Road Kill by Zoe Sharp Read Free Book Online Page B

over there and I’m over here.”
     
    Beezer jumped up onto Jamie’s lap and bounced up and down a few times, trying to lick his chin. He stared at the terrier without really seeing her, ruffling her ears in a reflex gesture. “Shit this is bad,” he muttered. He glanced at me with an almost fearful curiosity. “About Clare, I mean. How is she?”
     
    I repeated my father’s diagnosis, such as it was. “Do you know her well?”
     
    His gaze passed over me briefly, then slid away. “Not really,” he said with an awkward shrug. “I haven’t really seen that much of Dad since he and Mum split up.”
     
    Difficult to know how he’d be expected to feel about his father’s girlfriend, I suppose. Particularly as she was far closer to Jamie’s age than to Jacob’s.
     
    I’d told him only the bare bones of the story. That Jacob was away somewhere in Ireland and that Clare had been in a bike accident in which another biker had also died. I didn’t tell him the rumours about what might or might not have been going on between Clare and Slick. As it was he’d taken the news in pale silence.
     
    “So,” I said, sitting back. “Your turn. What were you doing breaking in to your father’s house at half-two in the morning?”
     
    Jamie grinned. “Got in to Heysham earlier this evening and went round the town with a few mates after we got off the boat,” he said. “Then—”
     
    “Boat?”
     
    “Ferry,” he explained. “From Ireland.” And when I still looked blank he added, “That’s where my mother’s family hail from, so that’s where we went back to. Just outside Coleraine. In the north.”
     
    I reached for my coffee cup again and waved him on.
     
    He shrugged again, still fussing with the terrier. “Well, I was supposed to be meeting someone but they didn’t turn up,” he said, pulling a face, “so then I didn’t have any place to stay.”
     
    A girl , I surmised. And he’d been hoping to get lucky . “And?”
     
    “And nothing,” he said with the same kind of easy smile that Jacob was master of. “I suppose I just thought why should I shell out for a hotel when my dad’s place was just up the road, so I thought maybe I’d come and crash here.”
     
    He hesitated, possibly realising that use of the word “crash” was not the best choice in these circumstances.
     
    “So you bypassed the drive alarm and broke in through the study window,” I said dryly, draining my coffee cup and standing. “Don’t they have doorbells in Ireland?”
     
    “I didn’t want to wake anyone,” he said, smiling easily. “I helped Dad dig that sensor in one summer when I was about ten. And the study window’s always had a dodgy catch on it.” He tipped the terrier back onto the floor and got to his feet, too.
     
    “Besides,” he added, following me out into the hallway, “when I saw the car and the bikes were all here I wasn’t expecting them to be away – or that I’d be jumped by Lara bloody Croft on the way in.”
     
    I led the way upstairs, turning off lights as we went. At the airing cupboard on the landing I dug out sheets and pillows and thrust them into Jamie’s arms, ignoring his surprised expression. I think he was probably hoping I’d offer to make the bed up for him. His mother, I reckoned, had a lot to answer for.
     
    Jamie made straight for the second room on the left, pushing open the door and stepping inside before I could stop him.
     
    “Erm, Jamie,” I called sharply. He stopped. “That’s where I’m sleeping and I’m afraid you aren’t invited.”
     
    He cocked his head in my direction, taking in my rumpled shirt and jeans in a single sweeping glance that seemed to suggest he was giving me serious consideration. “Oh well, if you’re sure,” he murmured, backing out. “Although, as that used to be my room, technically speaking I’m not the one who’s in the wrong bed.”
     
    For a moment I considered offering to move, but he was already grabbing