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

should I give in so easily?’ I fire back, and the man shrugs.

‘I don’t know. Maybe because my partner is going to gut your daughter like a fish if you don’t.’

I know it’s a risky strategy, but I decide to try it. I’m going to call his bluff. At least if I can distract him, he might forget about his phone for a minute.

‘I don’t think he has it in him,’ I say, doing my best to stay calm as I speak. ‘I think the pair of you are all talk.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. I think you believed that me and my daughter would be easy marks and just roll over and give you what you wanted. But we aren’t like that. We’re fighters. We’ve never had anything given to us. We’ve had to scrap for everything we have. Our home. Our money. Our lives.’

‘Please,’ he says, waving his hand in the air dismissively. ‘If you’re going to try to convince me that you two are anything more than just a couple of average women living in an average town, then you can forget about it.’

I’m so angry, and I wish I could let him know who I really was and what I have done. Maybe then he would think twice about what he is doing. But I can’t. It would be too dangerous to do that. But then again, he’s going to find out anyway if I don’t do something soon.

‘I want you to listen to me now,’ I say, sitting forward in my seat. ‘I want you to realise that you are getting yourself involved in something much bigger than you realise. This isn’t just about money. It’s more than that.’

‘And I want you to realise that I don’t care,’ he replies with a shrug.

‘You will do. Trust me. If you open that safe, you will be making a big mistake.’

‘Why is that?’

‘I’ve already proven to you that there are some things about me that you didn’t know.’

‘And?’

‘So what else is there that I might be hiding? What else have you missed in all the time you were watching me?’

I let him dwell on that for a moment until he ultimately gives up.

‘What?’ he asks, clearly frustrated.

But this is what I want. I need him to lose his air of calm because if I can get him on edge, he is more likely to make a mistake that gives me a chance to get out of this.

‘That’s my point,’ I say. ‘You have no idea. You can’t possibly fathom what I have done in my past to get to this point, nor can you fathom what I am willing to do to protect what I have. So with that in mind, why don’t you just walk away? Before it’s too late.’

He holds eye contact with me as he processes what I have just said, and I imagine he is trying to see if I will break first, but I don’t. I stare right back and let him know that I’m not afraid of him. Rather, he should be the one who is afraid of me.

It’s a pleasant surprise when he is the one who looks away, and he does so to check his watch again. Then he unlocks his phone again.

‘What are you doing?’ I ask.

‘You’ll see,’ he says, putting his mobile to his ear.

I look out of the window at the green fields rushing by as the train continues hurtling towards the coast. We’re not that far away now, and I usually feel optimistic when we reach this point because the end of my day is almost in sight.

But not today.

‘James, we’re going to have to speed things up a little here,’ he says into his phone. ‘Take off one of her toes.’

He didn’t really say that, did he?

‘No!’ I cry, lunging across the table towards him. But he ducks out of the way and manages to keep the phone to his ear.

‘Don’t hurt her! Please!’ I beg, terrified now that I have played this all wrong, and my daughter is going to pay for it.

‘What’s the code?’ he asks me again as I continue to try to grab his mobile but to no avail.

‘Leave her alone! Please!’

He shakes his head. ‘He’s just gone getting a knife from your kitchen,’ he tells me with an evil grin on his face.

‘No. Please!’ I beg, but I think I’m too late when he puts his phone on speaker and tells me to listen to what’s happening back at my flat.

That’s when I hear Louise’s screams from the other end of the line.

26

LOUISE

‘No! Please!’ I cry as James holds his mobile out towards me with one hand while moving the knife in his other hand in the direction of my feet. ‘Stop it! Please, I’m begging you!’

I wriggle on the bed and do my best to keep my feet away from the edge of the blade, but there’s only so much I can do with my hands tied above my head.

‘Help me! Help!’

James puts the phone down on the bed as he grabs my left foot and brings the knife nearer, and I realise I’m not going to be able to prevent this. The fact he has put this whole awful ordeal on speakerphone so my mum can presumably listen in makes it even worse.

‘You’re sick!’ I hiss at the man at the bottom of the bed as he puts the knife to my skin, but it’s going to happen now whatever I do, so I close my eyes and wait for the pain to come. Hopefully, it won’t be as bad as I imagine it to be. But he’s going to cut one of my toes off.

How can it not be bad?

I grit my teeth and keep my eyes clamped shut to avoid the sight of the blood spurting across the bottom of the bed, but then nothing happens.

There’s no pain. There’s no blood. When I open my eyes, I see that there’s not even a knife by my feet