Run Away With Me : A fast-paced psychological thriller by Daniel Hurst (ebook reader ink txt) 📕

out of this situation, but he looks as helpless as I feel. This has clearly been a long time in the planning, and now we are simply pawns in whatever game Adam and Gemma are playing.

I watch as the conspiring pair head for the staircase, and I wonder how long they are going to make us sit and suffer like this. It seems like it will be a while longer yet because they both climb the stairs and disappear from view, leaving me and my fellow prisoner in silence below them.

As we both struggle against our restraints again, I wonder what they could be doing up there.

But it’s not long until I get my answer.

Bradley and I exchange a disbelieving glance as we listen to the two people making love right above our heads.

47

ADAM

Like most parts of this plan, the lovemaking was Gemma’s idea. But I’m not complaining. Anything to infuriate my wife even more before she dies is fine by me. But now that is over with, it’s time to finish this.

‘This looks perfect,’ I say to Gemma as I look around the bedroom, and I’m not exaggerating. The sight of my wife and her lover lying unconscious on the bed is truly a sight to behold.

They are currently sedated by the chloroform, but that is only for the short term. In the long term, it will be something else that prevents them from ever waking up again.

All of their restraints have been removed, along with the majority of their clothing, and now the two mostly naked adulterers are lying still beneath the duvet looking as if they are sleeping off a very energetic bout of lovemaking.

I have removed all of my belongings from the room, as well as most of Laura’s items, although I have left her a few things. But I want it to look like she was only planning on being up here a few hours rather than a few days.

I have to admit, I’m enjoying this even more than I thought I would. Seeing the look on Laura’s face when I told her that I knew all about her affair and the baby’s real father was priceless and just reward for keeping my emotions in check about her infidelity until tonight. I also enjoyed seeing her reaction to the presence of Gemma, and we have made it clear that we are just as capable as getting up to the kind of things that Laura and Bradley did so many times. But now it’s time to put the unlucky couple out of their misery.

I make a final sweep of the bedroom to make sure there is no incriminating evidence on my behalf, but all seems okay. Besides, Gemma has already assured me that it is.

Feeling confident that I have got everything, I head for the bedroom door. As soon as I make it downstairs, I drop my belongings from the bedroom into my rucksack, before checking that there is nothing else down here that could be left behind that belongs to me.

When I am satisfied that there isn’t then I go to leave, but not before opening the fridge and removing the two bottles of beer that I have saved in there for this very moment. Gemma and I will enjoy these as we sit in my car by the roadside not too far from here and toast to a job well done and I can’t wait. But before the bottlecaps can be popped, there is one more job to tick off.

The goal here is to make it look like the two doomed lovers ran away to this cottage to spend some time together only to succumb to the poisonous fumes from a carbon monoxide leak and die together in the upstairs bedroom. Their ill-fated affair will explain both of their absences, and me and Bradley’s wife will eventually receive a sombre visit from a police officer when their bodies are eventually discovered the next time my sister makes a trip to this cottage for a weekend away, whenever that may be.

I feel bad that my sibling will have to be the one that discovers them, but it’s her property so it can’t be anybody else that does it. It will be a nasty shock for her I’m sure, but she will get it over it in time, just like I will have to get over the “news” of my wife going to the cottage to meet another man before ultimately passing away and leaving me a broken-hearted widow.

The idea is to make it seem like Laura and Bradley have been using my sister’s cottage as the meeting place for an affair that has been going on for a while. They would have planned to visit the cottage as usual and return to their lives straight after, but the fumes consumed them and left them lying dead for days, causing their worried partners to report each of them as missing, whilst unaware that they were actually together.

My visit to the police station yesterday to inform the police that I had discovered Laura’s affair with Bradley, and recognised his photo in the newspaper, was done to further cement this story in their minds and leave little room for doubt about what really happened.

Nobody will suspect that I was involved in their deaths, and even if they did, there will be no evidence to back it up. Laura and Bradley were carrying on an affair. They were using my sister’s cottage for their meet-ups. They got unlucky with the monoxide leak. They died.

End of story.

With them out of the way, it will leave me free to start a new life with Gemma in good time, once a respectable period of mourning has passed. Nobody will begrudge me a little bit of happiness after what I have been through, and when it comes time for me and the policewoman to tie the knot, we will do so with the knowledge that we are already bonded by something