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Prologue

Dead Water

Just one more.

That’s what she told herself as she stood in the narrow bathroom, damp climbing the walls and the light flickering overhead. One more job, then she’d sort things out. Catch up. Get square. Maybe breathe without the constant low-level panic pressing on her chest.

The message that might help lay open on her phone. Private booking. Good money. She switched to the calculator and tapped in the numbers again. Rent. Electric. What she owed Kayleigh. The extra she’d taken last week when she’d been low and needed something to function, despite swearing it would be the last time. The total remained stubbornly impossible.

Her phone buzzed again. You drive?

Something about the question sat wrong in her gut. She stared at it for a moment, hovering her thumb over the screen, before typing, Yeah. The reply took long enough that she almost hoped he’d changed his mind. Then another message appeared. I’ll send location.

She should’ve stopped there. Blocked the number. Found another job. There were always other men, other nights, other ways to scrape together enough to get by. Then Kayleigh’s name appeared on the screen. I need that money! Bring it tomorrow when you bring my car back.

She closed her eyes. Kayleigh had looked after her when she’d first ended up on the streets and taught her which men to avoid and which cars never to get into. She made sure she knew where to go when things went wrong. She couldn’t leave her short now. She needed friends in this business, and Kayleigh was one of the few she had.

So she sent the man her rate.

Fine.

She tied her long blond hair into a ponytail and reached for her mascara, forcing herself into motion before she could reconsider. One more. Then she’d sort herself out.

She took Kayleigh’s car.

She’d understand. This was half for her, anyway.

The location pin took her out of the city, which bothered her more than she wanted to admit. Most of her work stayed somewhere known. Streets with lights. Hotels. Houses. Places where other people were close enough to notice if something went wrong. She’d moved away from working the kerbside because private bookings were supposed to mean better conditions. Safer conditions. Going backwards would feel like admitting to everyone who’d told her she was being naive that they’d been right.

The roads narrowed as she drove, streetlights disappearing until there was nothing beyond her headlights but hedgerows, dry-stone walls and darkness.

A sign flashed past. The name was familiar enough to have her foot easing off the accelerator.

Turn back.

Then the road curved, and there, beyond the dark fields, the faint skeletal outline of the steelworks rose against the night.

Her phone signal dropped to one bar, then none.

The map had loaded enough of the route that she knew roughly where she was going. She could still turn around, though. The thought came more than once as she drove deeper into the darkness. But every time it did, Kayleigh’s message came back to her, along with the numbers on the calculator and the simple fact she couldn’t argue with.

She needed money.

Eventually, headlights appeared. A car waited on the gravel track, engine running. She pulled up several metres behind it and sat for a moment, both hands still on the wheel as she studied it through the windscreen. It was clean. Modern. Expensive without being flashy. The sort of car driven by someone with a proper job and a decent credit rating.

Or a rental.

She’d seen enough of those. Businessmen away from home, hiring something anonymous along with everything else. Men with real lives waiting somewhere else. Wives. Kids. Jobs where people shook hands and thought they were respectable.

That shouldn’t have reassured her. But it did.

Then she noticed the building beyond it. Low, wide and dark. Definitely not a house. Her stomach tightened as she remembered half-heard conversations from girls she’d known on the street. Private places out this way. Extra money if you didn’t ask questions. They’d laughed about them, said they weren’t that desperate.

Apparently, she was.

She grabbed her bag and got out. The passenger door of the waiting car unlocked before she reached it, and she took that as another small reassurance. At least he was expecting her. She climbed inside and gave him the easy smile she’d learned to wear for men she didn’t know.

“Hi.”