As soon as he stopped walking, the back door opened, and Evan dropped to his haunches when a man stepped outside and lit a cigarette, activating the security light. Finding a gap in the fence, he trained the binoculars on the man’s face, and frowned when he realized he hadn’t seen this one before. Added to the three men he had seen, and the three girls, that totalled seven extra people in the house along with his dad and Irena. But there were only four bedrooms, so where the hell were they all sleeping?

The man suddenly moved away from the door, and Evan’s question was answered when a second security light flared, highlighting a static caravan standing by the barn. The man walked round the back of it and, slotting the fag between his teeth, took a piss in the grass before climbing inside the caravan and switching a light on.

No longer able to see him, Evan turned his attention to the house. The kitchen blind was open, so he stood up and zoomed the binoculars through the window. Irena’s brother, the blond man, and the dark-haired one were sitting at the table, along with two men he hadn’t seen before. They were all counting piles of banknotes, and Evan muttered, ‘You’ve got to be fucking joking,’ when he noticed a white block wrapped in plastic in the centre of the table. Suspecting that it was cocaine, his hunch was confirmed when he scanned the tabletop and saw faint white lines and rolled-up banknotes among the cups, glasses, and overflowing ashtrays.

Shocked, he lowered the binoculars and tried to make sense of what he’d seen. His dad was so anti-drugs he’d threatened to report Evan to the police when he’d caught him having a sneaky spliff one time. And if he could do that to his own son over a bit of weed, why the hell would he allow these strangers to bring coke into his house? And he had to know about it, because the men certainly weren’t trying to hide it.

Unless he’d had no choice in the matter?

A crevice formed in the centre of Evan’s brow when he recalled the conversation he’d had with his dad the previous day. Frank had been uncharacteristically cold, and the look he’d given Evan when he’d sent him on his way had been odd, to say the least. That, added to the blond man’s unwarranted aggression, and the smooth way Irena’s brother had walked him back to his car, had made him think that something dodgy was going on. And after witnessing that scene through the kitchen window, he was even more convinced.

But was it possible that these people had forced their way into his dad’s house and were holding him prisoner?