Kieron is asleep. That is because of me. I’ve given him a mild sedative, not wanting him to be confused. Frightened.

Footsteps echo through the empty corridors. The hospital is so different to when I worked here. A ghost ship. Soon the solid walls will be knocked down. Houses built on the land where lives were lost. Saved. Where relatives grieved. Rejoiced.

My memories here are both good and bad. This wasn’t solely my place of work. It was the place where Catherine…

Wait…

Outside doors open, bang shut. He has come straight to the area where he knows I will be.

He knows me so well.

‘Hello, Aidan,’ I say as he dashes into the room. ‘You found me.’ Not that I’d been hiding. Not from him.

I need him.

‘I knew you’d be here, Lucy. I found the parcel.’

I knew he would. I knew he’d figure it out.

‘What are you playing at?’ he asks.

Our eyes lock. His are full of fear.

But he knows what I’m doing. That’s why he came.

He knows I am not playing.

This is not a game.

Chapter Seventy-Nine

Aidan

The smell of bleach hits him first, the second he pelts into the room.

‘Where’s Connor?’ Aidan looks frantically around, rushing over to Kieron when he spots his youngest son lying flat on a trolley. He lifts his limp hand. Presses two fingers against his wrist.

‘He’s fine,’ Lucy says. ‘I’ve given him a little something to help him sleep.’

‘Ryan?’ Aidan glances across the room, not wanting to leave his son’s side.

‘He’s fine too.’ Lucy soothes him in the same voice she has used over the years when he’s lost an animal at the practice, but this… this woman standing in front of him may sound like his wife, may look like his wife, but he knows from the calm detachment in her eyes that the Lucy he loves has been hidden. He has to find her. Appeal to her as a parent. A mother.

‘Melissa has been going frantic since Ryan went missing. Imagine how you’d have felt if it had been Connor. Is he here?’

‘No. He’s all right though.’

‘How do you know? I got home to find the house swarming with police, there was blood on the wall, the table knocked over. They think he’s one of The Taken’

‘I know he hasn’t been taken because I’m the one who did the taking. Not Tyler, I don’t know where he is. But Ryan.’

‘But Connor is missing—’