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

‘She spent so much of her life online,’ Stephanie said, breaking the silence. ‘If there are answers to be found, I bet they’re there. I just… I’ve had this thought in the back of my mind since the beginning. That this could all be just some kind of game she’s playing with us all.’

‘You think she’d do that?’

He was struggling to hide his growing sense of unease at what he was hearing. The revelations about Emily’s life. It was exciting, but daunting. More questions to investigate.

‘I don’t know what to think,’ Stephanie said, breaking into Mark’s disordered thinking. ‘I just want her to come through the front door like nothing’s happened. It doesn’t matter why she’s gone; I just want her to come back. I want to try again. Be a better sister this time.’

Mark stayed quiet, letting Stephanie process the emotions she was battling to keep under the surface.

Waiting for the moment he could get out of that place and start finding answers to the multitude of questions he now had.

Eighteen

The clouds had parted at some point during his return to the station, yet Mark couldn’t enjoy the cool autumn evening. He was instead back at his favourite place at work – his desk. Although this was tainted somewhat by the fact that he seemed to be working on the case alone. The others were distracted by the small matter of Joanna Carter’s body being found.

There was limited information to work with: her online accounts, the little contact she had outside her home, dropping out of college a few weeks earlier. She hadn’t told anyone, which suggested to him that she was trying to keep something quiet at least. Didn’t want to disappoint her family, he guessed. He knew her mum worked, and maybe didn’t notice her daughter wasn’t in college, but it still seemed a big thing for Emily to have been able to keep quiet. Which made him wonder what she was doing after leaving college, the people she was talking to.

Then he’d started reading through Emily’s social media accounts.

He had access to Emily’s main Facebook page, a Twitter account and Instagram. The Instagram page was blank, so she obviously hadn’t been one for taking photographs. The Twitter account had followers barely in three figures, most of which looked like spam accounts. The Facebook page was similarly empty.

It was her email account that got his attention.