The Prisoner(47)

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO


PAST

I woke in the dark, felt a hard floor beneath me. It took me awhile to work out that I was lying on my bedroom floor in Ned’s house. My chest hurt, my throat was on fire. I remembered then, Ned suffocating me.

I swallowed painfully. He mustn’t have wanted to actually kill me, he could have if he’d continued blocking my airways for just a few seconds more. But he needed me until the end of the month, he needed me available for the outside world.

The events of the previous day came flooding back and my cry of anguish echoed through the silent house. Images hurtled through my mind: the gunman dragging Hunter from the car, his pistol pointing downward, the bangs of three bullets being fired. The gunman raising his head, looking at me, then walking around Hunter’s body to get to me.

I curled my body into itself. I had misjudged Lukas. Hunter’s murder was down to him, I was sure of it. So many things pointed to it, from the message he’d been sending on his phone as I went to speak to him, to the way he had stared at Hunter as we were leaving. Lukas had assumed that Hunter was responsible for Lina’s murder. Except he wasn’t the one who had killed her.

My mind jumped to the thumbs-up message Ned had received in the plane, just before we left London for Las Vegas, from someone named Amos Kerrigan. Ned had spoken to someone called Amos after he’d murdered Lina; it had sounded as if he was asking him to come and remove her body from the house. Had Ned murdered Justine, and the thumbs-up from Amos Kerrigan was to let Ned know he’d disposed of her body? Nausea surged into my throat and scrambling to my feet, I ran to the bathroom.

My stomach emptied, I wiped my mouth, then sat on the bathroom floor, my head on my knees. There were things I didn’t understand. How had Lina passed through Immigration at the airport in Vilnius? I remembered overhearing Ned telling Amos Kerrigan to find Lina’s passport, and his comment that they would have to be more thorough this time. Had he paid someone, someone who could pass for Lina, to travel to Lithuania using her passport? Then, that person, or Ned himself, had used Lina’s phone to send the messages to Vicky?

But Lukas had taken the trouble to check that Lina had actually arrived in Vilnius. Had he also checked that the person using her passport really was Lina and discovered that she was an imposter? And because Ned had pointed the finger at Hunter—by effectively telling Lukas that Hunter was the last person to see Lina alive—Lukas had had him killed.

So, who was Lukas? Lina was an orphan, but maybe he was a family friend, someone who’d looked out for Lina when she was orphaned—someone who would avenge her murder. It would explain why he’d had Hunter killed. Payback. Which meant that it wasn’t over yet. Lukas would come after Ned, and he would come after me; he would finish the job his gunman had failed to do.





CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE


PRESENT

I’ve spent the last three days walking around the room in circles. It hadn’t taken me long to work it out, once I knew our abduction was about Lina. Lukas is behind our kidnapping. I had known he would come after us, but I didn’t think we’d be kidnapped. But maybe he had seen it as a way of extorting money from Jethro Hawthorpe before having us killed.

Exhausted from walking, I move to my mattress, wrap my blanket around me. The day I met Lukas, he said he was returning to Vilnius the next day. Is that where he is, masterminding our abduction from his home there, giving orders to the two men holding us?

Has Ned worked out that Lukas is behind our kidnapping? He must have, now that he knows this is about Lina. He will know, then, that he’ll never get out of here alive. Once the kidnappers have the money, they’ll kill him. They might spare me, but they’ll kill him.

There’s a noise from the basement.

“Wake up, Ned, the day has finally arrived. Your father has paid us, so we’re releasing you early.”

“What?” Ned’s voice is groggy with sleep. “Did you say you’re releasing me?”

“Yes, we’re letting you go. There’s a couple of hours before the agreed drop-off time, so you’ve got time to clean yourself up. We can’t let your father see you in such a disgusting state, can we?”

Ned makes a sound somewhere between a sob and a laugh. “Can I have a shower?” he asks. “Some clean clothes?”

“Absolutely. You can even have a coffee, if you like.” A pause. “There’s just one thing: if anyone asks you about your wife, you’ll tell them you don’t know what happened to her, that she was held apart from you. If you tell them that we killed her, we’ll tell them that you were the one who asked for her to be killed. And in case you’re wondering how we’d do that—well, we have the recording of you telling us to kill her. All we have to do is drop it off at a police station, or broadcast it on social media, for you to spend the rest of your life in prison, especially when we add in Lina’s murder. So, don’t forget, Ned. Nothing about your wife, and no pretending you were a hero.” Another pause. “Your wife tried to escape, did you know that? But you—nothing. You did nothing to try and help yourself.”

“Yeah, well, look where it got her,” Ned sneers.

“And that’s exactly what will happen to you if you say anything, or do anything, to displease us. We’ll be watching you, Ned, from all angles.” There’s the sound of the door opening. “Right, let’s get you into a shower.”