Cover

READERS ARE GIVING ALL FOR YOU FIVE STARS!

‘Five stars just doesn’t seem enough’

‘Read it in one sitting … I just couldn’t seem to put it down’

‘Sets the scene, reels the reader in and proceeds to twist this way and that’

‘Louise Jensen is the master of psychological suspense’

‘A fast-paced, unputdownable, gripping thriller’

‘Brings tension to whole new levels’

‘Fast-paced, gripping, and has a twist that I defy anyone to figure out’

‘Very, very highly recommended and my absolute favourite read of this year’

‘Be prepared to burn the midnight oil because you won’t be able to put it down’

‘Stays with you for a long time’

‘If you are a fan of psychological thrillers, you will love this’

Also by Louise Jensen

The Stolen Sisters

The Family

The Gift

The Sister

The Surrogate

The Date

Writing as Amelia Henley

The Art of Loving You

The Life We Almost Had

About the Author

LOUISE JENSEN is a global No.1 bestselling author of psychological thrillers. Louise has sold over a million copies of her books and her novels have been sold for translation in twenty-five countries, as well as being featured on the USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestsellers’ lists. Louise was nominated for the Goodreads Debut Author of 2016 Award and the Guardian’s Not the Booker 2018. Louise’s thrillers have been optioned for TV and film.

When Louise isn’t writing thrillers, she turns her hand to penning love stories under the name Amelia Henley. Her novels The Life We Almost Had and The Art of Loving You are out now.

Louise lives with her husband, children, madcap dog and a rather naughty cat in Northamptonshire. She loves to hear from readers and writers and can be found at www.louisejensen.co.uk, where she regularly blogs flash fiction and writing tips.

Note to Readers

This ebook contains the following accessibility features which, if supported by your device, can be accessed via your ereader/accessibility settings:

• Change of font size and line height
• Change of background and font colours
• Change of font
• Change justification
• Text to speech
• Page numbers taken from the following print edition: ISBN 9780008330163

For Pete Simmons.

An integral part of our family.

Prologue

Something is wrong.

I’ve a deep, primal instinct screaming that I need to get home to Connor. It isn’t just because of the row we’d had. The horrible, hurtful things he had said, it’s something else.

A knowing that, despite being seventeen, I should never have left my son alone.

Hurry.

The flash of neon orange cones blur through the window as I gather speed until the roadworks force me to a stop. The candle-shaped air freshener swings from the rear-view mirror – its strawberry scent cloying.

My fingertips drum the steering as I will the temporary traffic lights to change to green. The rain hammers against the roof of the car, windscreen wipers lurching from side to side. It isn’t the crack of lightning that causes my stomach to painfully clench, or the rumble of thunder, even though storms always take me back to a time I’d rather forget, but a mother’s instinct.

I’ve felt it before. That bowling ball of dread hurtling towards me.

Drawing in a juddering breath, I tell myself everything is fine. It’s only natural that worry gnaws at me with sharpened teeth. Every mother in our town is on high alert right now after the disappearance of two teenage boys. I have more reason to be on edge than most.

It’s not as though I’m thinking Connor has been taken, but it’s one thing for him to ignore my calls, he’d never ignore Kieron’s.

Never.

Particularly when he had asked Kieron to call him after his hospital appointment.

Why didn’t he pick up?

In my mind’s eye I see him, bounding down the stairs two at a time, balancing on a chair to reach the snacks he doesn’t realize I know he hides on the top of his wardrobe.

An accident, or something else?

Something worse?

My stomach churns with a sense of foreboding.

Calm down.

I’ve been under so much pressure lately that I’m bound to be anxious. Edgy. But… I jab at my mobile and try Connor once more. My favourite picture of him lights the screen. We took it five years ago during an unseasonably hot Easter. Before Kieron was diagnosed, before everything changed. We’re on the beach, the wind whipping his dark curls around his face. His grin is wide, traces of chocolate ice cream smudged around his mouth.

We were all so happy once. I don’t know how, but I have to believe that we can be again. The alternative is too painful to bear.

The phone rings and rings. Fear brushes the back of my neck.

Frantically, I try calling again, from Kieron’s phone this time. He still doesn’t answer.

The lights are taking an age.

Next to me, Kieron sleeps. His head lolling against the window, breath misting the glass. The dark sweep of his lashes spider across his pale skin. The hospital visit has exhausted him. The red tartan blanket I always keep in the car has slipped from his knees and I reach across and pull it over his legs. The passenger seat is swallowing his thin body. At thirteen he should be growing, but his illness is shrinking him. It’s shrinking me. Sometimes I feel as though my entire family is disappearing. Aidan barely talks to me, never touches me. In bed there’s an ever-increasing space between us. Both of us teetering on our respective edges of the mattress, a strip of cold sheet an invisible barrier between us. My head no longer resting on his chest, his leg never slung over mine, his fingers not stroking my hair anymore.

Connor is monosyllabic and moody in the way that seventeen-year-olds often are but he never was, before…

But it isn’t just that, it’s also this sickness that isn’t just Kieron’s. It’s everybody’s.

The lights turn green.

Hurry.

Before I can pull away there’s a streak of yellow. Through the rain a digger trundles towards me, blocking my path.

Kieron sighs in his sleep the way his brother sighs when he’s awake. Sometimes it seems the boys only communicate through a series of noises and shrugs. But that’s unfair. It’s hardly surprising Connor’s mouth is a permanent thin line as though he’s forgotten how to smile. It’s not only his concern about his brother on top of everything he went through before the summer that has turned my sweet-natured son into a mass of guilt and unhappiness, but the sharp truth that out of his friendship group of three, two of them have disappeared.

‘The Taken’, the local paper calls them, reporting that out of those who were there that tragic day, Connor is the only one left.

But Connor knows this as he hides in his room, too scared to go to school.

We all know this.

Tyler and Ryan have vanished without a trace and the police have no idea why.

It’s up to me to keep Connor safe.

I glance at Kieron.

I’ll do anything to keep both of my boys safe.

The driver of the digger raises his hand in appreciation as he passes by me. Before I can pull away, the lights revert to red once more. Frustrated, I slam my palms against the steering wheel.

Calm down.

Rationally, I know Connor hasn’t been taken.

He’s at home.

The door is locked.

He’s okay.

But still…

He never ignores Kieron.

Never.

Hurry.

Despite the lights being red, I pull away. There’s no approaching traffic. I snap on the radio again. The newsreader relays in cool, clipped tones that the missing boys haven’t been found but police are following several lines of inquiry. Nobody else is missing. The unsaid ‘yet’ lingers in the air, and although I know Connor is safe, my foot squeezes the accelerator. Home is the only place my anxiety abates. When we’re all under one roof and I can almost pretend everything is exactly how it was.

Before.

Visibility is poor. Frustrated, I slow, peering out through the teeming rain. If I have an accident I’m no use to Kieron, to anyone. My heart is racing as there’s another crack of lightning. I count the seconds the way I used to with the boys when they were small.

One.

Two.

Three.

A grumble of thunder. The storm is closing in. Everything is closing in, crashing down. My stomach is a hard ball, my pulse skyrocketing as a sense of danger gallops towards me.

Hurry.

The urgency to be at home overrides the voice of caution urging me to slow down. I race past the old hospital, which has fallen into disrepair, the white and blue NHS sign crawling with ivy, and then the secondary school. I barely register the figure cloaked in black stepping onto the zebra crossing but on some level I must have noticed him as I blast the horn until he jumps back onto the path. He shakes his fist but I keep moving.

Hurry.

My chest is tight as I pull into my street, my driveway. A whimper of fear slithers from my lips as I see the front door swinging open.

Without waking Kieron I half fall, half step out of the car, my shoes slipping on wet tarmac as I rush towards my house.

‘Connor?’

The table in the hallway is lying on its side. My favourite green vase lies in shattered pieces over the oak floor. The lilies that had been left anonymously on the doorstep are strewn down the hallway.

Funeral flowers.

‘Hello?’ My voice is thin and shaky.

Blood smears the cream wall by the front door. Lying in a puddle of water from the vase is Connor’s phone, the screen smashed. My feet race up the stairs towards his bedroom. A man’s voice drifts towards me. I push open Connor’s door just as shots are fired.

Instinctively, I cover my head before I realize the sound is coming from the war game blaring out of Connor’s TV. His Xbox controller is tangled on the floor along with his headphones.

His bedroom is empty.

The Taken.

It’s impossible.

‘Connor?’

He was here.

He was safe.

The front door was locked.

Quickly, I check every room in the house until I’m back in the hallway, staring in horror at the blood on the wall, trying to make sense of it.

Connor has gone.

Part One

Chapter One

Lucy

Thirteen days before Connor is taken

It’s there again. The car. Small and white and out of place. Parked under one of the beech trees that guard our street, lending us a sense of safety.

Who are they?

This is a family area. Most of our neighbours have four-by-fours, double garages with space on their neat blocked paved driveways for visitors’ vehicles. Nobody parks on the street.

‘Why are they just sitting there?’ I ask Aidan as he pulls out onto the road. ‘It’s the third time this week.’ Again, the car is parked far enough away that I can’t identify the shadowy figure inside, but near enough for the driver to be able to see our house and I do have a sense that it is my home they are interested in.

My family.

I shield my eyes against the bright rays of sunlight that slant through the windscreen.

‘Don’t you think it’s odd?’

‘Don’t we have more important things to worry about?’ Aidan asks wearily. I bite back my retort as I take in his grey face, the way his fingers are clutching the steering wheel. He’s right to be worried. We both are. There’s a lot riding on today.

‘Are you okay?’ I twist around in my seat.

‘Yeah.’ Kieron flashes me a tired smile. He’s so used to hospital visits they don’t faze him in the slightest, although I’ve made him aware this one is different. I’ve explained to him what I’m going to ask for during our appointment and he nodded. He’s been expecting it.

We all have.

Aidan drives too fast.

Our journey across town is peppered with awkward silences that I try to fill with conversation, choosing my words carefully. I’m conscious that I don’t want to glare a spotlight on the things Kieron is missing out on. He’d only been discharged from hospital a few days ago after a particularly nasty infection and he’ll be absent for the start of the academic year tomorrow.

‘Do you think my new form teacher will send me homework too?’ School is on his mind as well.

‘I expect so; they don’t want you falling behind.’ It’s not only his education that concerns me, he’s missed periods before because of the frequent bacterial infections that accompany his disease, but the social aspect he is sometimes excluded from saddens me. He can’t always play out with his friends. He hasn’t always the energy for his swimming club. Aidan and I try not to treat him any different to Connor, but the truth is, he is different to his brother. Set apart from other thirteen-year-olds.

Since being diagnosed with PSC – Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis, a chronic liver disease – five years previously he’s stopped growing at the rate of the other kids. Stopped living almost, although I’m overdramatizing again. If you asked him, Kieron would say he is happy and he is. He lives day-to-day like most kids do. Often he feels okay and thankfully he has very little pain. His side effects are manageable, mostly. But his bouts of infection and jaundice are terrifying.

It’s a relief when we pull up outside the nearest entrance to the paediatric unit. Aidan drops us off before he begins the game of chance where he’ll circle round the too-small area with the too-few spaces, eyes peeled for someone with keys in their hand, heading back to their vehicle.

There was a time I’d have waited, when we’d have stuck together.

Instead, we go ahead without him.

Hospitals have a smell. A taste that stings the back of the throat. So many people say they hate them but I suppose I’m more used to medical units than most. I’m comfortable amid the hustle and bustle. Inside this red-bricked building lives are changed. Lives are saved.

‘Here we are!’ I push through the swing doors and log our arrival on the touch-screen check-in system. We perch on hard orange plastic chairs in the cramped waiting room. It’s so hot in here, my skin is sticky.

My knee jiggles with nerves. Every few seconds I glance at the door, willing Aidan to arrive before we are called through.

‘I’ve got PSC,’ I hear Kieron saying to the little girl sat next to him, curly haired doll on her lap.

‘What does that mean?’ she asks.

‘My skin used to itch all the time but it doesn’t anymore,’ Kieron says simply, but it’s so much more than that.

PSC – three letters with mountainous implications. Possible cancer of the bile duct being the one that lurks frequently in my mind. There’s no known cause – that’s the frustrating part. It can be triggered after an infection, it can be genetically predisposed or it could be an autoimmune disorder. It could be caused by something else entirely. Nobody really knows.

It isn’t curable.

‘Kieron?’ The nurse that has come to fetch us addresses him directly. Kieron stands and follows her; I throw one last glance over my shoulder, before I step inside Mr Peters’ consultation room.

‘How are you today, young man?’ the doctor asks.

‘Fine.’ Kieron raises his hand and Mr Peters high-fives him.

‘He isn’t,’ I cut in, my tone sharper than I intended. ‘Fine, I mean. He’s lost weight. He barely has an appetite and he’s constantly exhausted. He was on the ward last week again—’

‘Let’s have a look at you, shall we?’ Mr Peters examines Kieron’s eyes, his skin. ‘We’ve got the results of the bloods and the latest scan.’ Kieron is monitored every three to six months. ‘There is some change but overall…’ He trails off as a breathless, red-cheeked Aidan rockets through the door, fringe damp above apologetic eyes.

‘I think it’s time,’ I say quietly. Mr Peters scrawls on Kieron’s notes. The wait for him to speak is unbearable. My heart hammers against my ribcage. Suggesting my youngest son undergo a liver transplant is not a decision I’ve taken lightly. We all knew it was a probability, but prayed it wouldn’t come to this. PSC is typically a slow-progressing disease. Statistically, Kieron shouldn’t be at this stage after five years, but we find ourselves here anyway. It seems Mr Peters doesn’t agree.

‘I’m going to tweak Kieron’s medication.’

‘He’s been in hospital three times in the past two months. He’s getting weaker.’

‘It’s not ideal but I’m not unduly alarmed, Lucy. You know that thirty per cent of kids with PSC need a transplant around ten years after diagnosis. Kieron’s not ill enough to be added to the transplant waiting list. I know it’s frightening but he shouldn’t suddenly deteriorate to the extent that—’

‘But…’ I swallow back my anger. ‘Mr Peters – Rob – Kieron shouldn’t have this disease full stop. It’s uncommon in kids of his age and you can’t predict… you can’t guarantee—’

‘Lucy, no one can promise—’

But it’s promises I want. The promise of a future.

‘Look,’ I say, ‘if we wait too long then Kieron could be too ill for major surgery. It’s becoming clear his liver has a limited mileage and no, PSC shouldn’t have progressed this quickly but it’s not unheard of and it has. If Kieron’s liver is at the beginning of ongoing deterioration, it’s better to catch it now than wait.’ I try to sound measured and calm, not come across as a hysterical mother but a hysterical mother is how I feel. Tears burn behind my eyes. I blink them away.

‘It’s a fine line, Lucy. Of course we don’t want to wait until Kieron isn’t strong enough to undergo an op but I don’t see this is necessarily the beginning of liver failure—’

‘But I know what—’

A hint of agitation creeps into Mr Peters’ voice. ‘We’ll know when the time comes and—’

‘There was this case where a young girl, without warning, deteriorated so rapidly…’ I’m aware that Kieron is in the room so I don’t finish but I don’t need to.

‘That’s extremely rare, Lucy.’

‘I know it’s rare. The disease is rare but it’s happening.’ I’m talking too fast. ‘It’s happening to us. And I just want… I just want Kieron to feel well and—’

‘I’m okay, Mum.’ Kieron slips his hand into mine and gives it a squeeze. He is so brave, my boy.

‘Let’s keep a closer eye on him.’ Rob taps on his computer. ‘We’ll keep on the antibiotics. I’ll see you in two weeks. Is the nineteenth okay?’

‘But—’

‘Lucy, if Kieron doesn’t need surgery that’s a good thing.’ Aidan pulls out his mobile and opens his calendar app. ‘I’m booked onto a conference on the nineteenth but Lucy can—’

‘But he will need surgery at some stage. We can’t pretend that he won’t.’ For a moment I stare at Rob, challenging him to meet my gaze. To talk to me as an equal rather than a parent. I’m incredulous that Aidan accepts everything he’s told. I can’t just put my blind faith in anyone with a white coat and a name badge, but, from the set of Rob’s jaw, I know it’s fruitless arguing. I can see that he has never felt the terror of a parent with a sick child. I don’t want to distress Kieron so I gather my bag and my doubts and my fears and we leave.

On the way home Kieron dozes. I don’t speak to Aidan. I can’t say what I want to say because I have left all of my words at the hospital, all of my hope.

I stifle another yawn as we pull into our street in silence. The spot under the beech tree is empty. The white car has gone but that doesn’t ease the sense that the house is being watched.

That I am being watched.

‘I’ll unlock the door before we wake Kieron,’ I tell Aidan as I climb out of the car.

I reach the front door but before I can slip my key into the lock I see it.

The dead bird on our doorstep.

Its black feathers are glistening, guts spilling over the concrete. My stomach drops, rollercoaster fast as I stare at it with repulsion.

‘I’ll get rid of it before the boys see it,’ Aidan says from behind me.

‘But…’ I swallow hard. ‘How do you think it got there?’ I want to ask who put it there but I’m desperate for a rational explanation I can hold tightly against my chest.

Someone has been watching me.

‘A gift from a cat, most likely,’ Aidan says.

But we don’t have a cat.

And neither do any of our neighbours.

It’s not only the weight of the unknown future pressing down on my shoulders, but the past.

It’s catching up with me.

‘Guilt is a rope that wears thin’ the old saying goes.

The Story Continues on BooksBarbecue!

Enjoyed this preview? ❤️ Do not stop here!

Read the complete book free online → 🔗

Continue reading now on BooksBarbecue and discover every page!

Love reading? Bookmark BooksBarbecue.com for more amazing books!

Happy Reading!