Hikers - The Collection (Complete Box Set of 5 Books)

by Lauren Algeo

  He took out his phone while the other men laughed at the poor couple’s misfortune. Ellen’s reply to his earlier message was still unread on the screen. She’d asked if Daniel had found a target and if anything had happened. Brewer tapped out a reassuring reply: ‘Crisis averted. No one hurt. I’ll fill you in when I get home.’

  She’d be desperate to know all the details but she’d have to wait. Brewer settled down on one of the chairs and relaxed his tightly wound body.

  ‘We saw her crying in the corridor too,’ he added to the group’s gossip. ‘I don’t think she’ll be showing her face back in the hall tonight.’

  It felt in bad taste to join in but he had to make the team comfortable with him and banter seemed to be the way to do it. If he wanted to fit in so no one would suspect his motives, he’d have to loosen his morals a little.

  ‘She didn’t look so hot with all that make-up running down her face,’ Adders sniggered.

  ‘I bet the press will get some close-ups if she makes the mistake of leaving through the front door,’ Richards added gleefully.

  ‘This will make even more women flock to David now.’ Even Seok was smiling and more animated, to Brewer’s surprise.

  ‘Yeah, women love to “heal” broken-hearted men,’ Adders agreed. ‘He’ll have them throwing themselves at him, lucky bastard.’

  The mood in the room was bizarrely more buoyant at the reveal of a scandal. Brewer poured himself a glass of water from the new tray that had appeared on the table while he’d been gone. He let the cool liquid soothe his dry throat as the other guys turned to their phones again – only this time they were checking Twitter and Facebook for any leaks on the cheating drama. Brewer gave a contented smile; he would be home in bed in no time.

  ‘There he is.’

  Daniel’s voice penetrated Brewer’s thoughts, shattering his short-livid relief. Everything had been silent on the boy’s front in the fifteen minutes since they’d got back to the office yet suddenly he was whispering again. Brewer sat up straighter and struggled to hear any other words.

  ‘This is the perfect time to get your revenge,’ Daniel suggested.

  He was probably still talking to David’s mind but Brewer didn’t know who the target was now. Jenny would have left sharpish and he’d thought David might have gone too so they could talk it out at home. Who was the ‘he’ that Daniel was referring to?

  Brewer glanced at the team. They’d quietened down after the drama and were clock-watching until home time. It wasn’t his turn to check on the Connors family next but he could pretend that he needed the toilet again.

  ‘How dare he have put his hands on Jenny,’ Daniel said. ‘He knew she was yours.’

  Ah, there it was. The new target must be the man who David thought Jenny had slept with behind his back. Whether any of it was true or not was irrelevant. Brewer felt an instant sense of dread at Daniel’s words. He wasn’t going to be satisfied with mental torturing at all; David was potentially going to hurt whoever this man was.

  Brewer forced a laugh and stood up. ‘Do you know what? I never actually went to the toilet when I checked on Connors – I got too distracted.’

  ‘Must be an age thing.’ Richards tapped the side of his head. ‘Going a bit senile are you?’

  ‘You’ll see when you get over fifty,’ Brewer laughed again and backed towards the door. ‘I won’t be a minute.’

  ‘If you see Jenny, give her my number now she’s single,’ Adders called after him.

  Brewer closed the door on their cackling. He hoped Jenny wasn’t still around or she might get caught up in the middle of this. With heavy legs, he made his way back towards the hall.

  ‘That’s it, get closer while his back is turned.’ Daniel was speaking faster. ‘There’s a bottle right there on the table.’

  Brewer groaned and quickened his pace. Oh god, David was going to attack the mystery man.

  ‘Grab it quick!’ Daniel cried gleefully. ‘Smash it on the table and stab him with it.’

  Brewer reached the doors to the hall just in time to hear the unmistakeable sound of breaking glass. A woman screamed loudly and a man cried out. He saw the commotion immediately. There was a small crowd of people standing by a table halfway down the room. Two men began grappling violently and one was thrown back against the table. Brewer saw David advancing menacingly towards the man who’d been flung back. He had the broken wine bottle clutched tightly in his right hand.

  People were backing away from the men rapidly, shouting for help. Brewer weighed up his options swiftly. David was hell-bent on getting his ‘revenge’ and he risked being stabbed himself if he tried to get in between the men. He couldn’t just let Daniel drive David to do this though.

  The boy. He was doing all of this. If Brewer could get Daniel away then it would stop. David’s mind would be clear of Daniel’s poisonous encouragement and he’d realise the mistake he was making.

  A brave man in a tuxedo attempted to wrestle David away but he was punched hard in the face and kicked to the floor.

  ‘Don’t you fucking move!’ David growled at the target man, who was trying to get away from him. ‘I know exactly what you and Jenny have been up to!’

  Brewer could see Connors grabbing Marie and Daniel out of their seats. The PM would be trying to get them away from the violence and he had to help. They needed to get Daniel out of there before someone got seriously hurt.

  ‘Connors!’ Brewer sprinted towards their table at the far end of the room.

  He reached them as they were moving around the table to head for the side doors. Daniel was still looking towards the attack and Brewer grabbed his shoulder. He propelled him forwards, knocking him off balance and causing him to stumble. Daniel glared up at him with a snarl, his dark brown eyes unmistakeably black. Connors was beside him in an instant, breaking Daniel’s gaze.

  ‘Get them out of here,’ he instructed Brewer.

  Brewer nodded and hustled the shocked family towards the double doors he’d been spying on them through only twenty minutes ago. The Deputy PM, Harlow, and his wife were also in their fleeing group but the Mayor had hung back. Brewer had the team on speed dial and he phoned Adders as they bundled through the door.

  ‘Did you fall in?’ Adders answered with a laugh.

  ‘Get the cars ready and meet me at the front,’ Brewer said sharply. ‘We need to make a quick exit. I’ve got everyone.’

  There was no time to worry about what was going on in the hall behind them. Daniel’s hold over David would be fading, if it hadn’t already been broken by the shove Brewer had given him, and it would all be over when he was in a car speeding back to Downing Street.

  ‘What the hell happened to him?’ Connors asked as they marched quickly along the corridor. ‘He completely flipped.’

  ‘God, I hope someone’s got that bottle away from him.’ Marie sounded on the verge of tears.

  Daniel was quiet beside him and Brewer didn’t look down. He couldn’t hear the boy in his mind any more either. Maybe David was seeing sense and had stopped his attack on whoever that man had been. Someone in the room would have called the police by now and they could deal with the fall out of it. Brewer had done all he could.

  Seok came charging towards them with Richards hot on his heels. ‘The cars are pulling around.’

  Seok took up position on the other side of Connors and spun on his heels. Richards paused to let them past then fell in step behind the group. The team had no idea what had happened or what the threat was. They had been trained to act fast and ask questions later.

  The doormen were gone from their posts and Brewer and Seok flung open the glass doors to let the family through. The crowd outside had dispersed once everyone was inside and there were only a couple of photographers still loitering around, presumably hoping to catch a celebrity staggering out at the end of the night.

  They sprang to attention when they saw the Prime Minister’s group come striding out and Brewer did his best to put himself betw
een them.

  ‘Jack, what’s the hurry?’ One man called out.

  A woman darted close to get some better shots of the family. ‘Has something happened inside?’ she asked.

  Richards barged her roughly aside and they hurried down the red carpet. The cars were pulling up alongside them, with Adders behind the wheel of one of the Range Rovers. The other two drivers had been waiting patiently in the cars throughout the evening and they looked alert behind the wheels.

  ‘Take everyone straight back to Downing Street,’ Brewer instructed.

  Harlow and his wife could go with them and head home later. Connors, Marie and Daniel got promptly into the Jag and Brewer headed for Adders’ Range Rover. Harlow and his wife followed Seok into the second Range Rover.

  The photographers stared dumbly after them as the cars sped off in a convoy. Brewer wondered if they’d seen Jenny leave in floods of tears earlier and now the PM was bolting during dessert. They would find out about the night’s events soon enough. The police would be arriving at any moment.

  As soon as they were safely away from Guildhall, Adders grabbed his arm.

  ‘What the fuck happened in there?’ he demanded. ‘One minute you’d gone to the toilet, the next you’re scaring the shit out of us with that call.’

  Brewer wiped the light sheen of sweat from his brow. His heart was racing under his clammy shirt.

  ‘It was David,’ he told Adders. ‘He started attacking the bloke who he thought Jenny had been cheating on him with.’

  ‘Oh.’ Adders sounded disappointed. ‘I thought it was a threat to Connors or something. Was our exit not a bit much for two guys fighting over a girl?’

  Brewer shook his head. ‘David was trying to stab the guy with a smashed wine bottle and he was lashing out at anyone who tried to stop him. Connors was trying to get Marie and Daniel away from him when I went in.’

  ‘Seriously?’ Adders glanced across with raised eyebrows. ‘Shit. That is more dramatic than I thought.’ He paused to steer the car around a sharp corner. ‘Do you think David actually stabbed that guy after you left?’

  ‘I hope not.’ Brewer shuddered at the thought.

  ‘Wow,’ Adders whistled. ‘He always seems so chilled out on TV. I guess this cheating thing must have made him go crazy.’

  ‘He looked like a man possessed,’ Brewer agreed, not wanting to say that he knew David definitely was possessed, and by the least likely person Adders could think of.

  ‘Even if he hasn’t hurt the guy, this will ruin his career,’ Adders mused. ‘He’s going to blame Jenny even more now. Maybe I’ll have to steer clear of her – all this baggage is too much for me!’

  He barked a laugh but Brewer couldn’t raise a smile in return. It might be hours before he’d know for certain if Daniel had succeeded in getting someone else killed. His bed was further away than ever – he’d have to stick around Downing Street for a while to deal with the aftermath and the police would want to talk to them. They were all witnesses to the attack and would probably have to give statements.

  Brewer leant his head back on the seat and closed his eyes. This awful night was far from over for him.

  Chapter 17

  Brewer groggily opened his eyes and blinked at the bright room. The space beside him was empty and cold so Ellen had been up for a while. He struggled into a sitting position to check the clock on her side of the bed. It was nearly 9am but it felt as though he’d just closed his eyes.

  It had been after 2am when he’d eventually made it home. He’d wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed and switch off his mind only Ellen had woken up as soon as he’d crept into the bedroom. She was desperate to hear about the evening, after only a few vague texts from him, and he knew she couldn’t wait until the morning. He’d fought back a yawn and propped himself up on the bed to fill her in.

  She’d looked horrified when he’d detailed the attack in the hall in front of hundreds of people. She couldn’t understand how Daniel had managed to turn a stable man into an irrational lunatic in such a short space of time. Brewer had suspected just how powerful Daniel was after the circumstances of Davenport’s death and this proved it.

  The boy could influence people without really trying. David had switched in barely half an hour of whispering. He’d gone from thinking that his girlfriend might be having an affair to trying to stab the man he believed it was with. He hadn’t once questioned where the information was coming from; he was just certain of the ‘facts’: Jenny was sleeping with someone else and the other man deserved to die because of it.

  Brewer had found out later that evening, from the police at Downing Street, that David hadn’t succeeded in killing the man, who’d turned out to be a producer Jenny worked with called Alistair McDowell. McDowell had been taken to hospital with some serious defensive wounds but he’d managed to get away before David could do any life threatening damage. He just needed some stitches and rest and he would be fine.

  The police told Connors that David had fled just before they arrived but they’d found him sitting on the pavement one road away, crying hysterically. He’d been arrested and they were gathering witness statements to decide the severity of his charges: attempted murder, assault, or actual bodily harm.

  Brewer knew that David would have been distraught once Daniel had left his mind and he’d come to his senses. At the start of the dinner, he’d been a well-loved comedian and now his reputation was in tatters, and he was facing prison. Too many people had seen his violent outburst and there would be demands for him to be sacked from his show, no matter what his sentence was. Jenny wouldn’t fare too well in the fall out either. People would think she’d been sleeping with her producer to advance her career and driven her boyfriend to madness.

  Brewer had given his statement to the police and waited until Harlow and his wife had left Downing Street. Thankfully Marie had whisked Daniel upstairs as soon as they’d got back so he didn’t have to endure being so close to him too.

  Connors had thanked him for his quick response in getting his family to safety. He’d been concerned about what Daniel had seen – whether the boy would be traumatised by it – and Brewer had almost laughed in his face. How could no one else see that Daniel was the one behind it all? Why could they not sense the evil that resided underneath his carefully constructed mask?

  Instead, he’d simply assured Connors that children were surprisingly resilient. He held back his real thoughts that something like the attack on McDowell was tame compared to what Daniel had witnessed during his short life. Attempted murder was nothing in comparison to cold-blooded killing. McDowell had had a very lucky escape.

  Brewer swung his legs over the edge of the bed and wriggled his bare toes on the thick carpet for a moment. He was tempted to lie back down and pull the bed covers over his head but he resisted. He stood up and crossed to the door, pausing to shrug on the navy dressing gown that hung on the back of it. He could hear the faint murmur of the TV from downstairs and smelt cooking bacon as soon as he stepped out to the landing. His empty stomach rumbled at the comforting smell. Some hot food and strong coffee would make him feel better.

  Ellen was sitting on the sofa in her white dressing gown, cradling a mug of tea. She glanced up when she realised that he was standing in the doorway.

  ‘How did you sleep?’ she asked. ‘Do you want a coffee? There’s bacon on the grill, do you want some?’

  Brewer held up his hand to stop her barrage of questions. ‘Whoa, I just woke up.’

  He walked into the living room and sat down in the armchair, registering the twenty-four hour news channel that was currently on.

  ‘I slept ok,’ he said. ‘I’ll get some coffee and breakfast in a minute, thanks.’

  Ellen leaned over the arm of the sofa to plant a kiss on his cheek. ‘Good. I eventually got back to sleep – it was hard to shut down after everything you told me.’

  ‘It was for me too,’ Brewer said.

  ‘At least you don’t have to go back th
ere until Monday,’ Ellen said. ‘You need the break after last night.’

  She paused to take a sip of her tea and when she looked back at him, there was familiar concern in her eyes.

  ‘How are you holding up?’

  Brewer took a second before replying. He could lie and say that he was fine, that he was coping with this god-awful situation. It was what he’d been reassuring her with for days but something about the way she was gazing at him so trustingly made him want to tell the truth.

  ‘Honestly?’ he asked.

  She gave a curt nod and he realised that he hadn’t been doing as good of a job as he’d believed at convincing her that he was ok.

  ‘Not that great.’ He finally spoke the words he’d been holding in. ‘Being at that place is beyond stressful and I feel on edge all the time. I can’t eat properly and I’m not sleeping well but I am coping.’

  He reached out and took her hand. ‘I will do this for however long is necessary. I can do it.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Ellen said quietly. ‘I knew it was getting to you more than you were letting on.’ He saw tears fill her eyes. ‘But you can’t shut me out. We’re in this together. I can help you get through it.’

  Brewer squeezed her hand and wished that he did have a coffee so he could wash down the hard lump that had suddenly formed in his throat.

  Ellen blinked back her tears and smiled at him. ‘Let’s get you some breakfast.’

  She disappeared to the kitchen and Brewer stayed sitting for a moment before following her. He made a silent vow to himself that he would let her in more… and that he would stop drinking so much. The plan was still on track and he’d survived an entire evening near Daniel.

  ‘I spoke to Mitch last night,’ Ellen told him as she buttered some bread.

  Brewer got a mug out of the cupboard and picked up the coffee pot. ‘Did you?’ he asked. ‘I thought we were going to call him today?’

  ‘I’ll be out later at the hen do and he said he was busy today,’ she said. ‘I was going crazy here, sitting by myself, when I knew something dangerous was going on at the event. I had to do something to help with our plan.’