Page 105 of The Angel Maker

But not now.

Fuck you, he thought.

Who are you to tell me what I should be?

They drove for some time.

Eventually, the car began rolling languidly from side to side, and then Chris heard the sound of its tires crunching over gravel. They came to a stop, and the driver and old man got out. Chris sat in silence for a while, his heart thudding in his chest. Where were they? After what felt like an age, the door beside him was opened and he was pulled roughly out of the car.

He winced. Wherever this was, it was much colder here.

“Where are we?” he tried to say.

And then the blindfold was pulled off.

There was no sign of the driver now, but the old man stood before him in the gray light. He had a knife in one hand. The other was holding something down by his side, slightly behind his leg. But Chris’s attention was drawn more to the familiar building looming over the two of them. Back when he had worked here, it had felt like a place of salvation and hope, but the sight of it now delivered only dread. Because a part of him understood that this place in which he had come back to life was the place in which he was going to die.

He looked back down and registered the hatred on the old man’s face. And he realized what the man was holding by his side.

A can of gas.

And the old man finally answered him.

Where are we?

“Home,” he said.

Forty-one

Katie drove through the winding roads north of the city.

There seemed to be little around her but empty fields and trees. She passed a few abandoned buildings. They were relics of a forgotten era: cottages and farmhouses that were so broken down now they might as well have been cairns of rock by the roadside. Aside from those, there were no distinctive features to the land. It was a world of endless fields dotted with distant clusters of trees that seemed as small as toys. Perhaps it would have been idyllic here in spring or summer, but right now the sky above was a vast canopy of gray-black clouds that seemed to be drizzling darkness.

She was about halfway there when she made a decision and pulled over.

She got out of the car and was immediately shocked by the coldness of the wind. The hedgerow beside her was shivering from the force of it. But if she was going to go through with this meeting, there was something else she needed to do first. So she took a deep breath, turned her back to the wind, and then switched on her phone. There were numerous voice mail messages waiting for her. She scrolled down the list. Most of them were from Sam, but there were several from what she assumed must be the police.

She clicked on the list of contacts and found her husband’s number.

He answered the call immediately.

“Hello?”

Her name must have come up on his screen, and yet there was such desperation in his voice that it was as though he didn’t quite dare to believe it was her. It broke her heart to hear him like that. And to know it was her fault—her responsibility—that he was going through this.

“It’s me,” she said quietly.

“Katie.Oh God.Where are you?”

She looked around. Having relied on the GPS to take her this far, she couldn’t have told him even if she’d wanted to. But, of course, she wouldn’t tell him anyway. That wasn’t why she’d stopped to make this call. She was phoning him because she was scared. Because she needed to tell him something. And most of all, because she wanted to hear his voice again, even if it was for the last time.

Where are you?

“I’m not sure,” she said.

“The police are looking for you.”

“I know.”

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