The Trap by Catherine Ryan Howard

Author:Catherine Ryan Howard [Ryan Howard, Catherine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing

PROMISES

The two uniformed Gardaí who had arrived to check the house and take a statement from Lucy about the intruder hadn’t ended up leaving again until well after 3:00 a.m. Chris had left the patio door open a few inches, it turned out, and he had come downstairs to switch off the lights and TV at some point, but there had also been a strange man outside the kitchen window.

They had physical evidence: in his hasty retreat, the shadowman had knocked over one of the pots in the house-plant grave-yard Lucy had been assembling on the ground directly below the window.

Even though she and Chris had checked that everything was locked, and even though he had suggested that they sleep in the same room for the night, or what was left of it—the box room, which still housed the bunk beds Lucy and Nicki had shared when they were kids—Lucy hadn’t been able to fall asleep until long after the sun had started to make its way over the horizon.

She was exhausted, even more so than usual, and not at all in the mood when Chris suggested they go for a drive. But he wouldn’t take no for an answer. He was adamant that she needed to get out, to clear her head, to gulp down some fresh air.

But as they joined the hazy snake of slow-moving cars escaping the city southbound, all Lucy breathed in were hot exhaust fumes. Chris hadn’t said he was heading anywhere in particular, and as the road began to rise, she thought for one crazy moment he was driving her to the scene, to the spot where Lena Paczkowski had reappeared. But he drove past the relevant turn-off and up higher into the hills, choosing the more elevated route at every crossroads, until eventually they found themselves at the peak of a sweeping landscape of rolling, sun-scorched mountains dwarfed beneath a dome of perfect cornflower-blue sky. Even the city was hidden from them up here.

They could’ve been the last two people on earth.

Chris pulled over, parking on the side of the road. He’d had the radio on since they’d left the house, tuned to a station that only used voices to intro songs, read out requests, and promise they’d be back to intro more songs and read out more requests after the break, but when he cut the engine, it died too, plunging them into silence.

“Let’s get out,” he said. “Stretch our legs.”

He did that and, even though Lucy didn’t feel like it, she followed suit. They met at the front of the car, rested themselves side by side against the bonnet.

No longer framed by the parameters of the windscreen, the landscape was even more impressive. Infinite, it seemed. Edgeless and endless.

It started to make Lucy feel a little light-headed. She wasn’t used to this much . . .

This much.

For the last year, she realized now, her world had been steadily, physically shrinking. She rarely went anywhere that wasn’t the cafe, her house, or the supermarket.

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