Road Kill by Zoe Sharp Read Free Book Online Page A

the spine slashing up, hard, onto the inner bone of his right elbow, then jabbed again on the backstroke, this time to the collection of nerves centred in his solar plexus. If it had been a sword I was holding, I would have run him through.
     
    As it was, my attacker went down with a crash, overturning a chair. One of the dogs – probably Beezer – finally began to bark behind the kitchen door, frenzied little yaps that sounded neither big nor menacing. More’s the pity.
     
    I flicked on the lights in the hallway and found that my intruder was a young man with longish dark hair, wearing a T-shirt and bike leather trousers. He’d been carrying a backpack that he’d dropped when he’d fallen and he was currently trying to clutch at all the points I’d hit with the hand that still worked. I waited until he had the breath to speak. At least I’d brought something to read.
     
    “Fuck me,” he gasped eventually. It was more of an exclamation than an instruction. There was the faintest trace of an Irish lilt to his voice and something about his face was familiar, but I couldn’t place him. Certainly not enough to be able to justify him creeping about in Jacob and Clare’s house in the middle of the night, that’s for sure.
     
    “Who are you?” I said.
     
    “Fuck that!” he countered hotly. “Who the hell are you ?”
     
    “If you’d just answer the question,” I said mildly, rolling the magazine up again, “we’d get along a lot better.”
     
    “You could be anyone,” he said, wary, rubbing at his throat and not taking his eyes off what I was doing with my hands. “I’m not telling you anything until I know what the hell you’re doing here.”
     
    I sighed. If there was one thing my time in the States had taught me, it was how to communicate with stroppy teenagers in terms they’d understand. This one looked twenty at a push, but I’d be willing to bet he wouldn’t be allowed into a nightclub without having to show his ID.
     
    “Tell me what I want to know,” I said, conversational, leaning over him, “or I’ll hit you again.”
     
    He reared back, shocked, then a gleam of laughter appeared and a big grin broke through his natural mistrust. His shoulders came down a fraction.
     
    “Well if you’re a burglar, you’re the prettiest thief I’ve seen in a long time,” he said. “OK. My name’s Jamie – Jamie Nash.”
     
    “Nash?” I repeated, confused. Jacob’s name was Nash. “But—”
     
    He nodded. “That’s right,” he said. “Jacob’s my dad.”
     
    ***
     
    I put the coffee down on the kitchen table in front of Jamie and sat opposite, picking up my own cup. He smiled in thanks and, now I knew the connection, I could see Jacob’s smile there, Jacob’s eyes.
     
    The family resemblance was clear, but Jacob had never mentioned having any children. He rarely talked about his ill-fated marriage to Isobel but I suppose it wouldn’t have been kind to do so in front of Clare.
     
    “How’s the arm?” I asked.
     
    “I may play the piano again,” he said, rueful, flexing it gingerly, “but I wouldn’t bet on it. Where did you learn to hit people like that? With a rolled up magazine, for Christ’s sake.”
     
    “Self-defence classes,” I said shortly and didn’t add that I’d been the one teaching them. “It means I’m classed as having had training and if I’d beaten you up with a chair leg they’d have thrown the book at me.” I smiled at him as I took a sip of coffee. “This way you’re the one who gets laughed out of court.”
     
    He snorted. “Remind me never to ask you to housetrain a puppy,” he said. “You’d beat the poor little bastard to death inside the first week.”
     
    “So you don’t know whereabouts in Ireland your dad might be?” I asked.
     
    He’d just taken a drink of his own coffee and he shook his head vigorously and swallowed before he spoke. “Didn’t even know he was away,” he said. “Ironic, isn’t it? He’s