Run Away With Me : A fast-paced psychological thriller

by Daniel Hurst

  Then she told me that I could kill my wife and lover and get away with it.

  38

  ADAM

  TWO MONTHS EARLIER

  It used to be Laura who was the one sneaking into hotels for illicit meet-ups, but now it’s me. I’m currently lying in a double bed on a Tuesday afternoon with a woman beside me who is not my wife. Do you think I feel guilty about it?

  Not one bit.

  ‘I can’t wait until they are gone, and you are free of all the anger,’ Gemma says to me as she snuggles in closer to me and lays her head on my bare chest.

  I smile because I know she wants the best for me, and it’s tearing her up inside that I am still carrying all the bitterness and resentment towards my wife and her lover. I also smile because I know it isn’t long now until we put our plan into action.

  It’s the plan that has taken us months to agree on but is now almost ready to be implemented. Ever since that terrible night when Gemma pulled me over for being drunk at the wheel, the pair of us have been engaging in our own affair. But unlike my wife’s, this one actually has some substance to it. I’m in love with Gemma, and she is in love with me. She saved me that night by the roadside when she could have easily taken me to prison and made my life even worse than it already was. Instead, she took pity on me and has helped in turning around my fortunes. She has shown me that I’m not the one who deserves to be punished for what Laura and Bradley did. Instead, it should be them.

  She has shown me a better way.

  She has shown me a way in which I win, and they lose.

  Likewise, I have also helped her. She confessed to me that she too had been going through some difficulties in her own life when she stopped me on the road that night. She was estranged from her partner and also suffering from a serious lack of recognition with her superiors in the police, leading to her feeling just as lost and lonely about things as I had been. It turned out we had both needed each other, and now we had that, life was so much better for us both.

  Gemma and I have been carrying on our affair ever since we met, but I know Laura doesn’t suspect a thing. Why would she? She’s too busy worrying about her own secrets to think about anybody else’s. Every day her pregnancy bump grows larger, and every day we come closer to the time when she will give birth to another man’s child while pretending that it is mine.

  We know the baby is a boy and we have agreed on a name. Samuel. But that is all we are agreed on. Laura thinks that we are going to be one big happy family, and while I pretend the same, I know the truth.

  Soon, Laura, Bradley and the baby they made will be gone, then Gemma and I will be together, and I will be free from all the pain that has come my way over this past year.

  ‘Not long now,’ I say as Gemma lifts her head and gives me a kiss before settling back down again.

  I can tell how eager she is to move forward with our plan, not just for me, but for herself too. Gemma has made it clear that it has long been a fantasy of hers to get away with murder, and for the majority of the time we have been together, we have been plotting the perfect crime. As soon as Gemma explained to me that I would never be able to move on with my life until my cheating wife was dead, we have been discussing ways of making that happen that wouldn’t end up with either of us going to prison.

  We’ve come up with many schemes over the last few months, but through Gemma’s knowledge of policework, and a little creativity from myself, we have now settled on the one that we are sure will work. I know Gemma is eager to get on with it, and I am too, but we both know that acting in haste is one of the many ways a criminal can get caught. Therefore, we are both ensuring that we exercise patience right now. We don’t want emotion to cloud our behaviour. We want to be cold, clinical and calculated. We want to give Laura and Bradley no chance to avoid their fate.

  Most of all, we want to get away with it.

  ‘I should probably be getting back to the office,’ I say before I risk closing my eyes and drifting off into a peaceful sleep.

  ‘Five more minutes,’ the policewoman on my chest replies, and I don’t put up an argument.

  In the end, we stay in that bed for another thirty minutes, although it’s not sleep that keeps us occupied in that time. Gemma gets turned on by the thought of what we are about to do together, and I have to say that I do too. We are lovers. We are accomplices. We are partners in crime. Best of all, we are in love, and that is something that Laura and Bradley can never say.

  Too bad for them. They’ve thrown away their chance of living for a meaningless fling. Gemma and I on the other hand, feel as if we have been reborn.

  Isn’t life wonderful?

  39

  LAURA

  ‘I want to go to the village now.’

  I can see that Adam is surprised by my sudden request as I walk downstairs and find him finishing a beer in the kitchen.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I want to see the news. There’s no Wi-Fi, no TV, nothing. I have to see the news, right now.’

  ‘What’s the rush?’

  Adam watches me putting on my coat, but he doesn’t seem too concerned because he continues to swig his beer from his position leaning against the kitchen counter.

  ‘I’ll drive myself into town if you won’t take me,’ I tell him, and I mean it. I am determined to get out of this cottage and go into the village to see the newspapers.

  What’s happening with the hit and run investigation? What’s happening with Bradley’s disappearance? What’s happening outside of these damn four walls?

  I need answers, and I need them now.

  ‘Don’t be silly. I’ll drive you,’ Adam replies. ‘But I don’t know what you are expecting to see.’

  I don’t reply to that. Instead, I just stand by the door with my coat and make it clear that I am ready to go.

  ‘I guess we’re going now then,’ Adam says, finishing his beer and picking up his own coat.

  I wait for him to put on his shoes and join me by the door and then we are finally ready.

  ‘You do understand this is very risky,’ Adam tells me as he opens the door and I feel the cold air blowing in from outside.

  ‘I don’t care. I have to know what’s going on.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  I step out onto the wet grass as Adam locks the door behind us and we make our way to the car quickly before the wind and rain return to batter this part of the world again.

  I get into the front passenger seat as Adam hops behind the wheel beside me and we slam our doors shut quickly, not that it’s any warmer inside the car than it is out there.

  ‘Get the heating on,’ I tell my husband.

  ‘Alright, give me a chance,’ he replies as he fiddles with his keys before he slots them into the engine and gives them a twist.

  I make sure all the vents are open and facing towards us as Adam turns a few dials on the dashboard until I feel the warm air rushing out.

  ‘Are you sure about this? I still think it’s a bad idea if we get seen together. Then the police will know you were in on this plan too.’

  ‘Just drive,’ I reply, and my tone of voice is firm enough to let him know that he isn’t to ask me if I’m sure one more time until we are down in the damn village.

  As Adam reverses away from the cottage, I tap the pocket of my coat and feel my mobile phone in there where I just placed it. I’m hoping not to need it. The newspapers should tell me what I need to know. But I’m carrying it as a contingency. I’ll only turn it on if I need to get online.

  Adam drives us along the dirt track towards the main road as I stare out at the hills in the distance. They look particularly ominous right now underneath the moody sky. It’s hard not to feel like I will never see blue sky again after spending a few days up here, but I know it’s not always as bad as this. If only the clouds would clear and the sun would come out then maybe I would feel a little better about things. For now, the oppressive feeling from the dark sky overhead is doing nothing to soothe the f
eeling of pressure that is already pushing down on me as I worry about myself, my husband and my unborn child.

  I’m also worrying about Bradley, even though doing so makes me feel guilty. I don’t have feelings for the man I cheated on Adam with, not romantic ones anyway, but I am still praying that he is alright. Anybody going missing is a worrying thing, and I’m not sure how many of those who do go missing get found safe and well, but hopefully he will be okay. But the fact his story was third on the local news report is troubling.

  It wouldn’t be on there if the police thought there was nothing to worry about.

  I wonder how many more stories would have been told before the newsreader got to the one about Steven Owen’s body and the hunt for the person who killed him. Maybe it was next. If only that damn satellite dish hadn’t broken in the wind.

  If it was the wind, that is.

  I am still harbouring a few doubts about whether Adam is being completely honest with me about why the TV is not working, especially since I was able to fix it myself so easily, but I guess I will find out soon enough. I can check the news as soon as we get into the village and I will be able to read all about Steven Owen and the police investigation into the driver’s identity. I guess Adam has nothing to hide because he wouldn’t be driving me into the village to allow me to do that if he did.

  We reach the main road, and Adam checks both ways before pulling out. It’s only a few seconds later when we pass the part of the road that I reached the other night when I dropped my phone and found out my sim card was missing. It turned out Adam had taken it out, but again, if he was trying to deceive me then he wouldn’t have given it me back.

  The closer we get to the village, the more I feel confident that Adam has been completely honest with me since that night he came home, and while that means the police are probably looking for him already, at least it means he isn’t lying to me. As long as I can trust him, we have a chance at getting out of this sorry mess. Because without trust, there is nothing. I know that better than anyone.

  Adam trusts me because he doesn’t know about Bradley and he doesn’t know that he is not the father of this baby. I’ve worked so hard to keep it that way, and I will continue to work hard for the rest of my life.

  I have no reason not to think that my life has many more years left in it yet.

  40

  ADAM

  I see the village appear up ahead through the windscreen and I slow down because I know the speed limit drops to 10mph on the high street. It seems a painfully slow speed to be travelling at now considering I was just doing over fifty on the main road that led down here, but I didn’t make the rules. The local police did. They are the same police who will soon have much more to worry about than somebody driving a little too fast around the village.

  They’ll be trying to figure out what the hell happened at the cottage on the hill and why there are dead bodies inside.

  ‘Here we are,’ I say to Laura as we reach the high street and I turn off to look for a suitable place to park.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Laura asks me as we leave the busy street behind for a more secluded one.

  ‘I’m parking on a back road. We can’t be seen together, remember.’

  Down here, we are out of sight of any locals and tourists, not that there are many of them out today in this weather. In better times, the high street would be full of people pottering around and peeping in shop windows, but not now.

  I find a spot down a quiet street and park up, looking around one last time to make sure there is definitely nobody else walking around here.

  ‘I’ll go and get a newspaper then,’ I say, unbuckling my seatbelt.

  ‘No, I’ll go,’ Laura interjects, quickly opening her door.

  ‘Don’t be stupid. You can’t go,’ I tell her.

  ‘Why not? You do.’

  ‘Yes, but I wear a baseball cap, and I’m not as memorable as a heavily pregnant woman wandering down the high street. If the police are looking for me soon and they put our photo on the news, then the people around here will remember you more than they remember me.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ Laura replies, and she must mean it because she is getting out.

  I know I have nothing to worry about if she is seen by other people. The main thing is that she is not seen with me. That means I’ll have to stay here.

  ‘Hurry up,’ I tell her, and she nods as she slams the door and rushes away down the pavement.

  I imagine she is going to buy a newspaper to see if there is anything about the hit and run in there. But there won’t be. Not in the nationals or the local one. I told Laura that it was in there the other day, but today is a new day, and the world moves on fast. Now, when she fails to find any evidence of it, I will tell her that fortunately, the story isn’t big enough to keep running in the nationals and it’s barely even relevant enough for the local rag. They are back to posting about break-ins at the post office and lost sheep on the main road, not a hit and run several miles away that has nothing to do with this sleepy village.

  I drum my fingers against the steering wheel as I wait for my wife to return, and I smile to myself as I do. Gemma has popped into my mind again, as she so often does, and I feel great about the fact that I will be with her again very soon. She is due at the cottage in the early hours of tomorrow morning, and I can’t wait to pull her towards me and give her a kiss. I especially can’t wait to do that in front of Laura. She’ll be stunned. She’ll be confused. And I imagine she will be angry. But that’s not all she will be.

  She’ll also be afraid.

  I cannot wait to see it.

  So hurry up Laura, and buy your newspaper so you can return to this car and we can go back to the cottage where it’s safe and warm.

  At least it is for now.

  But it won’t be for long.

  Soon it will be the most dangerous place in the world for her to be.

  41

  LAURA

  That trip didn’t go as well as I had planned. I didn’t find anything in the newspaper about the hit and run, and when I tried to use my phone, it wouldn’t work. Adam says that was because the story is not relevant to the village members who read the local paper and while that might make sense, what doesn’t is the fact that my mobile phone wouldn’t pick up a signal. The sim card is in the back so there is no reason why it shouldn’t have connected now, yet I am still unable to access the data on my device and browse the web. To make things worse, Adam had forgotten his phone so I couldn’t even use that. All in all, it was almost a complete waste of time.

  Almost.

  I have managed to find an article about Bradley’s disappearance in one of the newspapers, and I am currently lying on the bed in the cottage and reading it whilst Adam is downstairs having another beer. It’s on page eleven of one of the national newspapers, which is surprising and makes me worry even more. Clearly this is a story that is warranting some serious publicity and my heart is in my mouth as I begin reading the words beside the photo of the man I had the affair with.

  Beneath the headline ‘FEARS GROW IN CARLISLE FOR MISSING MAN’ comes a short article which I read quickly to try and find out as much as I can about what might have happened to Bradley. According to the article, he has not been seen for over forty-eight hours since he left his home to go to work at the usual time of 07:15. His weekday routine involved driving into the centre of Carlisle, but studies of CCTV footage around the city have found no record of him making his way to work. The article goes on to say that his wife recalls that he was in good spirits before he left and that none of his behaviour leading up to the day that he went missing suggested that he was troubled by anything, which is leading police to think there may be something more sinister behind his disappearance. But other than a phone number for the general public to call if they have any information, there is nothing else.

  No explanation. No theories. No clues.

  I lower the newspaper and shake my head, astounded that this cou
ld have happened to a man like him. His wife said that there was nothing wrong with him before he went missing and I believe her because I know what Bradley is like. He is happy, confident and positive. He is not somebody plagued by doubt, regret or fear. I don’t think for a second that he may have been secretly battling some kind of mental health issues that have led to him leaving his family and causing himself some harm. So what is the alternative?

  That he has been attacked?

  Kidnapped?

  Murdered?

  I feel sick at the thought of something bad happening to him, not because I care deeply about him but just because he is a nice guy, despite what he did behind his wife’s back. If something like this can happen to somebody like him, then it can happen to anybody. Nobody is safe out there. How awful.

  What kind of a world are we living in?

  I close the newspaper and put it on the other side of the bed, before resting my hands on my bump and worrying again about the world I am bringing a new life into. I’m sure I’m not the first pregnant woman to have the feeling of existential dread about birthing new life onto a planet that is full of so much uncertainty, but it’s one thing when you see and read about bad things in the news happening on the other side of the world. It’s another thing altogether when something bad happens to somebody you know in the same city that you live in.

  I hear Adam’s footsteps on the stairs, and I wait for him to appear in the doorway, wiping a small tear away from one of my eyes before he does. I could just blame the tear on my pregnancy hormones and not tell him the truth, which is that I’m worried about a missing guy in the newspapers. But I’d rather he didn’t see that I was upset at all. I need to appear calm and in control, even though I don’t feel like I am. I need to feel that way because Adam appears to be feeling that way. The fact that he seems to be getting increasingly calmer by the day should be making me feel better, but it’s actually making me feel worse. He doesn’t seem at all like the man who ran through the front door of our home only a few nights ago and blurted out that he had accidentally killed a guy with his car. Now, he seems like somebody who is waiting patiently for something.