The Passenger by Daniel Hurst (great book club books TXT) 📕

simply laughs and turns his device around so I can see the photo on the screen.

‘I’m afraid Louise is a little tied up right now,’ he says, and my eyes widen in horror as I see the image of my daughter on the bed with her hands fastened to the bedpost behind her.

18

LOUISE

I’ve promised James I’m not going to scream again, and in turn, he has promised not to gag me again. But I haven’t been able to convince him to untie me from the bedpost, so I’m stuck here as I watch him pacing around the room in front of me while he checks his mobile phone.

I honestly didn’t know what was going to happen when he locked the front door and dragged me towards the bedroom with his hand over my mouth, but I feared the worst when he told me that my mum would die unless I stopped trying to get away from him.

With that ominous warning rattling around in my head, I resisted only slightly as James tied me to my mum’s bed with the cable tie that he took out of his rucksack and wrapped around my wrists.

And there was me believing that he just kept his gym clothes in that bag.

Now I’m stuck here at the mercy of a man I thought I not only loved but could trust, and I’m terrified. What is he going to do to me? What is he going to do to Mum?

Why is this happening to us?

‘James, talk to me, please,’ I say after another unnerving moment of silence has passed.

I have asked him several times to explain his plan to me, but the threat of him gagging me made me give it a rest for a moment. I don’t want him to stop me speaking because then I really will be powerless to do anything. As long as I have my voice, then I have an opportunity to talk him out of whatever he thinks he is going to do, and I believe that is my only chance.

I could try screaming again, but it didn’t do me much good last time. Nobody is at home in the neighbouring flats during the day, so there is no one to hear my cries for help. I know that because I’m home all day, and I barely hear a sound inside this building other than the ones I make. Everybody’s at work, and I used to like that I was the only one who wasn’t. But now I’m wishing that I had had somewhere else to be today because then I wouldn’t have been home when James came around and surprised me.

‘Why are you doing this to me?’ I ask him, battling back tears. ‘I thought you loved me.’

I’m laying it on a little thick, but I did genuinely think we had something special together. I was obviously wrong. Maybe the guys my age aren’t so bad after all. I doubt any of them would have tied me to the bed like this.

But James continues to ignore me and still seems preoccupied with his mobile phone.

‘Who are you waiting for?’ I ask him. ‘Why do you keep looking at your phone?’

‘Just shut up,’ he replies coldly.

‘Not until you tell me what this is about,’ I fire back. ‘Is it my mum? Has she done something?’

James finally looks up from his phone. ‘She hasn’t done anything. But you have.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘This,’ James replies, and he turns and opens the wardrobe behind him. Then he kicks the door to the safe that sits at the bottom of the storage unit, and I feel a wave of nausea because I know what he is after now. The safe is buried beneath a pile of clothes that Mum thinks will stop anybody from finding it should they break in. But James has clearly found it, and I know why, but he is more than happy to remind me.

‘You told me about this safe, remember,’ James says. ‘That’s why you’re now tied up on that bed, and I’m about to open it and take all your money.’

A wave of dread washes over me as he finally tells me what this is all about. Yes, I told him about my mum’s safe a few weeks ago, but so what? He knows I can’t get into it.

Then I figure it out. I can’t open it. But my mum can.

‘What have you done to her?’ I ask, terrified to hear the answer.

‘We haven’t done anything yet,’ James replies. ‘And we won’t, as long as she gives us the code to open this.’

He kicks the door again, and I can see that he is getting more frustrated by the second. That must mean that the plan isn’t going as well as he had hoped so far.

‘Why would she give you the code?’

James suddenly turns back to me with a venomous look. ’To save you,’ he snarls. ‘Or at least you’d better hope she does.’

This can’t be happening. James is using me to blackmail my mum into opening her safe, the safe he only found out about because I blabbed about it to him.

I feel awful for being so careless with what should have been private information.

Mum is never going to forgive me for this one.

‘Where is she? Who is with her? Have you got her tied up somewhere too?’ I ask, afraid not just for my own safety now but for hers as well. She isn’t as strong as me. She must be so afraid. And I’m the one to blame.

‘Calm down. Your mum is fine,’ James tells me. ‘She’s on the train, and she will be back in Brighton soon, just like she told you she would be. But she has to give us the code before she gets home, or you won’t be here when she arrives.’

‘Who is us? Who are you talking about?’

‘My partner,’ James replies with a sly smile, and the sight of it makes me feel sick. I can’t believe