by Jake Cross
‘Brotherly love? I was drugged and kidnapped.’
Nate’s mind went back to the night of the kidnapping, armed with missing pieces. The memories were vivid, having been rescued from the depths. A simple, normal night in–
‘I’m not into crappy fantasy, Nate.’
‘We’ll flip this. Heads it’s “Game of Thrones”, tails it’s “Breaking Bad”.’
Pete fixing him a drink…
‘This tastes funny, Pete.’
‘A little something I added.’
Somehow realising that it had been drugged… ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean stay sat down or you’ll crack your head when you fall. Don’t fight it, Nate.’
Tossing the cup at his brother, then fleeing. Intention: hospital. Last memory of his life at home: flinging open the back door to find intruders blocking his path.
‘Just stop, Nate. Trust your brother. You won’t be hurt.’
‘You were never supposed to be hurt, Nate.’
Pete’s words pulled Nate back to the now. ‘Never supposed to be hurt? Your people have been trying to kill me ever since.’
Pete laughed. Actually laughed. ‘Do you really think they tried to kill you, Nathan? You damn idiot. How many times would you have been dead already? You would have never woken up that first time. They used tranquilliser darts, not bullets. Think about that.’
Nate tried not to let his emotions show on his face. Because his emotions said he believed this.
Pete said, ‘After you escaped and started running around the country, the plan threatened to fall apart. When my men didn’t capture you at the holiday park, I knew there was no chance of getting you out of the country as planned. There would have been sightings of you. The cops might get you first, and when you started denying everything, they’d dig deeper, and I had no idea what they’d find. So I had no choice.’
Pete leaned forward, fixing Nate’s eyes with his own. ‘It really hurt to do it, Nate, but I had to cut you loose. Let you go down. And make sure that when you went down, there was enough evidence against you to sink you forever, no matter what story or proof you might have to the contrary. I sent the police to the holiday park.’
Pete finished his beer and tossed the bottle behind him. It bounced off the wall.
Nate just waited.
‘So I left a guy behind at the park, his orders to keep out of sight, but to give you a postcode. The idea was that you’d hopefully write it down, so that when the police came to the holiday park and arrested you, they’d find it. Then they’d find Ryback’s smashed flat and a clue about a cottage in Essex. And at the cottage they’d find your latest victim. Ryback.’
‘And evidence that I’d killed Kaushal and Webber, right? Nathan Barke, the serial killer.’
Pete nodded almost apologetically. ‘But our guy at the park didn’t check in, and you got out before the cops could get you. I didn’t know if you’d seen the postcode on the guy’s arm, so I had Lazar send you down to Ryback’s London place. But yet again you escaped the cops. Once my men finally captured you, I decided to let the cops have you at the cottage. Red-handed, so to speak.’
Pete indicated the photograph of himself, apparently dead. ‘I wasn’t happy about having photos of the dead floating around, but Ryback insisted. Extra proof, he’d said. But I had an afterthought that turned into a brilliant idea. I decided to leave the photos near Ryback’s body to make the police think you’d showed them to him before killing him. Think about that, Nate. Why show them to a man before killing him?’
Nate said nothing.
‘The police would assume Ryback killed them and you were there for revenge. Understand? Ryback killed Kaushal and Webber and me, and tried to kill you. Because we learned about his faked robbery and drugs hoard. But you escaped and found him, and got revenge. I did this because I didn’t want that scumbag getting mourned, but mostly because I care about you, Nate. This way, the only deaths on your hands are those of a hitman and Ryback, criminals the world would be glad to see dead. I did this because I didn’t want you to be hated by the world.’
‘He’s lying,’ said a new voice, and both heads turned as Toni came down the stairs, holding a pistol of her own.
Nate recognised the pistol. Lazar’s. He hadn’t seen her take it from the dead cop’s flat.
‘I got to live one of my dreams tonight, Nate,’ she said. ‘I always wanted to jump in a taxi and say, “follow that car”.’
‘Toni, put that weapon away,’ Nate yelled.
‘Both of you, sit with your backs against that pillar. Ask him this, Nate. If the plan was to have you arrested after you escaped, then why the noose? The suicide note?’
Nate’s head snapped back to Pete. ‘That was Ryback,’ Pete said, his calm now gone, his eyes unable to meet Nate’s. ‘That was his plan, but he didn’t know I had already signed his death warrant. I had already turned his own men against him with a simple magic trick involving making money appear out of thin air in their pockets.’
‘Those men at the cottage were turned against Ryback, yet still they had the noose and the suicide note ready to go? He’s lying. It’s obvious. He’s telling you what you want to hear so you let him live. But what he doesn’t realise is that it doesn’t matter what you believe, Nate, because I’m here to kill him for killing Damar. And then I’m going across the sea out there, and I’m going to kill Xiomara.’
‘Damar?’ Pete spat. ‘Your loyalty’s misplaced. That fool set you up. You were supposed to die as well.’
She aimed the gun, angry. ‘More lies.’
‘He gave you no money up front, did he? He took your ID away, didn’t he? He said it was in case you dropped it, didn’t he? Did you really buy that, you daft bitch?’
She paused. Nate could see her mind struggling with Pete’s claim of betrayal by Damar. ‘All lies, Nate. That’s what people backed against a wall do when facing a gun. They lie to try to save themselves.’
‘What about the ring he gave you?’ Pete barked. ‘He took that away, too, right? What, in case you lost dropped that as well?’
She said nothing.
‘He knew more about all this than he told you. He knew quite a lot. He was one of Ryback’s main bitches. Answer this: why didn’t he tell you everything he knew?’
She shook her head, but Nate could see she wasn’t totally convinced that Pete was wrong. ‘If Damar had planned to kill me, he would have told me the truth. Just like the bad guys in movies. Just like you, right now, although your reason is that you think it’s going to allow you to see a new day.’
‘No, he would have told you the truth if the plan had been for you to live, not die. You were his good friend. Of course he wouldn’t keep such a secret from his good friend. The truth is, you didn’t need to know because you were not going to survive the night.’
She stepped closer. ‘But I did. And unlike you, I’ll survive tonight, too.’
Nate stood up. ‘The police, Toni. That was the plan.’
‘Your plan. I told you mine. Go outside if you don’t want to watch.’
‘If you don’t put down that gun, I’ll turn mine on you, Toni. And then we’ll have a serious problem.’
‘Nate, listen to me,’ Pete said. ‘I can probably never convince you that I never wanted you hurt, but you can never prove that I did. So, the choice is yours. Ryback was the criminal mastermind with the damn stupid supervillain alter ego, but his men work for me now. I have a lot of contacts, and I can get us out of the country quite easily. It was all set-up. Spain. You and me, we can go there tomorrow morning. That was the plan and it still is. Make a choice, because if you turn me in or let this woman kill me, everyone loses. There have been deaths and someone’s got to go down for those. Make that choice right now.’
‘It’s not his choice,’ Toni said.
Nate turned the gun on her. ‘Don’t make me shoot you, Toni.’
She said, ‘This was what we expected from the start, right? You’d want to kill me
, and I’d want to kill you. That’s what we both feared. Is this what it comes to?’
‘I guess it is. You are not killing my brother. Despite what he’s done. Remember I came all this way to get revenge for him, so don’t think at this stage, despite what he’s done, I’ll let anyone just shoot him dead.’
‘Your gun is empty, Nate. I put the last bullet into Lazar.’
Pete looked at the gun, and Nate saw his hopes drop. Nate tossed the gun away as if it were dirty.
Toni said, ‘Are you seriously thinking about it? Running away with him?’
Nate nodded.
She stepped closer to them. ‘Against the pillar. Now. Hands behind your back.’
Pete moved first. He sat with his back to the pillar and put his hands behind him. Nate didn’t move.
‘Do it, Nate,’ Pete said. ‘She won’t admit as much, but she isn’t killing anyone. She would have shot already.’
Pete obviously didn’t think Toni could be as callous as killing a man who was tied up, but Nate knew better. But he sat by the pillar and put back his arms. With one hand holding the gun on both men, she extracted two cable ties from a pocket. Nate’s right arm was locked to Pete’s left, and then Pete’s right to Nate’s left on the other side of the pillar.
‘So, what now? Kill us both?’ Nate said.
Toni knelt beside them both. Heads turned, Pete’s to the left, Nate’s to the right, they watched her.
She showed them her phone. ‘I know the whole story, okay? I recorded it for the police.’
Her head cocked, as if she was listening for something. Or to something. Nate strained his ears, and heard it.
A police siren.
‘You’ll go to prison, too,’ Pete yelled.
Nate calmly said, ‘I’m not sure she’d mind. Nobody’s lonely in prison.’
Toni kissed Nate on the cheek. He tried to avoid it, but she grabbed his hair and held him still, and planted her soft lips once on his skin. Then she got up and sat on the sofa, and put the gun on the table. ‘Now listen carefully, both of you.’
Wandsworth arson death victim found alive – woman arrested
Today, Metropolitan Police announced an arrest in the Wandsworth house fire murder investigation – even though the victim has been found alive and well.
In a shocking twist to this story, police yesterday raided a houseboat in Port Werbergh, Kent, where they found not only the man believed to have perished in the fire, but also his brother, the man suspected of his killing. Both men were discovered handcuffed and incapacitated aboard the vessel.
Following the fire last week, which destroyed a large house in Putney Village, Wandsworth, police discovered the body of a man believed to be Peter Barke, 48, and were seeking to question his brother, Nathan Barke, 42, who fled the scene and was the focus of a nationwide manhunt.
But today police arrested a 26-year-old Turkish woman on suspicion of arson, murder and kidnap. The woman is suspected of kidnapping both brothers and setting fire to the house to cover the crime. It is alleged she was working with a local businessman-turned-gangster and a rogue police officer, whose identities have not yet been released. The three co-conspirators are also being investigated about a drugs-related murder four years ago.
During their time as captives, Nathan Barke was allowed to leave the boat to buy supplies. He managed to escape and return to London, but was recaptured at Sunny Dream Leisure Park in Kent by their kidnapper’s co-conspirators, who are believed to have killed an unidentified man at that location, a crime that Nathan Barke was originally suspected of.
Although information from the police so far is sketchy, they have said the woman faked Peter Barke’s death in order to access funds in his bank account. Police are trying to establish the identity of the man whose body was found in the burned house.
The woman, who had been living rough on the streets of London, is fully co-operating with the police.
Acknowledgements
For my partner, Jen, who kept me grounded while writing this (more free time because I’m not allowed to watch the UFC).
Many thanks to the entire Bloodhound Books team, for hard work, dedication, fine editing and patience. Especially Betsy, Tara and Clare, who gave me a lot of their time (clearly not UFC fans).
And a final thanks to all who read this book. I hope you liked it. If not, I’ll get you next time.
A note from the publisher
Thank you for reading this book. If you enjoyed it please do consider leaving a review on Amazon to help others find it too.
We hate typos. All of our books have been rigorously edited and proofread, but sometimes mistakes do slip through. If you have spotted a typo, please do let us know and we can get it amended within hours.
[email protected]
Love crime, thriller and mystery books?
Sign up today to be the first to hear about new releases and exclusive offers, including free and discounted ebooks!
Why not like us or follow us on social media to stay up to date with the latest news from your favourite authors?
You will also enjoy:
Keri Beevis’ Dying to Tell
BUY NOW
