BooksBarbecue
Back The Last Guests
Chapters (54)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. Epigraph
  4. PROLOGUE
  5. PART ONE
  6. ONE
  7. TWO
  8. THREE
  9. FOUR
  10. DEADLY SAS RAID IN AFGHANISTAN UNDER SCRUTINY
  11. FIVE
  12. SIX
  13. SEVEN
  14. EIGHT
  15. NINE
  16. TEN
  17. ELEVEN
  18. TWELVE
  19. THIRTEEN
  20. FOURTEEN
  21. FIFTEEN
  22. SIXTEEN
  23. SEVENTEEN
  24. EIGHTEEN
  25. NINETEEN
  26. TWENTY
  27. PART TWO
  28. TWENTY-ONE
  29. TWENTY-TWO
  30. TWENTY-THREE
  31. TWENTY-FOUR
  32. TWENTY-FIVE
  33. TWENTY-SIX
  34. TWENTY-SEVEN
  35. TWENTY-EIGHT
  36. TWENTY-NINE
  37. DANIEL MOORE: ‘A SINGLE BLOKE, HAPPY-GO-LUCKY, A BIT OF A DUNCE BUT WITH A GOOD HEART,’ BEST FRIEND SAYS.
  38. THIRTY
  39. THIRTY-ONE
  40. THIRTY-TWO
  41. THIRTY-THREE
  42. THIRTY-FOUR
  43. THIRTY-FIVE
  44. BREAKING: POLICE CONFIRM DANIEL MOORE ACTED ALONE
  45. THIRTY-SIX
  46. THIRTY-SEVEN
  47. THIRTY-EIGHT
  48. THIRTY-NINE
  49. SECOND ARREST MADE IN WESTAY HIDDEN CAMERAS CASE
  50. EPILOGUE
  51. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
  52. Discover More
  53. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  54. Also by J. P. Pomare

This is my only chance. If I don’t escape, I will die; we will both die – me and the baby. I move again, lying down, reaching with my toes for the table. It is slightly closer from where he had pushed it with his feet and I hook my foot around one leg, just my toes, straining for purchase. It’s enough that the table turns, shimmies closer. The keys are on top and now I bend my knee, pulling. The table lurches forward. The feet whisper against the carpet as I drag it closer. There is no time to waste. I keep it moving, the keys are towards the back edge and with each jerking movement they slide a little further, but the table is coming closer now. Soon it is on me and I can use my hands and feet to keep dragging it. The keys fall on the far side of the table, hit the ground. I reach with my foot again, I can just touch the steel ring.

Sounds come from upstairs. A box moving, dragging over the wooden floor.

Come on, Lina, stretch. Every sinew, every cell strives to move my toe closer. The edge of the cuff bites into my wrist. Between my two biggest toes on my right foot, I pinch the key ring and bend my knee. It is close enough to take in my hand. I turn, get the keys, push one in the lock. It doesn’t go. I try the next one. And the next. I can’t hear the knife anymore, or any movement. I drop the keys, take them up again, keep trying those three keys over and over but they’re not working. Why won’t the handcuff unlock? My breath is frantic.

‘Ha, ha, ha, haaaaa,’ he says, slowly, clapping his hands. ‘Brilliant.’

I drop the keys. The table slides off me over the carpet. Looking up I meet his eyes in that mask. ‘They don’t work,’ I say, desperately.

‘Clever girl. They probably enjoyed that.’ He looks at his phone. ‘Even more viewers. They’re flocking to watch you suffer.’

‘You’re sick.’

‘I have to give the viewers something to watch, someone to root for.’ He calmly walks over, places the knife and the steel on the couch, then takes the keys from beside me and places them in his pocket. ‘I’ll take these. For now you can watch this.’ He shows me the phone screen again. I see myself on the floor beside the fire, I see him standing over me holding the phone. But the screen is cycling through the various cameras. For a second I’m looking at the downstairs bathroom, then the upstairs bathroom, then the hallway outside the bedroom, then… a scream tears out of me.