The Secret Path by Karen Swan (summer beach reads TXT) 📕

Now when she mentioned money, the numbers going up in ten-thousand-dollar increments, he just seemed to look at her with pity.

She knew she had to get away from him, and she knew it had to be today, before she grew weaker. She hadn’t eaten enough in the past week to sustain full-day treks in smothering temperatures; her feet were rubbed raw and in this weakening state, she was becoming more vulnerable to accident or infection the longer she was out here. She had no idea how long he intended to keep her here for.

Did her family know yet what had happened to her? Surely they must do. She couldn’t bear to think about it. Her mother would instantly dissolve into a puddle of hysteria. Miles would freak out but in a different way. As for her father . . . it would be his worst nightmare come true. He had always done his best to shield them from the harsh realities that came with wealth such as theirs; he had tried to give them normality; he had even prepared them for just such an eventuality. ‘Unfortunately, what we’ve got makes us targets,’ he had explained when they were barely teenagers, just as several members of the SAS walked in to the drawing room. But was it really possible to anticipate this? Her kidnapper was a sixty-something tribesman in a blanket, sitting on a tree stump, whittling a stick. Take them out of the jungle setting and in any other scenario, he’d be far more at risk from her than the other way round.

‘So . . .’ she said, putting down the coconut. ‘What now?’

He slipped the bone knife and the stick carving into the waistband of his trousers, then got up and carefully, almost reverentially, picked up the stones from the oval and put them in the bag. He took his walking stick from its place propped against a branch and finally, he looked at her.

‘Now we walk.’

The beauty was lost on her. Twenty thousand different shades of green, monkeys looping through the trees, exotically coloured birds perching on branches and chattering loudly as they passed by . . . She didn’t care. It was raining again (although no banana-leaf umbrellas were offered this time), the temperatures soaring, the relentless din grating, air so thick she could bite down on it. She longed for her bedroom in London, the dim light as the louvred shutters were closed, the silky smoothness of her sheets, the puffiness of her duvet and firm but yielding mattress . . . A bubble bath in the room next door, the scent of rose otto oil delicately tracing the cool air, a chilled glass of fizzing champagne, music on low, dinner cooking, Alex moving about in the kitchen . . .

Was she hallucinating? Or just dreaming? Would she ever get back to it? It felt like an impossible task. She couldn’t imagine ever getting out of here, stepping away from the towering trees, seeing an open sky again. How much had changed in under a week? A little girl had died, a little boy had gone unsaved and it was her life in London that felt like the paradise escape now, not this.

Wait.

Her feet stopped moving as she caught up with the mental mistake.

Alex? She had meant Rory.

Rory.

She was just confused. And soaked. And tired.

She resumed walking, falling into autopilot.

Rory.

Rory in the kitchen.

Wearing just his jeans, the tea towel tucked into the waistband, a leaf in his brown hair as he pulled the chicken pie out of the oven . . .

She stopped again, raindrops falling from the end of her nose, her hair. Her mind was playing tricks on her. She closed her eyes and felt his lips press against hers, so vivid, almost real . . . Hate me, then. All this had happened because she had tried to get away from him, deny a truth that was plain to them both. If she had just stayed . . .

She watched William walk on ahead, pulling further away with each step and it occurred to her – for the first time – that she could just . . . turn around. He didn’t have a gun to her head. She could simply walk in the opposite direction and go back the way they’d come. He walked mile after mile after mile without ever turning around to check on her; she could be ten miles away before he even noticed she had gone. Sure, she would be lost within ten metres, but what did that matter? She had no idea where they were heading to anyway. And what was he going to do? Stop her with that little bone knife?

She glanced behind her and then ahead again.

‘I wouldn’t.’

Tears gathered in her eyes, frustration and fury marbling in her blood as she saw William had stopped and was watching her. He hadn’t so much as twitched in her direction in over two days of walking, and yet the first time she even thought about turning around, he caught her?

‘Why the hell not? I’m not scared of you!’ she yelled, her self-control snapping in half finally. ‘I’m not your bloody prisoner! And you’re not my captor! You can’t make me do a damn thing!’

He didn’t reply, the benign villain with a carry-bag of stones and a walking stick. He just stood there for a few moments, then turned around and continued on his way. Almost as though he agreed with her. He couldn’t make her.

Tara’s mouth opened in disbelief. That was it? He was going to leave her there? ‘What do you even want?’ she cried after him. ‘Tell me! Tell me what you want!’

But he didn’t turn back and she watched as the leaves and branches began to flutter back into place after him, steadily taking him from her sights in chunks. Within moments he was gone. Just like that.

She turned on the spot – breath held, heart clattering – as she felt the same overwhelming, terrifying aloneness she had felt on the canoe, when the river had rushed powerfully beneath her.

With a sob, she broke into a run after him. ‘William!’ she cried, rushing blindly past the