The Hunt

by T. J. Lebbon

  She knew that they’d be able to track onto his satphone signal. She’d have liked to know how long they’d take to get here, but there was no way she could ask.

  ‘Thanks,’ Max said. ‘Thank you.’ The whiny gratitude in his voice almost made her want to puke. The phone beeped as he disconnected, and she nudged his ankle again.

  While the man cried and moaned, Rose pocketed the satphone, shouldered his rucksack, and picked up his rifle. She was nowhere near as experienced with a weapon like this as she was with the pistol, but Holt had taken her shooting once with a much older rifle, a Carcano from World War Two with adapted scope. He’d pronounced her a natural. She checked the safety, scanned down the mountain through the scope, and then slung it over her shoulder.

  Then she looked down at Max.

  ‘People like you came after me, once,’ she said. ‘For all I know it was you.’

  ‘Wh … what?’

  ‘And because I escaped, they killed my husband, daughter, and two sons. Molly danced. Alex liked Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Isaac was obsessed with space and astronauts. And my husband … ’ She trailed off.

  Max only frowned up at her. Perhaps it was the pain making his brain slow, but she saw pure confusion as he tried to compute what was happening.

  ‘They made my husband watch as they killed my children with knives. Have you ever seen anything like that?’ She pursed her lips. ‘Yeah. Actually, I expect you have. You’re the kind of sicko who watches those terrorist decapitations on the internet.’ A flicker of his eyes told her that she was right. ‘Imagine someone doing that to your children.’

  His eyes went wide. ‘What are you going to … ?’

  ‘Do to you?’

  Max glanced at his rifle over her shoulder, looked around at the barren, deserted landscape. There was no one, nothing.

  ‘I can’t have you making a noise when they come, warning them.’

  ‘I won’t, I won’t say a word!’

  She turned away, looked down into the valley, and tried to pretend he wasn’t squirming on the ground behind her. She had to get to cover soon, but for a moment she tried to remember being here with Adam. Drinking in the wilderness, the remoteness, and feeling safe because they were with each other. But this time her dead husband did not speak to her.

  Maybe because she was wrong. He’d never approve of what she had become, and what she was about to do.

  ‘Whoever you are, I’m sorry about your family, it wasn’t me, this is my first time and I only did it for … Just because I wanted something different, and … ’

  She could tell that he was crying. Probably snotting and foaming, pain and fear and self-pity making him the true, non-man he’d always known he was. Maybe he’d believed that hunting and killing someone would make him more of a man than he’d ever been.

  They had to get close. Rose couldn’t risk them being warned by Max. Or seeing blood.

  ‘Please, I won’t say a word when they come, I’ll keep quiet and not mention you and when they take me away I won’t say a word.’

  ‘I know,’ she said softly. She pulled the gun from her belt, turned, pressed the barrel up between his legs, aimed into his body, and pulled the trigger.

  The shot was muffled by his fat thighs. He jerked, screeched, his eyes opening wide. Then he started to shiver uncontrollably, both hands – the good one, and the broken one – clawing at his abdomen.

  Rose stood and circled him slowly, looking for an exit wound and signs of blood. His crotch and inner legs were darkening, but if they saw that they’d just assume that he’d pissed himself.

  She found that she was breathing light and shallow, and her vision began to swim. Murderer, she thought, trying to apply the name to herself. But while it fit, it didn’t inspire any emotion. She was dispassionate. They had made her this way.

  ‘Adam,’ she whispered. Nothing.

  She walked away from the dying man, striding carefully across the shifting shale towards the cover of rocks and trees.

  Chapter Sixteen

  plan

  Chris needed a plan.

  He sometimes did his best thinking in the hills. The conscious part of him was always concentrating on the terrain, making sure he didn’t turn an ankle or stray from whichever route or path he intended following. But the subconscious part of him found freedom in the wild, and while he ran or cycled he would often think things through. Problems with a current project, disagreements with Terri, his own aims and ambitions. Sometimes he took longer expeditions as a chance to really step back from where he was in life and analyse, make sure he was truly happy. Difficult, long runs removed him from the world and allowed him to view his life almost dispassionately. The fact that he was always pleased with what he found – eager to get home and see Terri, play with his girls, and return to work in his studio once again – meant that things were at peace.

  Not everyone had that chance to take a step back, or took it if they did, and he pitied them.

  From the moment he’d returned home from his morning run and seen the stranger in the kitchen, drinking his coffee and leaning against the worktop as if he owned it, Chris had barely had a chance to think.

  But now he felt in control for the first time that day.

  To his right – by the time and position of the sun he judged it as west – the ridge he’d just crossed veered up towards the summit of a tall, craggy mountain. Its pinnacle was hidden by hazy cloud, and from this angle he did not recognise it. To the east was another range of hills, and between the two was a deep, steep-sided valley. There were no visible roads following the valley floor, although he could make out several vague farmer’s tracks criss-crossing the lower slopes of the opposing mountainsides. A few uneven lines showed where rubble walls had been built in the past and then fallen into disrepair. There even seemed to be fewer sheep speckling the hillsides here, as if this valley, these mountains, were too remote even for them.

  It was a harsh, unforgiving landscape. People died out here. Every year walkers got lost and died of hypothermia, and casual climbers took on routes that exceeded their abilities and fell to their deaths. Snowdon and its surrounding areas claimed several souls each year. A famous mountain, popular with tourists and weekend walkers, its many dangers were hidden beneath a veil of familiarity and a tame veneer. Even with a hundred people drinking tea and eating cake in its summit café, someone unprepared could be bleeding their life away on its harsh slopes.

  Chris was more than prepared. This was his world.

  There were now four men hunting him. The fat bastard who’d fallen and broken bones on the scree was out of it. Maybe he’d be rescued, or maybe he’d stay there all night. Chris didn’t care. With his family being held gagged and at gunpoint, he’d be happy if the scumbag froze to death.

  Of the remaining four, it was Blondie who posed most danger. He’d continued even when a companion was injured, his ultimate aim driving him onwards. I’m his ultimate aim, Chris thought, and the nape of his neck tingled. He must always remember the target on his back.

  The Rambo character was overweight and looked unfit. He might not be able to keep up for too long. Of the other two he had yet to form an opinion. But it seemed certain that he was not dealing with people like him. As the hours went by, the idea of trying to negotiate with these men seemed more and more foolish. There was obviously a lot of money involved in this; these were rich dicks looking for a forbidden thrill.

  But he still needed a plan. So as he kept a good, easy pace across the wild mountainside, he thought things through.

  Running blind, on and on, would only end one way – with him lying dead on a mountainside. Maybe they’d take their trophy and then leave what was left of him there to rot. It could be weeks or months until he was found. Or, if they bothered to hide him away well enough, it might be many years. He’d become the skeleton of a mountain runner ill prepared for the environment that had probably killed him. Would his family be alive to receive the eventual, tragic news?


  He couldn’t think that far ahead.

  If he slowed down and let one of them shoot him, perhaps he’d save his family. Or perhaps not. It was a chilling thought. If a madman went on a shooting spree in Sainsbury’s, Chris would have instinctively leaped in front of his family to protect them, or gone at the gunman. But that wasn’t the same as intentionally being shot to death. It was dying taking action, not resigning himself to inaction.

  He wasn’t sure he could do that.

  His heart was beating fast, but not through exertion. It was stress, pure and simple. He didn’t know what to do next, and not knowing felt like a noose tightening around his throat.

  Even if he did manage to contact the police somehow, they’d view it as a call from their most wanted man. Three people slaughtered in his house, his family missing …

  His story was unbelievable.

  ‘Fucking hell!’ he hissed as he ran. His thighs were aching, feet hot, back wet with sweat, but he was used to this; he liked the sense of physical exertion. What he was not used to was not being in control.

  He’d pushed hard since the scree slope, choosing a difficult route uphill that involved some scrambling, working his way around giant boulders, and climbing a couple of short, steep cliffs. Nothing too dangerous – nothing that his pursuers wouldn’t at least attempt – but he’d hopefully put some distance between him and Blondie. He’d looked back many times, but though he’d seen no sign of pursuit, it was a difficult landscape to read. Dips and slopes, ridges of rock, folds in the land meant that someone could be within twenty feet of him and he might not see them.

  But if Blondie had moved as fast as him, he wouldn’t last until sunset.

  Chris settled beside a spur of rock. He was positioned so that anyone more than fifty feet away wouldn’t see him, and if one of the hunters approached the way he’d come, he would see them first. A quick drop down the rock’s sheer side, and then there was a steep descent that he could escape down. He’d be close to them, but a rapidly moving target. He hoped they weren’t that good a shot.

  He finished one of the two bottles of water. It was warm and unsatisfying, but it would quench his thirst for a while. He’d need to refill the bottle as soon as possible, and the water bladder was also half empty. Without purification tablets he risked picking up a bug, but he’d drunk from mountain streams before without any ill effect. Just another risk in a day that was filled with them.

  He gobbled down an energy bar, too. They tasted pretty grim, but they were heavy on carbs and sugars and would get straight to his muscles.

  Plucking the phone from his pocket, he pressed the dial button. As he held it to his ear he kept glancing around, rucksack back on, squatting on his feet instead of sitting, ready to spring into motion at the first sign of movement.

  ‘Already?’ Rose asked.

  ‘Sorry,’ Chris said. ‘Forgive me having some questions for you.’

  ‘Make them quick.’

  ‘Where are you? What are you doing?’

  ‘Waiting,’ Rose said. ‘So ask.’

  ‘What am I supposed to do?’

  ‘What you’re doing.’

  A buzzard family was circling the grassy plain of the valley down below. Two adults and an infant. They were almost level with him, drifting on thermals and never once needing to flap their wings.

  ‘I’m running.’

  ‘Good. Stay alive, stay ahead. But not too far.’

  ‘Stay just in their sights, yeah?’

  ‘If they lose you for too long, think you’ve escaped, the hunt might be over.’

  ‘And then?’

  Rose did not reply. He imagined her sitting on a hillside somewhere, phone pressed to her ear, gun in her other hand. She’d be weighing everything she said carefully. He was her pawn, not her partner.

  ‘Just where are you?’ he asked again.

  ‘I told you. Waiting.’

  He lifted himself up a little, looked around, and gave the finger to his surroundings. He listened for any reaction at all down the phone but there was nothing.

  ‘I don’t have any way out of this, do I?’ he asked.

  ‘Just do as I tell you and I’ll help.’

  ‘You’re only helping yourself!’

  ‘Don’t shout. It’s quiet up here, noises carry. Weird. I don’t like it.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. Your social media’s full of this kind of shit. That’s why I brought you here.’

  ‘Where are they holding my family?’ Chris asked. It was the only question that really mattered, and the only destination that made sense. If he found his way to civilisation and called the police, his arrest would likely prompt his family’s murder. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying not to consider that, but doing so only let him see more of their despair. Terri, tied up and gagged and trying to be strong. His poor young daughters, wondering why he hadn’t been there to protect them. He’d told them he always would.

  ‘No idea,’ Rose replied.

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘Whatever.’ She was cold, distant.

  ‘Where were they keeping your family when they killed them all?’ She didn’t respond. That was what he wanted. To shock, upset her.

  ‘Not far from home,’ she said softly, after a while.

  ‘Then mine will be in Cardiff,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘It makes no sense going further with them. Tied up in a van like that, the further you travel, the more chance of being found out.’

  ‘Listen, these people are serious! I know about them, you’ve no idea some of the things I’ve found out. No idea. They’re professionals.’

  ‘Then Cardiff makes even more sense.’ An old house with a basement, maybe. Somewhere people are used to seeing activity. Or maybe one of the new apartments in Cardiff Bay, there are so many down there.

  ‘Don’t think of going there.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because they’ll never let you get that far. If they think you’re getting too close the Trail will intrude on the hunt, kill you, kill your family, then disappear.’

  Chris frowned, scanned the rocks around him, looked down the slope and back at the hazy mountaintop. ‘You’re not concerned about my family at all, are you? Or me?’

  ‘That’s right.’ Cold again, emotionless.

  ‘Fuck you, Rose.’ Fury coursed through him. ‘Your family’s already dead!’

  ‘And there’s no saying that yours … ’ She trailed off.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve got to go.’ And she disconnected.

  Chris tried calling her number again, but after two rings it was unavailable. He stared at the phone as if he could will her to call back. Dialled in ‘999’, pressed the call button, heard nothing but a single tone.

  He felt like crying. He felt like screaming. But at least after that call he was not so aimless.

  Cardiff, and home. It was more of a plan than he’d had before.

  Chapter Seventeen

  change

  ‘I never thought I could change so much,’ Rose said.

  ‘You were completely changed the moment it happened.’ Holt was driving them up into the forested mountains to the east of Sorrento. He drove a Range Rover this time, at least ten years old and with almost two hundred thousand miles on the clock. It smelled as if it had been used to transport animal dung for the last forty thousand of those miles, and the whole driver’s side of the interior was greyed with a fine layer of cigarette ash. Holt smoked foul-smelling tobacco, rollie hanging from one corner of his mouth as he drove. His fine, greying hair flickered in the warm breeze.

  Rose thought about what he’d said for a while, leaning back in the seat with her arm resting on the opened windowsill. She looked out across the landscape and thought about never coming here with Adam. Italy had been on their list of things to do. They’d actually had a real list, scribbled in the back of the small notebook he’d often carried with him, and sometimes h
e would whip the book out and they’d add something more, another dream. Top of the list, the first thing written down, was ‘Have kids’, and after each birth he’d ceremoniously lined the sentence through. Some of the other entries had been ticked off. Many more remained unfulfilled. It was the first time she’d thought of that notebook since the murders. She hated the idea that it might now be in an evidence box somewhere, contents pored over by investigators searching for a marriage problem that had never existed. How could she have done it? she imagined people asking. How could she kill her own children?

  But beyond such thoughts lay madness, and she’d pulled herself too far through to submit to that now.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t think so. Not straight away. I lost myself pretty quickly, but I was just trying to hide from what had happened. Deep down I was still the old Rose, just hanging on. Avoiding looking back. I only really started to change when I came here.’

  ‘And met me?’ he asked. She already recognised that tone; he was being playful, though most people would have had trouble detecting any trace of humour.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said. But Rose knew she had to be careful, because of that way he sometimes looked at her. Though she was learning from him and able to bear looking into the future once more, she also had to remember that she hardly knew him at all. Perhaps he was contemplating all the lives he could have lived if things had been different. Maybe some of them were with her.

  She’d only once asked him about his own family past, and the expression on his face as he’d turned away dissuaded her from ever asking again. She wasn’t sure whether it was grief or regret. Whichever, it had scarred him badly.

  ‘That’s me,’ he said. ‘The changing man.’

  ‘But for the best,’ she said. She’d been sober for almost a month, and though the hankering still sometimes bit in with glass-like teeth, she felt that she’d finally started to emerge from the other side. ‘You brought me through, and you’re helping me move on.’

  ‘By helping you sober up?’

  ‘Yeah. And teaching me to kill.’

  Holt chuckled, a grating sound that was as close as he came to a laugh. It sounded like an old engine dying down. ‘Rose, I’ve told you before, I can’t teach anyone to kill. I can show you how to follow someone in a crowded street, how to pick a lock, how to avoid being seen, the ranges and capabilities of various weapons. I can tell you how to hold a gun and pull the trigger. But killing someone is something you have to teach yourself.’