The Back Road
Page 41
“What are you wearing? I thought it would be silk.”
She moved her gloved hands down to the scarf that was blindfolding him and quickly and firmly slid it down from his eyes to his mouth, where she pulled it tightly into place.
He blinked a little, and looked at her in her costume. His arousal had reached such a peak that it took several seconds for him to register what he was seeing, and he stared at her with a look of horror as he tried in vain to cry out.
The mask over her face revealed only her eyes, and they were filled with a mixture of feelings too complex to interpret. Only the few who knew her well would have recognised the most significant of those feelings—that of sheer determination.
She reached across to the bedside table where moments before she had placed a syringe. With a quick indrawn breath she parted the dark hairs in his groin with a gloved hand and plunged the syringe in as deeply as possible. A low moan was all that could be heard as he fought a futile battle to break free. She knew that the syringe hadn’t hurt too much, but she also knew that he understood what it meant.
And then he was still.
* * *
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Description of Only the Innocent
When Laura Fletcher approaches her home in Oxfordshire to find hordes of photographers crowding the gates, she knows there is something terribly wrong. She is faced with the shocking news that her husband is dead - brutally murdered - and according to Chief Inspector Tom Douglas, there is little doubt that the murderer is a woman.
In a marriage that has taken her from the glamorous five star luxury of London, Venice and Positano to a bleak and draughty manor house in rural Oxfordshire, Laura has learned to guard her secrets well. She is not alone. It would appear that all the women in her husband’s life have something to hide.
But there is one secret that she has never shared, and when the investigation reaches its dramatic and horrific climax, she realises that she has no choice. She has to give Tom Douglas the final piece of the puzzle. And this changes everything, leaving Douglas with a terrible dilemma: whether to punish the guilty, or protect the innocent.
ONLY THE INNOCENT is a spellbinding psychological thriller that will leave you breathless!
Praise for Only the Innocent
“Rachel Abbott’s Only the Innocent is not your average whodunit murder mystery. The question that drives this thriller is not who did it, but why. Abbott carefully constructed a world of mystery, depravity, sex, violence, manipulation and intrigue on so many different levels that I can honestly say you truly have to read until the last page to understand and appreciate the complexity of the story.”
“It’s a long time since I read a book that occupies my mind constantly and is all consuming. When I was reading this one, or when I was not, I could think of little else.”
“I could not put this book down – it was a completely addictive page-turner – so much so that I read until 3 am finishing it.”
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