BooksBarbecue
Back The Game
Chapters (68)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. NOW
  4. One
  5. BEFORE
  6. Two
  7. Three
  8. Four
  9. Five
  10. Six
  11. Seven
  12. Eight
  13. Nine
  14. Ten
  15. Eleven
  16. Twelve
  17. Thirteen
  18. Fourteen
  19. Fifteen
  20. Sixteen
  21. Seventeen
  22. Eighteen
  23. Nineteen
  24. Twenty
  25. NOW
  26. Twenty-One
  27. BEFORE
  28. Twenty-Two
  29. Twenty-Three
  30. Twenty-Four
  31. Twenty-Five
  32. Twenty-Six
  33. Twenty-Seven
  34. Twenty-Eight
  35. Twenty-Nine
  36. Thirty
  37. Thirty-One
  38. Thirty-Two
  39. Thirty-three
  40. Thirty-Four
  41. Thirty-Five
  42. Thirty-Six
  43. Thirty-Seven
  44. Thirty-Eight
  45. NOW
  46. Thirty-Nine
  47. BEFORE
  48. Forty
  49. Forty-One
  50. Forty-Two
  51. Forty-three
  52. Forty-Four
  53. Forty-Five
  54. Forty-Six
  55. Forty-Seven
  56. Forty-Eight
  57. Forty-Nine
  58. Fifty
  59. Fifty-One
  60. NOW
  61. Fifty-Two
  62. Fifty-Three
  63. Fifty-Four
  64. Fifty-Five
  65. AFTER
  66. Fifty-Six
  67. Acknowledgements
  68. About the Author

‘Last chance,’ the voice said, the same flat tone coming through the phone. There was a new background noise on the call though. Wind, or something. ‘Level Four. Are you playing?’

‘I haven’t got a choice,’ Holly said, her breath catching in her throat as she spoke. She stood up, crossing the room and opening the curtains slightly. ‘I want this to be over. Will it be over?’ She looked out onto the street, hoping to catch a glimpse of someone nearby.

Someone on a phone.

She knew they were out there. Watching her. They had seen her mum leave.

Holly listened as she was given her instructions. Waiting for the call to end, before standing up and leaving her bedroom. She went downstairs, back into the kitchen. Half an hour earlier, she had been swapping pleasantries with her mum.

Now, she crossed to the knife block next to the microwave, paused to consider each one in turn, then selected the largest. She held it up in the light, searching the blade for a reason to stop playing, and found nothing.

Holly slipped a jacket on, slid the knife up her sleeve and then left the house.

Thirty

The website for whatever the ‘Huddle’ was didn’t really give Mark all that much to go on. A landing page with a few lines of text, stock photographs of sad-looking people being comforted. A ‘Contact us’ box, and a few testimonials on another tab.

He wondered if there was more information to be found if he accessed it from an actual computer, rather than his mobile, but figured it’d be much the same. From the look of the site, the dates on some of the supposed testimonials, it hadn’t been updated in a few years.

A few phone calls later, a name procured and checked, he was pulling up outside a detached home in a leafy cul-de-sac on the outskirts of the city. The echo of his car door closing was the only sound as he made his way up a meticulously well-maintained path, next to a well-kept patch of grass. The stone bordering and hanging baskets further projected an image of normality.

He rang the doorbell and stepped back, one hand on his ID in case it was asked for, which it increasingly was now. People were getting more security conscious by the day, Mark thought, as he spotted a camera affixed to the house above him.

The door opened, a tanned man in his fifties looking him up and down, one hand on the door. ‘Yes?’

‘Hi, I’m Detective Constable Mark Flynn,’ Mark said, trying a disarming smile that didn’t quite land. ‘Are you Kevin Blackhurst?’

A frown and then a slight pause. ‘Yes.’

‘I was wondering if you could spare a few minutes to talk about an ongoing investigation.’