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

There was still no answer on Natasha’s phone.

He closed his eyes again, phone in his hand, waiting for her to call him back.

Back to the case at hand, he thought. His personal life could wait.

There was no way that they would warn Emily’s family off speaking to him. It hadn’t been that bad, he thought. So he’d lost his temper a little bit – it wasn’t like he’d smashed the incident room up or anything like that. He’d shouted and been thrown out. It could have been much worse.

He would put speaking to the family again on the list.

On the passenger seat, the information he’d gathered the previous night was stacked up. He opened his eyes, began leafing through some of the papers, hoping to find something more. Something else he could take back and show DI Bennett or any of the others. Something tangible. One part of him could see the reality of the situation. What he’d tried to pass on to DI Bennett and how stupid it had all sounded.

His phone lay dormant in his other hand, coming to life with a quick swipe. Something had been bugging him since the previous night – something he had read or heard. A distant memory he couldn’t quite grasp.

He opened the anonymous Facebook account on his app and began looking around his feed. Saw the link to a news story from the Liverpool Echo article, which is when it finally clicked.

He’d seen a mention a few days earlier – before he’d known about the existence of The Game. He clicked on the page and began searching back to the previous news articles, looking for the correct one.

There were more than a few about the events of the previous week. He went through them all as quickly as he could, trying to find the one he’d seen. Reading through endless comments, searching for the one he could only just remember.

It had mentioned The Game. He was sure of it.

It took him ten minutes to finally find it. By that point, his phone was almost dead, so he had to attach the charger in his car to keep it going.

She played The Game and lost. Shame it wasn’t the other twin. Would have been more fun.

The comment had been left a couple of days earlier, but now, it seemed like it was something he shouldn’t have scrolled past. It was buried under a number of similar comments. Now, it took on a much different light, given what it said.

The Game…

It was the capitalisation of the word, so odd in comparison to the rest of it. He had dismissed it without even thinking – yet, with what he knew now, it meant more.

It meant that whoever had left the comment could know something.