Eye Snatcher Read Online Free

Begged that he’d never find out the identity of the Jonnie Doe, because it just rammed home the reality of the brutality. It rammed home that the kid had a family. Friends.
    It made the Jonnie Doe a real person, not just an alias.
    But Brian’s stomach dropped when he looked at the screen. Muscles in his arms loosened, like a cold wave had crashed over his body.
    “That your boy?” Carter asked.
    Brian stared at the picture. Felt more anger, more sickness, growing inside him.
    He didn’t recognise the boy from his bright blue eyes. He couldn’t.
    But the curly dark hair. The way his thick eyebrows met, just slightly, in the middle. The little silver stud in his left ear.
    “That’s him,” Brian said and turned away.
    Their Jonnie Doe was a Jonnie Doe no longer.

FOUR
    Jean Betts looked outside the window of her cottage on Westhaven Road and twiddled her necklace around in her fingers.
    She stared at the hedges, at the cloudy sky that autumn rain pummelled down from. It’d been two days since she’d last seen Sam now. He’d gone out for a walk with Clara. Gone for a walk, like a good lad he always was for taking her for his mum.
    And then he’d gone. He hadn’t shown up. Wednesday night was the last time Jean saw her son.
    She heard a whimpering. Turned around and saw Clara sat in the middle of the wooden floor of the cottage, looking at Jean and tilting her head to one side.
    “I know,” she said. “Your brother, he’ll be back soon. He’ll be back.”
    Clara just turned her head some more. Let out another series of little whimpers.
    Jean sniffed up, got a whiff of the wood burner drifting down their chimney and through the open fireplace from next door. Her nose was a bit on the stuffy side. Allergic to dogs. Always had been. But it was just something she’d put up with, for Sam. He’d been through a lot already in his short life. Jean had moved him around a lot—moved him away from his dad, then away from Plungington, then in and out of Stan’s life. He needed someone else. Someone to keep him company other than those bloody videogames of his.
    Clara, a rescue dog that a client kindly gave her, was the answer.
    “He’ll come back,” a voice said from the kitchen.
    The voice made Jean’s stomach turn. She knew she shouldn’t have let him stay over. She knew it was a bad idea. It went against her beliefs, her protocol.
    But she was lonely. Since Sam had gone missing two nights ago, she was scared.
    And he was here. Someone to lean on the shoulder of.
    Even if it was costing him his hard earned cash, he was here.
    Jean stepped towards the open-door kitchen area. She could see him leaning against one of the wooden chairs at the kitchen table. He was dressed in a suit. Slicked back dark hair. Smelled of aftershave that Jean didn’t recognise—borderline perfume. His nails were well cut. Scrubbed.
    That’s something Jean always noticed about her clients. Their nails. Their nails told her a lot about the person paying her for sex. About their lives, their attitudes towards themselves.
    This man clearly cared about himself.
    Jean started walking towards the kitchen, towards this professional, when she caught a glance of herself in the mirror. God, when had she got so old? Her blonde hair looked scruffy. There were wrinkles under her baggy eyes. Spots on her chin.
    She used to be beautiful. Just years ago, Jean used to be beautiful.
    And sure, she was still only thirty-two, but she wasn’t what she was. Her lifestyle had a way of breaking her down, taking everything good away from her.
    And it wasn’t like she lived a particularly wild life for an escort either. She didn’t drink much. Didn’t smoke. Didn’t do any drugs, not since her early twenties. She was a responsible parent. She just did a job that responsible parents didn’t do, and she had to make up for that in every other area of her life.
    She stepped away from the mirror and saw the man looking at her.
    He had steely green eyes. Eyes