“Mia—”
“No,” she snapped. “You told Gus to stay here because you were worried about me and this ridiculous harassment crap the police think is coincidental nonsense. It wouldn’t kill you to just fucking say so.”
She hung up, leaving me half bewildered and half delighted that our relationship had returned to something resembling our teenage years. In hindsight, perhaps I had been habitually evasive,but I’d admit the truth when I saw her, and she’d be okay with that. I got her, and she got me.
I fired out a text to say as much, but she beat me to it.
Mia:Sorry. You just frustrate me. Still. I love you xx
I deleted my original message and tapped out a reply.
Luke:i know. i’m working on it. love u x
But my phone battery died before I hit send. Sighing, I jogged upstairsto plug it in, then came back down to figure out what I needed to do before I made the three-hour round trip to see Billy. Fighting through the traffic around the IKEA roundabout to get to the timber merchant was unfortunately at the top of my list.
I drove the van—complete with its monkey’s worth of brand new tyres—out of town to the retail park in the industrial estate. The traffic was shit,and I’d left my phone at home, so without Spotify to distract me, my thoughts returned to the strange events Mia and the police apparently thought weren’t worth further consideration. Logic told me they could be right, but my gut said otherwise. The break-in, the van, the weird packages in the post. Even without the black car that had trailed me around Rushmere a few weeks ago, it all added upto something I couldn’t shake. Maybe it wasn’t her ex, but I didn’t find that notion comforting. A pissed off ex-husband made sense. A rando doing this shit didn’t. At all.
A shiver ran through me. Fuck, I needed to talk about this—preferably with someone who took me seriously. Frustration and disquiet was building in my veins and I knew what would happen if I didn’t find an outlet for it.Nothing. Old habits would die hard and I’d shut down, derailing everything Mia and I had been through to get to this point. But who could I talk to? Who could I confess to how fucking terrified I was that there was some lunatic out there about to amp up this bullshit? What if Mia had interrupted whoever had broken into her van? Would her face look like the battered roses I’d swept from the concrete?
Nausea rushed me. I swallowed thickly and tried to push the macabre image from my mind, but it was tough when I had nothing but the back end of a wanky Range Rover to focus on. Anxiety buzzed in my veins, my blood roaring in my ears, and I swear my teeth fucking trembled.
Thankfully, though, the traffic moved on before I could have a complete meltdown, and navigating the roundabout fromhell pulled me clear. I parked outside the timber merchant and opened the back of the van to make space for the wood I needed for the week ahead. After a busy few weeks, it took a while, but keeping my hands occupied was good for my soul.
With a clear space and a lighter mind, I shut the door and turned towards the shop. The roar of an engine spun me round again. A black car was speeding acrossthe car park. I met the gaze of the driver as it careered towards me, and his name was on my lips as metal crunched bone.
