Page 24 of The Reaper

“Oh, there is a way out?”

“Well, there is always a way out, isn’t there?”

“I don't know, sometimes things happen that you can't control. Sometimes there is no way out.”

She felt like they weren't talking about the book anymore.

“He’s only doing it to save his family-” She boldly ploughed on about the book though.

“Yes, the things you’d do to save the people you care about...”

“I… don’t know…”

“It’s enough to turn even the best of us, isn’t it?”

Her head snapped up to his.

“You know a white lie can be told for what you think is the greater good, but it turns into something much bigger than you thought? It grows legs of its own and takes over.”

She kept the book in mind. “A crooked policeman is still on the wrong side of the law, he has crossed that line and there is no way back, he’s basically a criminal-”

“Only if he is caught.”

He eyed her with a long look. Then leaned in for a kiss. She let him. To any onlooker it would have looked like an innocent kiss, a familiar peck on the cheek between a couple in a relationship. But then he looked at her again and kissed deeper, longer, as if he didn't want her to go.

As if he were saying goodbye.

CHAPTER

FOURTEEN

HANNAH

She strodeinto the ward like normal, expecting to see Jack, in the bed, where he always had been. She was expecting their usual exchange. Him asking and pushing for details of the past, them getting physical, following that intimate high despite how things were unravelling around them. He expected him to be sitting on his bed, waiting for her.

But he wasn’t there.

Instead, PC Paul Roper and his supervisor, Morris, were there, hovering, waiting. They looked heavier, more menacing. Something about it all raised the hairs on her neck. Her heart beat started hammering. Something felt off. Enemy, her body screamed. She had to resist the urge to run, to fight.

“Hannah Wells,” Roper said. Morris nodded only in a greeting to her.

“Jack’s not here?” Morris asked her, nodding towards the bed, unmade, empty.

“I… just got here myself,” she said, ambiguously, she took a seat on the chair next to the bed. She had to appear cool, calm, casual. She had to pretend everything was normal. She wouldn’tgive him up just yet, She wouldn’t reveal their secret. For they had that at least, they shared such a complicated and tangled web of lies and secrets. And yet some simple truths, too.

“He’s probably at a physio appointment, I think he’s doing really well physically, healing up…” She began to babble.

“Oh really?” Roper said, and for a moment she thought he’d seen through her. “Well that’s good for him, we were actually hoping to find you.”

“Oh?” she asked.

“Yes, we just wanted to ask you a few more questions-”

“Of course, fire away. Why do you need more, have you found something out?” she asked, face deadpan, innocent, helpful, perky.

Morris paused now, her gaze flitting over Hannah as if she was searching for something. Hannah was determined to give nothing away.

“No more. Hannah, we want to know a bit more about where you met Jack. And when. We need to check CCTV to confirm some key… facts,” Morris finished.

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