Wrong Time, Wrong Place by Simon Kernick Read Free Book Online Page A

her feet.
    Then, finally, everything went black.

10
    SLOWLY, EVER SO slowly, Ash’s eyes opened.
    For a few seconds she had no idea where she was, just this vague feeling that she’d had a dark and brutal dream in which her beloved Nick had been murdered. Then, as she raised her head from where it had been face down in foul-smelling mud, and felt her whole body aching, she remembered what had happened, and her heart sank.
    Rubbing mud from her eyes, she carefully glanced round. Sunlight dappled through the trees, and she was forced to squint against it. By the sun’s low angle she guessed it was fairly early in the morning.
    She rolled round on to her back with a groan and saw that water was lapping at her hiking shoes. She was lying next to a fast-flowing river, with a cliff stretching up on the other side. The river must have carried her along for God knows how far before depositing her here in a flat clearing.
    As she slowly sat up, Ash felt a rush ofsickness that immediately set off a bout of shivering. She was in a bad way. But at least she was alive. Somehow, against all the odds, she’d made it. And somehow they hadn’t found her, even though she must have been unconscious for hours.
    Ash got to her feet, cold and sick but determined not to break down and cry over what had happened to Nick. Which was when she remembered that she’d killed one of them herself. Killed him . It was hard to accept that she, Ash, a primary school teacher by trade who hadn’t had a fight since she was thirteen years old (with Chloe Baxter about a boy in the dinner queue), had beaten a man so badly that his brains had come out. Jesus. It made her want to throw up.
    Pulling a thick knot of matted hair out of her eyes, she staggered through the trees. How on earth was she ever going to explain what had happened the previous night to anyone? She still wasn’t sure why she, Nick and the others had been targeted. But at least now that it was daytime, she felt less scared. There was something about the sunshine that lifted her spirits.
    The woods were empty and filled with the sound of birdsong. It was a real contrast to the previous night. No baying of hounds, or screamsof dying friends. She thought about Tracy then. Poor, frightened Tracy caught in a metal trap and left to die alone.
    ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ Ash told herself. ‘You did what you had to do.’
    Even so, it didn’t make her feel any better.
    The forest began to thin out, and the sunshine became brighter ahead. Ash sped up, telling herself that soon she’d be able to rest, that it wouldn’t be much longer before she found someone. Just one more big effort and this would all be over.
    Suddenly the trees parted in front of her and she was standing on a narrow pot-holed road. On the other side was an overgrown field that stretched up towards another pine-covered hill.
    She looked down, never so pleased to see tarmac in her life. It was a sign, however minor, of life – something she felt she’d left behind. It filled her with a renewed sense of hope.
    She looked left and saw a stone cottage on the corner thirty metres away. Smoke rose from its chimney, and a battered old Land Rover sat on its dirt driveway.
    A new emotion mixed with the hope, one she’d become used to in the last twelve hours. Fear. This could be where the men hunting her lived. They had to live somewhere, and it waslikely to be close by. Had the girl, the one who’d caused them so much trouble, escaped from here? If she had, it would explain why they’d been so keen to silence Ash and the others, to prevent them from reporting what they’d seen to the police and leading them back here.
    She took a deep breath, trying to work out what to do. The problem was she had no idea where she was. She reached into her jeans pocket and pulled out her mobile, hoping for a reception, but it wouldn’t even turn on. The water had ruined it.
    Standing in the road shivering, Ash felt utterly drained of energy.