Darkside_ A Novel - Belinda Bauer [125]
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The killer did come home, although nobody would ever have guessed it.
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Jonas was a fit man, but running through the foot-deep snow was exhausting. His lungs tore at his chest and his heart pounded his ribs like a madman in a cage. His boots and trousers were wet well past his knees and seemed to be made of something that stuck to snow and dragged at his legs every time he tried to lift them to place one foot in front of the other.
Still, he made it across the first field lit only by the stars and a slim moon, his eyes adjusting so well that he even spotted the gap in the hedge that denoted a gate, which he clambered over so fast that his legs got left behind and he dropped face-first into the snow on the other side before getting up and running again.
Despite the snow over uneven ground and the wind that drove the flakes into him, fear made him faster than he'd ever have thought possible and blurred the blizzard so that he was running through a snow globe as it was shaken up. He couldn't tell which way was up, as flakes came at him from everywhere - now in his eyes, now in his ears, now slapping the back of his head like a teacher. The only guide was that bathroom light which - mercifully - he had left on in another time and place he barely even remembered now. It disappeared and jiggled and jerked on the inconstant horizon. If it weren't for that he might have run to Withypool for all the sense of direction he had left in him.
Now and then he saw the tracks he was following, but he didn't really care about them any more. His target was that bathroom window. He didn't care where the killer was going - as long as it wasn't Rose Cottage. As long as it wasn't to Lucy.
Not Lucy! Not Lucy! Not Lucy! The words beat the rhythm of his headlong race across the snow.
He pulled his phone from his pocket and looked at the display but there was no signal. Big shock. He tossed it aside like ballast.
The prints in the snow curved slowly to the right. The gate in the second field was off somewhere to his right and opened on to the lane. He couldn't afford the detour and kept running straight down the hill. He would have to go over the hedge beside Rose Cottage. Or through it.
Either way, it wasn't stopping him.
The hedge loomed, huge and black with its happy icing of snow. Because of his height, Jonas had done high jump at school. He wasn't much good at it but he remembered the basics. He speeded up, turned in at the last moment, and threw himself at the hedge in a not-ungraceful arc. He landed high enough to be suspended there in uncomfortable limbo. He rolled on to his stomach, reaching for anything that would give him purchase, gripping handfuls of branches and thorns, dragging himself across the five-foot expanse, which sagged and dug and snapped under him like cruel water, before dropping to the ground in a heap on the other side, right next to Lucy's Beetle. There was a crunch and he winced as he landed on his torch.
He stood, jerked forward as if to rush into the house, and then stopped and caught his breath. The killer could be there. He couldn't just rush in. He needed to think. He couldn't afford to screw this up. Lucy needed him. Now more than ever.
He couldn't fall apart on her now.
The front door was closed but unlocked. His fault. His fault. Leave it open for people so Lucy wouldn't have to keep getting up. This was the countryside; his home village. They'd felt so safe! Leaving the door unlocked had become a dangerous habit, and a bedtime oversight.
He sucked air into his burning lungs and pushed open the door.
Everything was the same.
He peered into the dark front room but the TV was off, although the fire still burned softly behind the guard.
No light in the kitchen. He crossed quietly to it. It was empty, and the washing machine hummed.
Up the dark stairs, pausing