The Hunter's Prayer by Kevin Wignall Read Free Book Online Page B

the woman. He walked back then, and for the second time his ears tricked him into thinking she’d quietened. But it was still there, an incoherent wailing, growing louder, more intense.
    And there was nothing he could do to help. He could keep Ella Hatto alive, he could kill for her, but he could offer no comfort, no compassion. He didn’t have those things within him, and it made his skin crawl to stand there in earshot of her distress because it exposed him for who he was. He was a man with a gun, nothing more, and he didn’t even want to be that.

Chapter Five
    S he puzzled over the skirt through the first fuzzy moments of wakefulness. She seemed to be wearing a long skirt, one she didn’t recognize. She was slouched awkwardly and she felt if she moved she’d be able to see it properly and she’d understand.
    Chris was holding her, though, and the train was rocking gently and she didn’t want to move. And then from the corner of her eye she saw someone else in the compartment with them, and then recognition: Lucas.
    She jumped up in the seat, startled, full of dread. Chris released her. Lucas looked up from the book he was reading, curious perhaps, no more than that. She was about to say she’d had the most dreadful dream but her conscious thoughts had caught up with her.
    Her family was dead. Lucas had told her. Men like those who’d tried to kill her had gone to their home and killed her parents, killed Ben. The tears started to form again, her throat tightening, but she fought clear of it, focusing on the moment.
    ‘How do you feel?’ She looked across at Lucas but the question hadn’t been his. He was already reading again and she was puzzled as she looked at him, trying to work out if he was scared of her emotions, his own, anybody’s, or if he just didn’t feel anything at all.
    There had been moments in the last twenty-four hours when she’d thought there had to be something more to him, softer depths. That morning with Chris, the conversation she’d overheard from the bathroom, and just the way he was seeing them through this—it all gave the impression that they were more than just a job to him.
    But looking at him now she had her doubts. He wasn’t like they were. It didn’t matter anyway; Lucas didn’t matter—not against being alone, not against half of who she was being erased like that.
    And she still couldn’t find a way to register that fact. It was too big, too final. How could they be gone? How could Ben not be there? It seemed so unreal that she began to speculate on the ways in which Lucas could have been mistaken. Or possibly he was lying—like Chris had said, they didn’t really know who he was or that her dad had sent him.
    ‘Ella? How do you feel?’ Chris’s face and that question and she knew it was true. They were dead. She’d cried herself to exhaustion, her jaw aching still, and yet even now she felt like she didn’t have the space, the distance, the facts, any of the things she needed to come to terms with it.
    ‘I don’t know,’ she said, finally answering him, and her own voice sounded strange, like she was underwater, or lost in some heart-sickening dream.
    ‘I went and got some drinks. Do you want some? Coke? Water?’
    ‘Water, please.’ He handed her the bottle. The water was warm but she took a couple of mouthfuls, then more as she realized how dry her throat was.
    At first she thought it was getting dark but looking out of the window, she saw the sky was overcast and that the landscape they were passing through was alpine and damp.
    ‘Are we in Switzerland?’
    Lucas looked away from his book long enough to check his watch but didn’t answer.
    ‘You’ve been asleep for a few hours,’ said Chris.
    ‘If you want to freshen up you should do it now. We’ll be there soon and then it’s about a thirty-minute drive.’
    ‘Where are we going?’ She had nowhere to go, nothing to return to, a truth that should have torn her again but all her pain was