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CARRIE WOKE FROM A dream in which she was drowning, pulled under by dangerous currents.
She opened her eyes to darkness. Her head hurt. Her arm throbbed. She felt as if she’d been asleep for a thousand years.
Now she heard a multitude of voices; panicked and angry and laced with grief. She heard furniture being toppled, feet running, jostling. Somewhere at the back of it all, she heard a baby crying.
She tried to sit up. Immediately, a searing pain forced her back down. She waited a minute and tried again. She got up onto her elbow. The darkness pushed back to the edges of her vision. Now she saw light, blurred shapes and movement. The voices grew louder.
She reached out a hand. Her fingers gripped metal bars. She drew in a frightened breath as memories came rushing back. She’d been at the house. She’d been attacked. Instinctively, she felt the wound on her arm. Pain shot up to her shoulder.
Voices became clearer. Snippets of panicked conversation reached her ears.
“What do we do?”
“They’ll come for us!”
“Jacob is gone! Gone!”
Carrie brought up her knees and pushed her feet against the bars, manoeuvring herself until she was sitting with her back against the cage. Her vision was clearing. She could see bodies pacing up and down.
“I saw them!” A male voice said. “His car was on the roadside. The police were everywhere. It’s only a matter of time before they find us!”
She was thirsty. She needed water. She tried to cough, to clear her throat.
“I say we go. Get everyone in the van and drive.”
“No! Jacob may come back.”
“Jacob is dead, Cynthia!”
“We don’t know that, not for sure!”
“What I do know is there’s a body in the barn and the police are crawling all over the countryside. If we don’t leave now, we don’t leave at all, and everything Jacob’s taught us will be for nothing. Monsters like that dead prick in the barn will have won!”
“I don’t know, Heath. I don’t know—I need time to think!”
“There’s no time. I’m gathering everyone up.”
“What about the new boy?”
“The boy’s one of us now, he goes where we go.”
“And her?”
“She stays. If we take her with us, she’ll only try to escape.”
“But—”
“I’ll take care of it. Now, go tell Morwenna to start rounding everyone up, then grab what supplies you can.”
“But Cal—”
“You just keep him occupied. If he wants to come with us, fine. If he doesn’t then I’ll take care of him, too.”
Carrie’s vision pulled into focus in time to see a young man storm away, followed by an older woman with a baby in her arms. Their voices grew quieter, then she heard footsteps hammering on stairs.
Terrified, Carrie leaned forward. She was in a basement. It was cold and damp, a single electric bulb casting light over the room.
She had no idea where she might be and right now, she didn’t care. Whoever these people were, they were not going to let her live.
A cry escaped her lips. Fighting back tears, she pushed against the cage door then fumbled with the padlock.
She wasn’t going to die down here. She wasn’t going to stand by and watch while everything she loved was destroyed.
Pushing herself back up against the wall, Carrie brought her knee up and lashed out, kicking at the cage door. Bars rattled. The padlock flew up and down. But it held fast. Carrie drew her leg back and kicked again and again, channelling all her anger, all her despair. But the lock remained. She hadn’t even made a dent in the bars.
And now someone was coming back.
She caught her breath as she heard footsteps moving closer. Panic gripped her throat. They were going to kill her. She was going to die right here, right now.
Carrie turned and saw a figure lurking in the shadows of the doorway. She recognised him instantly, could smell the skin she used to press against her cheek and plant kisses on and shower in soft baby powder.
“Cal?” she croaked. “Is that you?”
He emerged from the shadows; his sinewy frame crouched down on its haunches. He stared at her with wide, dark eyes that were just like hers. He edged closer, then closer still, little by little, until he sat centimetres from the cage.
He looked terrible, she thought. Filthy, malnourished, like an animal. But underneath the feral exterior, Carrie could see her son.
The son who had almost killed her daughter. The son who had stabbed her mother in the chest, narrowly missing her heart. She stared at him, not knowing how to feel. Not knowing what to say.
Cal stared back, his gaze filled with ghosts and demons.
“I missed you,” Carrie said, and a tear spilled from her eye. “I missed you so much.”
It felt wrong to tell him because he’d almost murdered her mother, and yet it felt so right because he needed to know. Because knowing that he was still loved was the only thing left that might save him.
Cal stared at her, his expression unchanging.
“I never stopped looking for you,” Carrie said. She was crying now. Her sobs breaking up her words. “You have to know that, Cal. I never stopped looking.”
Cal cocked his head to one side, his eyes following the tracks of her tears. He reached through the bars and plucked a tear from her chin. He studied it for a moment, then slipped his finger in his mouth and tasted her sadness.
“Please, Cal,” Carrie said, pressing her face up to the bars. “I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t know what you’re involved in, but it’s nothing good. We need to get away from here now. We don’t need these people. It can just be you and me. I can keep you safe.”
Cal stared at her uncertainly.
“Think about it—we’ve missed out on so much in each other’s lives, wouldn’t it be nice to try again? To have a second chance at being mother and son? All you need to do is let me out of this cage and we can get away. Just the two of us.”
Carrie held her breath, watching her son.
Footsteps thundered across the ceiling. A voice, panicked and muffled, shouted out instructions.
“Please, Cal,” Carrie said, staring into his eyes. “These people don’t care about you. They’re leaving and they’re going to kill me unless you do something about it. Let’s get away. Away from here. Away from the cove. We could go somewhere different. Anywhere you like.”
Cal inched closer, until his face was just on the other side of the bars.
“Don’t you want that, Cal? Don’t you want it to be just the two of us?”
It was like he was trying to see inside her head, to decide whether she was telling the truth.
“We just need a car. There’s a van outside, right? We can go. Just drive. You and me, together. But we need to leave right now.”
Cal stared at her, his black eyes glittering. He reached out a hand. Carrie took it, gave it a squeeze, turned it over and kissed the bloody palm. Cal watched her, his face pulled into a frown. Then he stood and walked out of the room.
“Cal, please!”
She stared at the empty space he’d left behind, her trembling hands making the bars rattle. Above her head, a cacophony of footsteps and frightened, young voices filled the air. But she was barely aware of them.
Cal was coming back into the room again.
Carrie’s heart swelled with relief. Then it missed a beat.
Because it wasn’t Cal.
It was the boy she’d seen at her house. He was carrying a jerrycan. The stench of petrol burned Carrie’s nostrils.
The boy smiled at her.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “We should have left you alone.”
He tipped the jerrycan, pouring petrol onto the floor and around the room. He backed away through the door without saying another word, leaving a trail of fuel in his wake.
Carrie shrieked and rattled the bars. She pushe
d herself back against the wall and lashed out with her feet, over and over, until she had no strength left.
Above her, the house was growing quiet. Footsteps were fading, scared voices turning to distant whispers.
“I’m sorry,” Carrie whispered as her body sagged against the bars. Maybe she deserved to die. Maybe she should stop fighting. If she’d kept her eyes on Cal seven years ago, none of this would have been happening. Instead, they’d be at home right now, watching a movie and eating popcorn on the sofa, or they’d be going for a chilly winter walk by the sea, their necks wrapped in knitted scarves.
“I’m sorry,” Carrie said again. And then it really was quiet upstairs. Silent, even.
She stared at the wet trail of fuel leading out through the door. How long did she have before the flames came rushing in, until she was a scorched pile of ashes and bone?
Carrie closed her eyes, tried to shut out the stench of the petrol. She gripped the bars with all her strength. And she waited.
And then, after a minute, she felt heat against her skin. At first, she thought the fire had come and she felt a rush of terror. But there was no smoke. No crackle. No singed air.
She opened her eyes.
Cal crouched before her, the tip of his nose almost touching hers. He looked down as he inserted a key into the padlock. Then he hesitated, staring up at her with frightened eyes.
Carrie sucked in a breath. A hole opened in her heart as she swallowed back more tears.
“I promise you, Cal,” she said. “I promise that it’ll be just the two of us. I promise that I’ll keep you safe.”
Cal turned the key and tore off the padlock. The cage door swung open.
He held out a hand.
Carrie took it, leaning on him as she staggered to her feet. For a moment, they both stood there, staring silently at each other. Carrie wanted to wrap her arms around him, to hold him to her chest, and yet she wanted to run from him, to escape from this feral creature that had once been her son.
But she didn’t run. She followed him as he hurried out of the room and along a narrow corridor, crouched down in the darkness like a nocturnal animal. She followed him to the top of the steps, their feet splashing in wet fuel, then waited as he held up a hand and checked the hallway.
Voices were coming from outside the house. Children were crying. Petrol fumes choked the air.
Then Cal was leading her into a laundry room and shutting the door. Carrie watched him open the widow and remove the board. She watched him climb through. She took his hand and climbed out after him.
It was dusk and it was raining. The ground was icy beneath her bare feet. They were at the side of the house. Cal was pressed against the wall at the corner, peeking out.
Carrie joined him, saw a flash of a yard with a large van at its centre. She had a vague recollection of being inside that van, of being dragged half-conscious from it. Now she saw young people and children climbing into the back.
Someone pulled on Carrie’s arm. She spun around to see Cal. He nodded at her to follow him. They ducked down low in the growing shadows and scuttled past the yard, unnoticed.
Parked behind a large barn was a small, three-door hatchback that was splattered with mud. Cal held up a car key. Carrie took it.
She opened the door and climbed into the driver’s seat. She peered through the windscreen to see Cal was unmoving, his eyes fixed on the barn window, a strange, unreadable expression on his face.
Carrie waved a hand, catching his attention, then Cal was silently climbing into the passenger seat next to her.
Carrie slipped the key into the ignition.
Then she froze.
She had lied to Cal. She had made him a false promise.
It could never just be the two of them. She could never let go of Melissa, and it was only a matter of time before the police tracked him down.
And yet the hope in Cal’s eyes had been infectious, filling her with dangerous ideas.
Carrie started the engine. Spinning the wheel, she drove past the barn and then past the van, pushing her foot down on the accelerator pedal.
In the rear-view mirror she saw some of the adults leap out and wave their hands. She saw the man who had attacked her run forward, then a young woman pull him back. She heard them shouting and screaming. They looked terrified.
Then the house was gone from view and they were driving along a dirt track, back to the road.
As they reached the road and turned left, away from the farm, away from Porth an Jowl, Carrie stole a glance at Cal. His eyes sparkled. For a moment, he looked like the boy she once knew.
“Put your seatbelt on,” she said.
Cal did as he was told.
Smiling, Carrie drove on.
Her son’s life had been stolen from him. Bad men had tried to destroy him then shape him into their own image. Now he would be punished for all the evil that had been inflicted upon him. And even if he’d become too dangerous to be allowed to go free, it was unfair. Because Cal deserved so much more.
He deserved to love and be loved. He deserved to feel safe and secure. He deserved a life that was free of cage bars.
If she could give that to him, if she could show him a mother’s true love, even for just a few hours before handing him over to the police, then maybe she could bring him back. Maybe Cal could be a boy again.
Her happy little pirate.
THE DEVIL’S GATE (Devil’s Cove Trilogy #3)
The Devil’s Cove trilogy comes to a shocking and terrifying end. Read on for a sneak peek.
LINDSAY CHURCH SAT at the dining table in a grand room with impressive bay windows and an ocean view, picking at her dinner. Her mother had said it was chicken in some sort of sauce that Lindsay had already forgotten the name of. But to her ten-year-old eyes it looked like chicken dumped in vomit. Lindsay thought she'd rather take a walk into town and grab a burger from that nice little place on the seafront. After all, they were supposed to be on holiday, but her mum and dad had insisted on a nice family dinner, something that was a rare occurrence these days.
Lindsay looked around. Her father, Paul Church, a greying man in his early fifties, sat at the end of the table nearest to the door – no doubt so he could make a quick exit – ignoring his food and his family as he thumbed the screen of his phone. She wasn't quite sure what he did for a living, something to do with science, but she knew he was rich. She also knew that he spent most of his days at work and hardly any time at home with his family; especially his two children. Lindsay didn't mind so much. She didn’t particularly like her dad. He was moody and bossy, thinking he was in charge even though he was never around. And he was never interested in anything that she had to say. Sometimes she wondered if he forgot he even had a daughter.
It hadn't always been that way. There had been a time when she was younger, when he’d get home in time to read her bedtime stories. There had been a time when he had been interested in her thoughts and ideas, even the strange ones. Then there’d been all that trouble last year and her dad’s face had been in the newspapers and on the television. He hadn’t been the same since.
Lindsay’s gaze shifted across to the other end of the table, where her mother, Donna Church, sat not eating and staring unhappily at her husband. Lindsay wondered if her mum felt the same as she did: what was the point of a family holiday if they were all going to continue ignoring each other? That was just another day in the Church family. She'd overheard her parents arguing last night. Her mother had wanted to know why they even owned a second home in Cornwall when it sat empty fifty weeks of the year. Her father had called her mother ungrateful, which hadn’t gone down well.
Sitting across from Lindsay was her brother, Todd, who had recently turned seventeen, which apparently made him think he was an adult now, even though everyone knew you weren’t an adult until you turned eighteen. Being seventeen also made Todd think he was better than Lindsay. She sneered in disgust as she watched him shovel food into his mouth, his eyes on his p
hone just like their father. She didn't much like her brother, either. All he ever did was whine and complain at her. Don't go into my room! Don't touch my stuff! Don’t interrupt me! Et cetera, et cetera. Moan, moan, moan. Lindsay didn’t know what else he expected from her. She was ten years old. Anyway, she still hadn’t forgiven him for the dead arm he’d gifted her with yesterday when their parents weren’t watching. He was always doing that – giving her a quick jab to the ribs or a punch to her upper arm, all because he didn’t like her playing with his phone. It wasn’t her fault that her parents wouldn’t let her have a phone of her own, and it certainly wasn’t her fault that he’d taken puke-inducing naked photographs of himself and left them in the pictures folder for anyone to see.
Lindsay stared at her food again. Puffing out her cheeks, she set down her fork and turned to gaze out the large bay windows at the far end of the room. In the near distance, the sky was turning all shades of orange, red, and purple. It looked like a big bruise, Lindsay thought. Like the one on her arm thanks to her stupid brother. Beneath the sky, the sea was calm and flat and growing darker by the second.
They'd been here for three days now and still hadn't gone to the beach, even though it was just across the road. Dad had spent most of the time working in his study, while all Mum wanted to do was explore boring towns and go to boring galleries. Lindsay only ever got to see the ocean once a year and she desperately wanted to dip her toes in it. Living in London, she got to see the River Thames sometimes, but it wasn’t the same. The Thames was dirty and disgusting and surrounded by concrete, and if you dipped your toes into it, you’d probably never see them again. The ocean was like a mysterious beast, rising and shifting as far as the eye could see. If she had to suffer a week’s holiday with her annoying family, couldn’t they allow her, just for once, to do something she wanted?
“Mum?” Lindsay said.
Donna heaved a shoulder, shifted her gaze to her daughter. “Hmm?”
“Tomorrow, can we go to the beach?”
“I thought we could go to Truro. Do some shopping and visit the Cathedral.”
Desperation Point Page 25
