Three For A Girl (Isabel Fielding Book 3)

by Sarah A. Denzil

  “I told you, the private investigator got it.”

  “He told you in person?”

  “No, over the phone.”

  “But you met the guy in person, right?”

  His questions are getting annoying, but I try not to snap. “Yeah, I went to his office and had a meeting.”

  “Okay,” Tom says. “When you were on the phone to him, did his voice sound exactly the same, or was it different?”

  A tingling sensation spreads over my scalp. “I don’t know. I can’t… I think maybe I met someone else in the office and a colleague called me with the address.”

  “Was it the same number?”

  I shake my head. “No, it was a mobile. There was a team of investigators. I just assumed a different member of the team called.”

  Tom nods his head and makes a hmmm sound. “I think we need to prepare for the fact that we might be walking into a trap. The person on the phone could easily have been Owen Fielding and you didn’t know it.”

  I follow the satnav, taking a left onto another unfamiliar street. How often do I even leave Hutton? When was the last time I left the country? What the fuck was I thinking? A thick farm boy like me can’t take on a pair of psychopaths.

  “How would Owen know that I’ve seen a private investigator?”

  Tom shrugs, glances out of the window like we’re on a jolly somewhere. “Perhaps he or she has been following you. Perhaps they’ve paid someone else to follow you.”

  “I don’t know. It seems a bit far-fetched,” I say. “How would they find the time to do all this? Wouldn’t the police see them?”

  “Seb,” Tom says my name like a sigh. “Let me explain something important to you. You need to internalise this if you are going to come out of this alive. They are cleverer than you. They are more devious, cunning and resourceful than you’ll ever be. They also have money. There’s no way they could have got out of the country and back without using money. It’s pretty impressive, not sure how they pulled that off. You are thinking inside the box like you always do and assuming that they’ll play fair, because you play fair. But they won’t.”

  I close my eyes for a moment, and then open them again, my fingers wrapped tightly around the steering wheel. The road before us is empty. We’re heading to a remote location and my chest tightens.

  “How do we win?” I finally ask.

  “Honestly? I don’t know. All I know is, if we see an opportunity, we take it. We don’t hesitate or stop to question whether it’s right or wrong. Take it. End it.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Leah

  I can’t help but gaze over at the farm when I leave the car on the drive, longing for Donna or Seb or someone to see me from the estate. If only Donna could see Cassie’s knife and phone the police. But there’s no movement. The doors and windows are closed against the cold. Donna is in there, somewhere, alone. That is, unless Isabel or Owen has her.

  I begin to walk up the path to the cottage when Cassie grabs my elbow.

  “No, not inside,” she says. “We’re going somewhere else.”

  I know what she’s about to say before she says it. “The abandoned farmhouse on the moors.”

  “Good girl.”

  “It’s a bit obvious, isn’t it? Quite on the nose.”

  “Everything is a circle,” she says. “It all comes back around. Like karma.”

  We start on a slow walk, stumbling on the wet ground. A few flutters of sleet come down from the bright white sky. The further up we go, the more we’re engulfed in a mist of snow. The wet sleet turns into snowflakes. There’s no way anyone from Seb’s farm would see us now. They’ll see nothing but mist and snow flurries. I imagine Donna standing at the window with Patch the dog at her feet, hair messy from sleep, the icy sky looming over the moors.

  “That kind of logic doesn’t work in your favour,” I say. “If you believe in karma, then you will be punished for this.”

  “I’ve already faced my punishment. I had years of it. This is my reward.”

  She notices that I’m purposefully slowing down, dragging my feet through the snow. She takes her free hand and gives me a push to make me walk faster. I bow my head to protect my eyes from the cold. The sight of the settling snow freezes my blood more than the cold. This is terrible for me. It makes the changes of being saved even slimmer. But perhaps I can save myself. Keep her talking.

  “Can you tell me one thing, Cassie?”

  “It depends what it is.” She’s slightly breathless from the hilly climb. Her boots slip as we climb over some of the rocks.

  “What are you going to do with Seb and Tom?” I ask.

  She ignores me, her eyes drifting away. Her indifference seems genuine, which makes me think that Isabel and Owen have something planned for them, not Cassie. If it was Cassie, then I could at least find out, even if I can’t stop what’s about to happen. I get the feeling that I’m not going to be able to predict anything that happens next. If I want to get out of this alive, and save my unborn child, I need to adapt to the changing environment.

  Up above us, the old farmhouse comes into view. There’s a dusting of snow on top of what’s left of the roof. The gaping holes where doors and windows should be make me think of missing teeth. Behind the house, the sky closes in. Not only is it snowing, but it’s mid-afternoon and the sunset is only an hour or two away.

  “What are you going to do to me?” I ask.

  “We’re nearly there,” she says, nodding towards the farmhouse. “You’ll find out soon enough.”

  “It’s not safe in there,” I say. “Most of the roof has already collapsed. The rest could go at any time.”

  “We won’t be there too long.”

  I stop, not wanting to put one foot closer to that building. “What if someone comes? This isn’t as remote as it used to be. You get all kinds of morbid people coming to this place.”

  “We know,” Cassie says. “We’ve decided to cross that bridge when or if it comes to it.”

  “We?”

  She grins and pushes me towards the ruins. I hold my breath as we duck under the archway and into the house. This is where my dreams bring me. Where my subconscious longs to be. As soon as I’m inside, I picture Jess taking photographs with her phone, picking up stones and putting them in her pockets. I see her closing her eyes and breathing in the air, tapping into her creative side. And then I see Tom in the corner, pinned down by David Fielding. Isabel walking up and down with her sharp knife, in her element, relishing in power of it all. James Gorden’s headless body in the centre of the room, strapped to a chair.

  Finally, my mind comes to the present, and I take it in slowly.

  First, Neal Ford is tied to a chair, pushed into the centre like James Gorden once was. There is a small stool to his left, and on it, Isabel is perched. Her hands are clasped on her knees as though she’s posing for a school photograph. She smiles sweetly at me.

  “Hello, Leah.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  DCI Murphy

  When Murphy arrives at the address, he discovers it’s one of those independent hotels. Not a large chain type with hundreds of rooms. This is a small B&B with a friendly old couple at the helm. Even though he rang ahead, they are wide-eyed with fear when he turns up with his team.

  “Good afternoon, I’m DCI Murphy, we spoke on the phone,” he says, showing them the relevant documentation.

  The greying man nods his head slightly. He’s short, round and a little red in the face, like a comedian from the seventies. Right now, this man has the appearance of a rabbit in headlights, frozen, and uncertain of which direction to turn. A woman, presumably his wife, stands next to him, her hand gripping her husband’s. She’s even shorter, with hair cropped short but blow dried tall. Her eyes are wet with a glaze of tears. These are people who love their business. They never wanted to help a serial killer.

  “Now, this is all routine and we don’t want you panicked, okay?” Murphy says, suspecting that the man an
d his wife aren’t listening to anything he’s saying.

  They both nod in unison.

  “Okay,” he continues. “Do you recognise this woman as the person who checked into the hotel?”

  Murphy shows them a headshot of Isabel.

  “No,” the man says. “I’m not sure. The girl was about that age, and had hair like that, but…”

  “Her face is almost the same,” the woman says. “But not quite.”

  Murphy strikes that as an odd answer, but he gives the photo to a PC. Perhaps they’re too rattled to recognise Isabel right now.

  “And which room did the person using this credit card check into?” Murphy asks.

  “Room four,” the woman replies. She passes him the key. “On the second floor.”

  “Thank you. Before we get you out of the building, I need to know if anyone has been in or out of this room today?”

  “We haven’t seen anyone,” the man says. “But we aren’t always on the front desk.”

  “What about the last hour?”

  “No,” he says. “I was here checking in a couple from about three-ish. I stayed and manned the phones for the full hour. No one left.”

  “Great. That’s really helpful. Now, if you could go with my colleague here. Is there a private room that you use?”

  “We have a lounge, yes.”

  “Is there any access out of the building from this point?”

  “No, just the main entrance, and one we use for deliveries, which is next to the kitchen.”

  “Great, this is PC Fisher and he’ll go with you to the lounge. Thank you for all your help today.” Murphy turns to his DI. “We need a team outside the kitchen. I’m going to head up to the rooms.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Murphy directs two officers to stand outside the lift doors. Then he nods to the armed officers. “Enter room 4 on the second floor, search the place. Check all exits. If the room is clear, we perform a systematic search of the hotel. Are you ready?”

  He hopes this goes well. Though it’s unlikely that Isabel and Owen will be armed, he can’t rule it out. Especially knowing about their uncle and his connections to the criminal underworld in Thailand. If they managed to get back into the country illegally, what are the chances that they brought weapons with them?

  The stairs creak under the heavy boots of the armed police. Murphy follows at the rear with the room key in his hand. Everything is set up professionally, and yet he has the unsettled gut of a man who senses something is wrong. This hotel is the perfect location for two fugitives. It’s rural, out in the middle of nowhere, with two older owners and barely any staff. Maybe one or two other customers. And yet, Murphy still finds it difficult to imagine no one recognising Isabel and Owen’s faces. That’s when he begins to wonder if they have help from someone else. He took a description of the woman who checked into their room and it sounded like Isabel, but when he showed the couple Isabel’s picture, they weren’t sure.

  Room four is on the second floor, and Murphy’s heart thuds as he and his team reach the first floor. A couple of men filter off to warn the occupants of room two.

  Murphy barely hears the knock. He’d asked those men to be discreet and they were following that order well. Yelling, and loud footsteps won’t help them today.

  They make it to the second floor and continue along the narrow hallway. Armed police go first. Murphy’s eyes roam the floor, walls and ceiling, checking for anything and everything. Old wallpaper peels at the edges. There’s a stain on the carpet. A red stain. Blood?

  The men wait for him outside the door. His heart pounds hard, but he can’t let it show. He can only hope they don’t notice the sweat on his brow or the dark circles beneath his eyes, because he hasn’t known exhaustion like it ever since Isabel Fielding first escaped from Crowmont Hospital. She has turned his world upside down. And perhaps now, he gets to catch her for a second time.

  He nods.

  DI Davies bangs on the door. “Police. We have a warrant to search this room. Please step away from the door.”

  Murphy quickly unlocks the door using the room key, which is an actual metal key that scrapes in the lock. He immediately takes a step away. Armed police edge the door open first, and cautiously enter the room. Murphy hangs back, knowing that these men are trained for this. They move silently.

  The door swings open a few inches more and he gets a better view of the room. The first thing he notices is that Isabel isn’t here. There’s no creepy woman-child standing there to meet him with a psychopathic grin on her face. Instead, there’s a man lying face down on the bed.

  “Check the bathroom and the wardrobe,” he says, making his way over to the bed.

  The man’s wrists are tied together and strapped to the bed. He’s naked from the waist up, and his back is covered in dried blood. There’s blood all over the sheets and soaked into the carpet. But the worst part to look at are the cuts, carved deep into his back, on almost every inch of exposed flesh. When Murphy moves closer, the stench of urine hits the back of his throat. He’s almost certain that this man is dead, but he can’t see the cause of death. The cuts are bad, but there isn’t enough blood on the sheets and carpet to believe that he bled out. These are mostly surface wounds.

  Standing over him, Murphy see’s the gag around the man’s mouth. The lacerations on his wrist from the ropes are minimal. He isn’t a forensic expert, but it doesn’t feel as though there was much of a struggle. Then he notices the syringe on the table. They drugged him. Makes sense. He’s a broad-shouldered guy, and Isabel is a small woman. Owen isn’t exactly jacked either.

  Murphy takes another step closer to examine the syringe when he hears it, the soft, inhale and exhale. He bends down and presses his ear closer to the man on the bed.

  “All clear,” someone says.

  Murphy’s eyes widen. “The victim is still alive. We need an ambulance. Now.” He pulls at the ties around the man’s wrists, yanking them apart in frustration. The victim moans softly, half conscious. Finally, Murphy gets him lose, pulls away the gag, and helps him breathe. With a thought that makes him sick to his stomach, Murphy comprehends the fact that if they hadn’t come sooner, this man would’ve slowly suffocated with his face buried in the pillow like that.

  “Someone get some water,” Murphy orders.

  Now that he’s away from the pillow he sees the man’s features for the first time. Even though there are more wounds over his face, at the hairline and across his nose, it’s unmistakable. Owen and Isabel kidnapped and tortured Josh Braithwaite.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Tom

  Seb doesn’t trust me, and I don’t trust him. I don’t like the way he keeps glancing over at me, that square jaw clenched like an actor in a bad western. I don’t trust him to have my back because he doesn’t have the ruthless edge he needs for this. He isn’t a killer. One look at Isabel’s doe-eyes and he’ll pity her.

  I decide not to tell him about the missed call from DCI Murphy. I don’t know what Seb has told Murphy, because he’s definitely told him something. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have had the grilling I got after Dominic’s death. Luckily, I was with a client at the time of the death. It would be too obvious to listen to the voicemail, so I can’t do that either. Seb will immediately think it’s Leah and start asking questions. Besides, I do want to know if Leah is okay, and leaving the line open means she can contact us.

  Perhaps none of that matters because the satnav is telling us that this remote lodge at the end of a private road is our destination. Both Seb and I take in our surroundings. The lodge is one of those wooden kinds, built to resemble an American cabin. It sits on the edge of a dense forest. I read the sign: Priestley Grove. A tingle of fear worms its way down my spine as I replay Seb’s words in my mind. I think we’re being played.

  Stop Isabel by any means necessary. That’s the end goal here. Even if this is some sort of set up, we can still ensure that Isabel Fielding never stalks our family again. Seb parks the tru
ck and pulls up the handbrake. I grab the hammer from under the seat. Seb unclips his seatbelt and picks up a short axe. The weapons strike me as the kind of thing a Viking would arm themselves with. Which seems fitting, because this is a primal, ancient act of justice. Handled man to man, or man to woman in this case. I imagine Isabel, and how much I thought I admired her for a time. The thought makes my stomach heave.

  I look at Seb before stepping out of the car and see the mirror image of my own grim determination. My feet hit a thin layer of snow before I shove the car door closed.

  We walk silently towards the lodge. Somehow, with only a nod, Seb communicates that I should go around the back. I break away and walk around the side of the building. If there is anyone in there, they must have heard the car. We’re not surprising anyone with our arrival. I move quickly, wanting to get this over with.

  The snow makes everything slower and more dangerous, especially in a place as remote as this. Luckily, I was wearing sturdy boots when I turned up at the farm, making the slippery terrain easier to negotiate.

  There’s no exit at the back of the lodge, but there is a window that I attempt to peer into. The curtains are closed apart from a crack about two centimetres wide. I lean closer to the glass, squinting through the drawn fabric.

  An eye stares back at me.

  I lean away, gasping.

  “Wait!” I yell, running around the side of the lodge, feet sliding in the snow. “Don’t open the door!”

  But Seb is already in the process of yanking the door open. He raises his axe, ready to fight, when an explosive bang echoes through the clearing. The axe wobbles in the air. Seb’s body judders as he jerks back, the big farmer staggering from a blow. I reach him in time to catch him as he falls to the ground. But as I lower Seb to the ground a second bullet whizzes past my ear. Heart thudding, breath caught in my throat, I look up at the lodge, the door still half open. I can barely see into the small building, but I can make out the shape of Owen Fielding holding some sort of gun. Not a handgun, but not big enough to be a shotgun. A sawn-off shotgun perhaps. He’s reloading it and I don’t have much time. I wrench the axe from Seb’s hand and fling it into the room, through the half-open door.