The Lost Girl (Brennan and Esposito)
Read The Lost Girl (Brennan and Esposito) Online
Authors: Tania Carver
The Surrogate
The Creeper
Cage of Bones
Choked
The Doll’s House
Truth or Dare
Heartbreaker
Published by Sphere
978-0-7515-5791-6
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © Tania Carver 2016
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
SPHERE
Little, Brown Book Group
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London, EC4Y 0DZ
Table of Contents
To Beth. As I promised it would be.
T
he house was supposed to be a safe one. That was why they were there.
She didn’t know where ‘there’ was, exactly. Just followed what Mummy and Daddy said. Went where they went. Did what they did. But yes, she thought, it was safe. Or at least it felt safe.
Wrong.
It happened without warning. It had been a normal day. Or what had become a normal day for the family. Mummy, Daddy, her brother and her, all together as usual. It was snowing outside and she and her brother had wanted to go out, play in the snow. Mummy and Daddy had looked at each other, concerned. But the men who watched them, watched over them and kept them safe, Mummy said, told them it would be OK. They’d keep an eye on them. So she got ready.
Before that she had been playing with the new dolls she had been given. She didn’t know what she was supposed to do with them, really. Their clothes, their hair and the little plastic things they came with were all different to what she was used to. She’d had dolls, of course she had. But they had been cloth and straw. They had smelled of natural things, of what they were made of. Like Belinda. Not like these. They smelled of things she didn’t know. Didn’t like. Plastic, her mum had said. And her mouth had twisted up the way it always did when she wasn’t happy about something. She put the doll down, didn’t want to play with it if it was going to upset Mummy. But Mummy saw what she was doing, smiled.
It’s all right, she said. Play with your doll. It’s fine. And she looked down at her and kept smiling. But when she looked up and away the smile evaporated quickly.
She didn’t know how long they had been there. She remembered her life before the house. She remembered something that she thought must have been happiness. Safety. Security. She remembered smiling a lot and not worrying about things. Then one night, Mummy and Daddy had told her to be quiet, very quiet. Like they were playing a game. She had been allowed to carry one toy but that was it. She had chosen her favourite rag doll, Belinda. And that was it, they were off. Mummy, Daddy, her brother and her. Off into the night.
She was scared. Creeping along by a fence at what she thought must have been the bottom of the garden, still pretending it was a game for Mummy and Daddy’s sake. Still trying not to breathe.
Eventually they came upon a hole in the fence. Daddy ran towards it, beckoning the others. She stopped, stared at it. Couldn’t move. Mummy had seen her, stopped. Looked at her.
What? Come on.
It’s a game, Mummy had said, her voice tight and hissing. A game. Come on. You’re with us. Everything’ll be fine. We’ll come back for
…
everything else. Come on.
She still wasn’t convinced but this was her mummy talking so she followed them.
They ran through some woods. Woods that until then she had only glimpsed the tops of from a distance. Now she was in amongst them, moving quickly.
They heard a sound from behind. Turned.
Come on, her daddy shouted and they all tried to run quicker.
This isn’t a game, she thought. This is scary. I want it to end. I want to go back
…
And then she saw lights ahead of them. Two. Blinking. On, then off. On, then off. And, pulled along by Daddy, they ran towards them, even faster.
It was a car. A big one with lots of seats in. Someone opened the back door and Daddy put her brother in then her. Finally he and Mummy joined them. They hardly had time to say hello to the driver and his friend before the door shut and they were off.
And then they came here. To the safe house.
Do this, said her brother.
He lay down in the snow, put his arms and legs out, moved them backwards and forwards. Because he was her brother and because he was older and she had been taught to always follow your elders and betters, she did the same.
What are we doing? she said after a few minutes.
Making snow angels, he said. Look.
He stood up, beckoning her to do likewise. He pointed at the ground where they had been.
See? It’s like wings. He looked at her, smiled. He had hardly stopped smiling since they had arrived there. We’ve got wings!
She could see what he meant. And because he laughed, she laughed too. And they did it again.
The snow kept falling and lying all morning, so there was no shortage of it to play in. They played until she started to get tired and a bit hungry.
Going in, she said.
Her brother looked up from the huge snowball he had been rolling, intending it to be the body of the biggest snowman ever made. Aw, stay
…
Coming back, she said, and went round the corner of the house.
That was when she saw it. The sight that would stay with her for the rest of her life.
At first she thought their two guards were playing snow angels too. But as she approached she noticed that their wings were red. And they weren’t moving.
She didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t move. She looked round, wanting to call for her brother, but the words wouldn’t come. Eventually, she ran inside, heart pounding, needing Mummy and Daddy.
She found them. They were on the floor too, like the police had been. Covered in blood.
And then she was grabbed from behind.
She struggled, tried to bite, kick, scream, everything. Stop whoever it was doing whatever they had done to Mummy and Daddy. But she couldn’t do anything. Whoever it was had her too tightly.
Stop struggling, you little fucker, a voice growled in her ear.
She smelled bad breath. Stale meat and cigarette smoke. She didn’t stop struggling.
I said stop it, or you’ll get what they’ve had.
The meaning of the words penetrated. She stopped struggling.
Good, the voice said. We’re going to leave now. You’re going to lie on the floor and not move. Keep your eyes and your mouth shut. Count to a hundred. Can you do that?
She didn’t know if she could. She nodded.
Good. And when you’ve done that do it again. Or we’ll come back. And you don’t want that.
He threw her down on the floor. She kept her eyes closed. She tried to count to a hundred.
Eventually she opened her eyes. Stared. Her mummy was staring right back at her. She felt wet and picked her hand up. Mummy’s blood.
She wondered what had happened to her brother, where he was. Didn’t dare move to get up and find out.
So she lay there. For how long, she didn’t know. Staring at her mummy’s sightless eyes, letting her mummy’s blood soak into her clothes.
Too scared, too numb, to even cry.