He was casting his mind back over everything he’d said and done outside the house—everyone he’d spoken to, every lie he’d told, and photo opportunity he’d politely declined—when the knock came again. Louder, this time, less patient.

“It might be someone hurt, or in trouble.”

“It might be,” he said. His gaze was fixed on the door. He could only see part of it from the armchair he’d claimed as his own back at the start of the week, and the darkness outside turned the frosted glass window to a square of charcoal black.

But he got an impression of something out there. Real or imagined, a shape loomed beyond the glass. Large. Imposing.

Inevitable.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

“You’d better answer it. They’re not going to go away,” she said.

His gaze unlocked itself from the door and went to his wife in the chair across from his. He almost swore at her. What? You go and fucking answer it! But, she was right. Anyone who came all this way out into the middle of nowhere to knock on a door at this time of night was not going to just give up.

The people who were after him would never give up. They’d hunt him to the ends of the earth, if it came to it.

Perhaps, they already had.

The poker scraped on the rough stone of the fireplace as he removed it from its hook. He’d been jabbing at the flames with it for most of the night, keeping the fire going as best he could, and the metal tip still radiated enough heat to burn anyone who found themselves on the other end of it.

And, of course, there was the damage it could do with a good hard whack.

He saw his wife’s eyes flit to the makeshift weapon. She said nothing, but got to her feet and positioned herself in front of the door to the room where the girls were sleeping.

They could call the police, of course. Assuming the wind was blowing in the right direction for them to get a signal. But it would take them at least twenty minutes to get here at full pelt with lights flashing.

Add in the time to make the call, to explain, to give the address, and—

The knocking returned as a thumping fist that rattled the glass in the old doorframe. He jumped, his breath catching in his throat, his grip tightening on the limply held poker handle so that it sprang erect.

“Fuck,” he whispered, and the word hung there in the fiery red murk.

He thought about the back door.

He thought about leaving her—leaving them—to face his mistakes.

But he couldn’t do that. He couldn’t.

Someone would almost certainly be waiting out the back, too.

The door shook. His wife hissed.

“Go and see who it is, Archie!”

The poker shook in his hand.