The Hunt Read Online Free Page B

bench with ropes around her legs and waist. She was blindfolded, and wearing loose jogging bottoms and a tee shirt. Megs was kneeling beside her, also blindfolded, sobbing softly. Gemma was tied up on the floor on Terri’s other side.
    There was a dark stain across the right shoulder of Gemma’s school shirt. It seemed to match the patches on the walls, as if the truck also bled.
    ‘No,’ Chris said again, louder. ‘Terri. Terri! Girls?’ But they couldn’t hear.
    The image changed quickly, turning as whoever held the camera or phone on the other end switched it around to face themselves. It was a woman. Fiftyish, attractive, but with cold eyes. She smiled broadly, but only with her mouth.
    She held up a gun.
    ‘One 9 away from this,’ she said, waving it back and forth and pointing it out of sight at his blindfolded family. ‘Last chance. Next time we won’t warn you again.’
    ‘What do you want?’ Chris shouted. ‘Just tell me, I’ll do anything, let them go and—’
    ‘You’re probably ranting and raving a bit right now,’ the woman continued. She had a nice voice, calming, controlled. She could have been a school teacher. ‘I can’t hear you. But I know you can hear me. So calm down.’ She looked aside at her watch. ‘Twenty-three minutes. Be ready.’ She smiled again, then the picture flickered off. His phone went dead.
    ‘Ready for what?’ Chris shouted. He raised his hand to hurl the phone at the wall, but held back at the last instant. ‘For what?’ He looked around for cameras, microphones, evidence of things in his home being tampered with. His home. They’d come in here, invaded his space, taken away his family
…
    He couldn’t shake the image of his girls tied up like that. Megs crying and nestling against her mum. Gemma, bloodied, struggling and stretching, probably doing her best to release herself from her bindings. And Terri, sitting there looking far calmer than she must feel. At that moment he would have given absolutely anything to have them back safe and sound. His safety, his sanity, his life, without a moment’s hesitation he’d have handed them all over.
    ‘I don’t have much money,’ he said. ‘Twenty grand saved, a bit more, but I can’t just get it. It’ll take five working days. Is that what you want? It must be. Money.’ He frowned, thinking that through and really not understanding it at all. They lived in a nice house, but nothing special. Two cars, both over three years old. His architect’s firm was reasonably successful, but he was the sole employee, turnover around seventy grand each year. Nice, but nothing spectacular. Nothing that would attract the attention of the sort of people who could do this.
    Take his family, threaten his siblings and friends. Carry guns. Use his own tech against him.
    He put his phone screen-down on the kitchen worktop and paced the kitchen again. He was sweating again now, chilled from his long run. He’d always had something of a vivid imagination, and now and then he’d written ideas down with the intention of one day writing a book. Terri had been encouraging, but it had never gone much beyond a few pages of notes and several tentative first chapters. Once, out on a long run, he’d imagined the end of the world. Running the barely used public footpaths across the top of a local range of hills, he’d lost himself for a few miles daydreaming about what would happen if he got home from the run and everything had changed. His family, friends, neighbours, associates, all gone. Turn on the TV
…
white noise. Nothing on the radio. Leave home and everything is normal, return two hours later and find he’s the only man left alive.
    Now, that had happened. His whole world had changed, and unless he did precisely as instructed, they would end it. He didn’t know what they wanted. But in less than twenty minutes he would find out.
    Chris couldn’t keep still. He walked back and forth, looking down at his phone every few