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

We will be bonded by what we did here tonight, and that is much longer lasting than some simple marital vows.

Gemma would never hurt me like Laura did, and I would never do that to her either. Why would either of us risk it? We both know what each other is capable of now. We daren’t break each other’s hearts lest we end up six feet under like the two unfortunate souls in this cottage.

As I look down at the unconscious couple on the bed, I say a silent goodbye to my current wife and then turn to walk out of the door with my future one.

Goodbye, Laura.

Sleep tight.

And good riddance. 

48

ADAM

It’s 3 am by the time I arrive back at the house I share with my wife. Of course, I am alone as I walk through the front door, and I better get used to it. Laura will never be here again.

She may already have taken her last breath in that cottage.

After leaving Laura and Bradley under the duvet in the bedroom, Gemma and I worked on switching out the throat plate above the fireplace downstairs so that it wouldn’t properly disperse the fumes up the cottage chimney when the fire was on. Swapping the clean and efficient throat plate for a congested one we had created especially for tonight, we made sure the fumes would begin to build up inside the cottage before we made our exit. The miniature carbon monoxide alarm that started to sound several minutes after we had turned the fire on gave us the proof that we needed that the fumes were starting to spread dangerously around the cottage.

Leaving the unconscious couple upstairs and Bradley’s car parked outside, Gemma and I made our way back to the city in my vehicle, again using only the back roads to avoid any cameras. All the painstaking plotting of a route by my accomplice in the police has paid dividends, and we can rest assured that we have not been seen.

I drove Gemma back to her place before I returned home and now I am finally ready to crawl into my bed and rest, safe in the knowledge that Laura and her betrayals are a thing of the past.

I’m not sure how long it will be until my sister visits the cottage again. It could be weeks. It could even be months. No matter. In that time, the police will continue to search for the missing pair. There will be theories, there will be speculation, and there will likely be many more visits from the police before the truth comes out. But when it does, there will be no suspicions being thrown in my direction. It will just be seen as a terrible incident, a pregnant woman and her lover killed as they slept by the hazardous fumes from the faulty fireplace, and while they should never have been in that cottage together cheating on their partners in the first place, nobody would have wished such an untimely death on them.

Nobody except me.

I walk into my kitchen and toss my car keys onto the side before opening the fridge and going in search of another beer. It’s not long since Gemma and I enjoyed a little drink as we drove home from the cottage, celebrating our evening’s work and toasting to a great future ahead. But I fancy another drink right now.

Fortunately, I manage to locate a couple of bottles at the back of the fridge, and I take them both out before opening them and heading for the stairs. The plan is to chill out on my bed for a little while with my drinks until I hopefully drift off to sleep, although I’m half-expecting not to get much sleep tonight. How can I with all this adrenaline rushing through me? It’s not every day that you get to take a life, and it’s not every husband who gets to exact glorious revenge on his lying spouse.

For me, this night feels like the culmination of a dream I have harboured for so long. The road has been long and rocky, but I never gave up believing that I would get justice for myself in the end. I couldn’t have done it without Gemma, but so much of it was down to my own hard work too, and I shouldn’t sell myself short when it comes to my accomplishments. Not everybody can carry out what I have just done. My wife had no idea what I was up to until the very last minute, and that took months of planning to make happen.

I switch on the bedroom light and place one of the beer bottles onto my bedside table as I swig from the other while heading into our en-suite bathroom. I plan to have a quick shower, but I change my mind when I decide that lying on the bed simply cannot wait any longer.

I return to the bedroom and sink down onto the mattress, feeling my tense body instantly relaxing with the combination of my horizontal position and the alcohol passing my lips every few seconds.

The house is eerily silent, and I suppose I better get used to that. Laura will never again walk these rooms, chattering away on the phone to her friends or calling out to me when I have left something lying on the floor that she now has to pick up. The TV will never be blaring out when I get back from work, nor will I hear her rummaging around in the kitchen cupboards or listening to music while she has a shower. I can’t say I’ll miss her, although I will miss the company. It’s annoying I’ll have to wait a while to have the same level of companionship with Gemma, at least publicly, but it’s a small price to pay for a lifetime of future happiness. For now, I’ll enjoy my beer, enjoy the silence, and enjoy the fact that my wife