Vanished by James Delargy (free novel 24 TXT) 📕

dropkicks at the end of the bar looking for a reaction. Failing to get one, she headed for the door.

‘Here’s my number,’ said Matty, passing her a thin matchbook, the name and number of the pub written in green on a grey background. Basic.

Emmaline looked inside. There was only a sliver of six grey-topped matches inside. ‘There’s no number.’

Matty took another sip and smiled. ‘Just call the pub. I’m usually here.’

Emmaline smiled and slipped the book into her pocket.

20

Naiyana

Naiyana searched from building to building, calling out for her son but finding the loneliest reply of all. Silence.

Desperation crept in. She checked her phone. Out of habit. She knew she had no signal to call Lorcan or the police.

Leaving one building, she caught a flash of something up ahead. Possibly a figure, possibly not. Ignoring the voices that warned her against following the mysterious figure, she did, stumbling over broken fences and rubble buried in the dirt.

Reaching the house, the figure had disappeared from sight, so she followed her instinct on where it had gone. Where Dylan had gone.

She kept calling out. Still Dylan didn’t return her pleas. He was punishing her and maybe she deserved it. She had been ignoring him while she played on her phone and now it was his turn for a game. A cruel game.

It was only a shortness of breath that made her pause, leaning on a fence that bent under her weight but resisted just enough to support her. She looked around again. The entire town seemed to be holding its breath, waiting for her next move, as if playing hide and seek too.

Squeezing her eyes shut she tried to block everything out. She took a deep, arid breath that almost choked her. It rebooted her senses. She flashed open her eyes. There had been no figure. And even if there was, it wasn’t Dylan. A six-year-old boy couldn’t outrun her.

Sucking in more air she decided to return to the house. Hopefully Lorcan had returned. They could search together. Plan and search. She felt so desperate she didn’t even care that she needed Lorcan. She was independent and strong but fear was fear. And fear was selfish. It was always better to wade through deep shit with a partner in tow.

Back at the house, there was no sign of their white Toyota. She fought the crush of disappointment as she stepped inside the front door. She pondered her next move. Walking across the scrub to Hurton to get a signal seemed like folly. But viable folly. Proactive folly.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the noise. Not the low rumbling that plagued them at night but something else. A rustling. Like an animal hunting for food. It was coming from inside the house. Maybe the figure in town was real. Not human but animal. Coming from the bedrooms. An insistent growl, angry or hungry. She grabbed a knife from the kitchen. To defend herself. To attack.

She crept down the hallway trying to keep quiet but the old floorboards made it impossible. The noise had switched from rustling growl to a squeak. A litany of all the savage animals it might be flashed through her head, but none of them squeaked. What squeaked in the desert?

Easing open their bedroom door she could immediately see that it was empty, the beds still a mess from this morning, the evening sun poking through the simple wooden shutters that Lorcan had erected to keep the light out.

There was one room left. As she approached Dylan’s door she prepared herself for anything. Four legs, two legs, hairy, scaly, wild.

She pushed the door open. What she found made her drop the knife, narrowly missing her foot as it embedded in the floorboards. Dylan was in bed, his eyes closed but thrashing around as if in the midst of a nightmare, the bed squeaking in pain as his weight shifted across the worn springs.

Naiyana sat on the edge of it and touched his forehead. He wasn’t feverish at least. Just a tired boy catching up on the sleep he wasn’t getting at night. She sat there until the darkness swamped them both, quick and oppressive. Lorcan still wasn’t back. Her sense of apprehension switched from her son to her husband. Where was he?

21

Lorcan

He hadn’t lasted long in the pub. The stares and the whispers that swirled around the musty air were too much. A few galoots had asked outright who he was and what he was doing but he had ignored them. An older woman with silver hair had even attempted to chat him up but it had all seemed like one big joke being played at his expense. So he had bought himself a few tinnies and found a remote spot between Kallayee and Hurton to drink them in peace, the ute looking out over a deep gorge, something he wanted to come out and explore in the full light of day.

As he chucked another empty into the scrub, his thoughts turned to his life and what he – they – were doing here. He had hoped it would bring them all together. Striving for a common goal. A surfeit of space and freedom without the unrelenting pressure of work. But as far as he had run, it was still on his mind. What he had done. Whether it had been right. Whether it had been necessary. It had burnt a lot of bridges and brought a lot of heat. He had torn up his career for the sake of some petty revenge. Destroying companies seemed ingrained in the family DNA, like one giant succubus, feeding off despair.

They would be looking for him. They had previous in hunting people down which he had only learned at the tribunal. These were not people to mess with. Crooks. Violent crooks. But what was done was done. No turning back. No contact. But that was a fallacy. There was always contact. While they still had their mobile