Page 117 of The Man Made of Smoke

Please, please, please …

Aspinall nods to himself.

He discards the blackjack and picks up something from the ground beside him. John squints, trying to make out what it is—and feels a lurch of horror when he does: a knife, glinting briefly in the light for a second. Then Aspinall stands up, his free hand gripping Daniel’s wrist, and he begins pulling his body down the compound.

Down toward where John is crouching.

Three empty pens between them.

John watches helplessly as Aspinall passes the first, dragging Daniel behind him. Coming closer. He seems so strong, so effortless. It’s horrifying to see his son’s body being pulled across the ground like dead weight, but there’s a deeper sense of horror too—

Past the second pen.

—because John knows that the three of them—Sarah, him, Daniel—are the last remaining victims in Aspinall’s chain. And there’s only one possible reason why Aspinall needs Daniel to be alive. When he kills John and Sarah, he wants Daniel to be aware of what’s happening. He wants him to see and feel every second of it, and—

Past the third pen.

Brace yourself, John tells himself.

You’ll only have one chance.

Aspinall reaches the entrance to his pen. John wants to hold his breath but knows that he’ll faint if he does. All he can do is hope. And Aspinall doesn’t turn his head. He doesn’t care; he doesn’t see. He just keeps going, dragging Daniel behind him, focused on the next pen along. John knows there will only be a second before the man sees the ragged hole in the ground where the post once was. Before he realizes the pen is empty.

He forces himself to his feet.

He only managed to move a little way from his prison before collapsing, and he’s so much weaker now, but he tries to gather some last trace ofstrength inside himself. Stumbles out of the pen, his vision blurry, the farm off-kilter and turning around him. Aspinall is still holding both the knife and Daniel’s wrist, staring into the next enclosure, caught in that split second between seeing and understanding that offers John his only chance.

Come on, old man. Keep going.

Aspinall starts to turn—

And John launches himself at him.

Thirty-Six

I opened my eyes.

All I could see was darkness and dusty ground and shadows that stretched out at odd angles. What had happened? Everything was blurry and strange. It reminded me of ducking my head beneath the surface of a swimming pool on sports day. The cheering from the stands suddenly muted and dulled; my heartbeat in my ears; and then all that noise returning, incomprehensible for a second, as I broke back up into the air to take a breath.

I rolled onto all fours and vomited into the dirt.

Broken fragments of memory slotted together in my mind.

The farm.

Aspinall.

Sarah.

Panic flared as I remembered where I was and what I was doing here. My right hand was pressed to the ground. I noticed there were shadows playing over it, and then I heard the sound of fighting from beside me to the right.

I turned my head.

Two people were wrestling on the ground a bare couple of meters away. At first, that was all I could make out, because their bodies wereonly half illuminated by the lights, and they were rolling this way and that. Puffs of dust were rising from the ground, and the shadows spilled out like fingers opening and closing against the dirt. One of the men suddenly shouted out in pain, and a moment later the light caught Craig Aspinall’s face, now sitting astride the other figure.

Aspinall pulled the knife out of wherever it had been stuck in the man beneath him, then raised it and brought it down with a thud into the front of his shoulder. The impact caused the other man to lift his head, and when his face caught the light too, I realized it was my father.

Aspinall pulled the knife out and raised it again, his free hand gripping hold of my father’s hair, turning his head to hold the target steady.

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