Jake’s step faltered. ‘Stay with your mother, Millie,’ he said throatily, then he pulled the front door open and slammed it hard behind him.
Forty-Six
‘Where’s he going?’ Millie asked, her voice a hoarse whisper.
‘I’m not sure.’ Coming back from the kitchen, Emily grabbed her bag from the peg and snatched up her own car keys.
‘Mum…’ Hearing the sob in her daughter’s voice as she reached for the front door, she stopped and spun around.
Millie’s eyes were wide, her face, free of make-up, that of a petrified child.
Her heart catching, Emily moved quickly towards her as she stepped falteringly down the stairs, yanking her into a firm embrace. ‘I have to go after him, Millie. Stay here,’ she said, breathing in the smell of her, the scent of her child, her flesh and blood. Her baby girl; she would always be that no matter how grown-up she was. She had to make her world safe.
Gulping back a knot of raw emotion, she pressed a kiss to the top of her head. ‘Call Ben. Tell him we need him to come home. And stay here until I ring you.’
Millie eased away to look tearfully at her.
‘I won’t be long, I promise,’ Emily assured her, giving her another firm squeeze then turning back to the door before her courage failed her.
She wasn’t sure where Jake had gone, but the cold fear in the pit of her stomach told her he might do something terrible, something completely out of character. Though perhapsincharacter when it came to protecting his children. Both of his children. He had never considered Ben to be anything but his son. Even when Ben had treated him abysmally, whether because of who he was or the age he was – Emily only wished she knew – Jake had been there for him. She couldn’t let this happen. She had to stop it. Shehad to protect her family, Millie, Ben, Jake – the people she would die for. She knew that she was the only one who could.
Deep down, she’d always known this day would come.I know you, Emily! I fuckingloveyou! I’ll find you, I’m warning you. You belong to me!She heard his voice when they’d handed the sentence down. Saw his face contorted with rage, the intent in his unfocused eyes as he’d pinned her down, the night she’d foolishly gone to him. She’d fought him … until she’d been too frightened of what he might do. She’d fought the ghost of him ever since, just as she’d fought to rid herself of the ghost of her sister. He wasn’t going to go away – not unless she made him.
She stopped a short way from the house to grapple her phone from her bag and search for the text she’d tried so hard to convince herself wasn’t what she’d thought it was, the warning she’d tried steadfastly to ignore. How she wished now that she hadn’t. She could have put a stop to this earlier, prevented so much pain and heartache. Knowing what she now knew, that Paul Lewis had been using her daughter, hurting her to hurther, to gain access to her, she had no doubt it was him who’d been drugging her. He who’d been responsible for what had happened to poor Zoe, to Natasha.
I’m watching you. She read the text over again, each word piercing her heart like an icicle, and then, nausea clenching her stomach, she switched to hands-free, called the number it had been sent from and drove on.
‘What do you want?’ she asked when he picked up.
He didn’t answer for a minute. Then, ‘You,’ he said simply.
Forty-Seven
Jake
Blind anger burning inside him, Jake struggled to concentrate on the road. He should call the police. The fact that this Paul Lewis had been stealing drugs from the surgery was enough to make sure he was investigated. But he couldn’t do that without implicating his daughter, something that piece ofscumhad undoubtedly factored in.
He slowed for a second, his breathing ragged, sweat beading his forehead. If he did inform the police, potentially risking Millie’s whole future, would it even be enough to put this animal back where he should be, behind bars? Lewis was obviously responsible for everything. Jake’s gut twisted as he pictured Natasha lying bleeding in the road. She could have died. Had it beenhimin Zoe’s flat? He obviously thought it was his right to abuse any woman he fancied. Would Edward have been a target too, a man who would have given his life to help other people, only to almost have it snatched away because he’d made a mistake? One single mistake. Jake felt sick to his soul imagining the pain he must have been in as he’d tortured himself with what he believed was his failure. And Jennifer Wheeler: the bastard had taken away everything she’d thought had made her life worth living.
This vermin, Paul Lewis, Louis – bile rose in his throat even thinking his name – had hurt his daughter. He’d hurt his wife, more than Jake could ever have contemplated. And hehadcontemplated it, many times over the years; he’d tried to understand why she’d seen another man after he and she were together. Why hadn’t she trusted him enough to tell him? How could she have thought that one day he wouldn’t find out about Ben? Ben didn’t look like him, and wasn’t anything like him in character. He’d watched Emily worry about it, been close so many times to asking her to be honest with him.
A simple blood test when Ben had had suspected appendicitis as a child had told him what he’d needed to know. And he’d waited, and he’d hinted, and he’d prayed that she would tell him. He’d waited in vain. Finally she’d broken histrust in her. What did he do with it? he’d asked himself. What did a man do with that information when he still loved his wife despite it? His family. His daughter. His son. He’d loved Ben from birth. Hewashis father. No one could ever take that away from him. Even with Ben pulling away from him lately, he’d made up his mind he wouldn’t let that happen. And now this. His world was disintegrating all over again because of thisbastard.Millie would have to live the rest of her life with the psychological damage he would undoubtedly have caused her. Emily had lived with it for years, for some inexplicable reason feeling unable to confide in him.
Jake doubted that an individual who clearly revelled in people’s suffering would experience any kind of remorse. He didn’t deserve to live.
Hatred settling like ice in the pit of his stomach, he pushed his foot down, heading to the surgery. The man wanted drugs; he would have them. The worst fucking trip of his life.
Half an hour later, he reached the address Millie had given him, a run-down car repair shop on the road out of the village towards Worcester. Lewis apparently lived in the flat above it. Jake slowed, his heart hammering like a freight train. Was he really going to do this? Seeing again his daughter’s terrified face when he’d found her cowering in the doorway of the surgery, knowing this monsterhad used her, coerced her, that he’d abused his wife in the worst possible way, he knew he couldn’t walk away. He’d made mistakes. Several. He’d failed to put his trust in the people around him he claimed to love. He’d imagined his father possibly capable of this evil, he’d accused Emily, he’d even doubted Ben, to his shame. He’d sat in judgement on Emily all these years for not telling him the truth, and then, when he’d finally given up hope that she would, he’d made an irrevocable mistake, one he’d lived to regret. On top of all that, busy with his own life, shut away in his office feeling sorry for himself, he’d let his daughter down. He should have been there for her, for his family. He hadn’t been. He needed to put right some of those mistakes.
His mind made up, he checked his jacket pocket, making sure the syringe he’d collected was easily accessible, as well as some extra ampoules of morphine should he need them.
Forty-Eight
Emily
Icy fear gripping her stomach, Emily climbed the concrete steps leading up to the flat, a forties-style brick-built property with metal windows, one of them boarded up. The paintwork on the front door was peeling.
He’d left it open.
