a baby together, destined to be together. Sheneverloved him. She doesn’t love his baby. She doesn’t even know how to look after him!’
‘But you do,’ Cassie tried, her voice parched, from the pressure, the dirt and the rain. ‘It’s obvious how much you love Samuel, but this isn’t going to help him. We don’t know where he is.’ She took a gamble and prayed hard. She hadn’t been able to get hold of Jemma. If Jemma had realised how deranged Kim was, it was possible that she was running from her, rather than from Cassie. ‘He might be in danger. She might be hurting him, Kim. For God’s sake, think before you do anything. We have to talk, think of all the possible places he might be. We have tofindhim.’
Feeling the pressure on her back ease a little, she moved her hand another fraction.
‘Do you have any idea where she might be?’ Kim asked, now sounding uncertain.
Cassie hesitated. She had to make this convincing. ‘No, but if I can send her a text, I know how to persuade her to part with him.’
‘How?’ Kim asked doubtfully after a second.
‘Money.’ Cassie held her breath, prayed in earnest. ‘Jemma will give him up to someone who loves him, who can care for him properly, as long as she knows she can slip quietly away. I can help you too, Kim, if you—’
‘I don’t want your fucking money!’ Kim screamed. ‘IlovedJosh. I would have followed him anywhere! Followed him onto the tracks!’
‘I know!’ Cassie’s fingers curled around the torch. ‘I know you would.’
It took all of her strength, all of her willpower, to buck her off and swing the torch.
As Kim flailed backwards, Cassie scrambled away, her heels slipping and sliding in the soft earth beneath her as she tried to lever herself up. Once on her feet, nausea and terror swilling inside her, it took a second for her mind to process what had happened.
Kim wasn’t moving.
Cassie’s world stopped turning, the whisper of the wind through the trees fading as she sank slowly back to her knees.
Move,she willed herself.Go.But she couldn’t. She couldn’t move. Her mind raced feverishly. She had to find Samuel. They would take him. The authorities… After everything… She dragged herself up, took a stumbling step backwards, swiping the blood and the rain away from her face – and then stopped, her gaze lighting on the phone at Kim’s side.
Her breath stalled in her throat. Sick trepidation clutching her stomach, she willed herself forward, faltered as if the devil might reach up from the bowels of hell and drag her down with him, then took another cautious step and snatched the phone up.
Gulping back the fear lodged like a shard of glass in her windpipe, she hesitated over the keypad, fingers trembling.
Fifty-Six
Adam
‘Anything?’ Adam asked Ryan, glancing back to where he stood trying to get hold of Jemma on the phone.
‘Nothing. She’s still not answering.’
‘And you’re sure she wasn’t at home?’ Adam asked futilely. Ryan had said the lights were all off, that Jemma’s car had gone from the drive. In which case, where was she? Was Kim with her? Had they realised that he and Cassie had found out that Samuel and Liam were one and the same and run?
Cursing the time they’d wasted after being stopped by the police, Adam turned back to the cottage. There were lights on here, which must mean that Kim had been here this evening. The conservatory lights were also on, judging by the glow he could see over the back gate. Was she in there, listening to music with her earphones on maybe?
There were no lights on upstairs. He scanned the windows again. Where in God’s name was she? More worryingly, where was Cassie?
He went to the lounge window, glad that he’d put off the job of replacing it. It took no more than a few shoves before the ancient sash gave. Praying he hadn’t alerted the neighbours, he hitched himself up and climbed inside. Ryan was close behind him, as desperate as he was. After Adam had told him about Kim and what she’d done, he guessed that finding the child he considered to be his son was Ryan’s priority. He felt like a thief, but this was an emergency. How much of an emergency he wasn’t sure, but the sick feeling churning his gut told him something was very wrong.
‘Kim?’ he called, attempting to keep his tone calm. Despite the anger that had possessed him when he’d realised she’d faked her pregnancy, he didn’t want to scare her. He needed to know what the hell had been going through her mind, what her end game had been, apart from to milk the situation for all she could get, destroying what was left of his family in the process. He badly wanted to understand what she’d hoped to achieve in the long term, but that could wait. Right now, he needed to find her – and fast.
Going through to the dining room while Ryan checked upstairs, he ground to a halt.Christ.Fear slicing through him, he took in the scene before him: ornaments swept from the shelf, the mirror smashed, jagged pieces of glass all over the floor. His gaze shot to the conservatory, where the lights were blazing. Striding across to the French doors, he tried them. ‘Locked,’ he said to Ryan, who’d appeared behind him. ‘Anything upstairs?’
‘Nothing,’ Ryan said. ‘Apart from a whole bunch of photographs of Josh on one of the bedroom walls. Weird photos, not personal, you know? Some of you and your wife too.’
Fuck.Adam raced to the kitchen. The back door was open. What the hell had gone on here? He ventured onto the patio, dreading what he might find out there.
Something crunched under his foot as he stepped out. He bent to retrieve it. A shard of glass. Apprehension knotted his stomach as he pressed two fingers to the dark stain underneath it. It was thin and watery after the rain, but it was definitely blood, stark against the pale grey of the patio slabs. Whose?
‘They’ve gone!’ someone shouted across the garden as Ryan joined him, his phone torch picking out other random splatters of crimson. Ryan shone the beam in the direction of the voice. The old woman next door, Adam realised.
