Unfinished Business (The Shades of Northwood 3)

by Wendy Maddocks

  The meeting with Henry Lawson was over and Katie felt like she might implode with nerves. The whole set up had been down to luck really, although she tried to say it was careful planning and clever judgement. But the lie sounded flimsy even in her own head. The important thing was that he had bought her story, promised to help. It was too tempting for him to turn down. He got to play the hero until the zombies in her dreams and her own darkness had done all the grunt work of wearing her down, making her believe that it was harder to go on than to give in. And then, he could finish the job. The knight in shining armour and the devil in disguise, switching between them on the flip of a coin. He would follow her into the dream, watch her exhaust everything she had left, and then he would bring out his hidden weapons and put the red shine of hate in his eyes and kill her. Knowing what was going to happen sent a cold shiver along Katie’s spine. Dying was no longer a concept that scared her – it had lost that awful power soon after she learned she was living amongst ghosts – but being murdered brutally had it. Her recent past had been chock full of the dregs of humanity, the cruelty of love and hate; this may well be the last she ever knew of such depravity. It was wrong, she knew, but she didn’t want this to be the end of it and she didn’t want this man who called himself Henry Lawson to be the last person she saw. No, there must be more. More suffering, more malice more violence.

  If there’s no more, I might as well be dead.

  Katie tilted her face to the sky, tasting the tang in the air that meant rain was coming. By the look of the heavy grey clouds in the distance, there may even be a storm. This is what life tasted like – the threat of a coming thunderstorm and then the joy when it passed you by. Of course, Katie would always be the unlucky one who got struck by lightning.

  Ahh, you win some, you lose some.

  She pulled up the hood of her coat as the first drops bean to fall. Home. It’s safer at home. It wouldn’t be safer in a padded cell with a SWAT team standing guard outside her door, but she headed for home anyway. She needed to get a few things.

  Chapter twelve