“But it’s your birthday!” Russia said. “Why on earth would you want to stay in on your birthday? Gotta go out and drown your sorrows. Especially considering . . .” She gestured at the news on the screen. BREAKING: 19 DEAD IN KINGS X ATTACK.
“I just don’t feel like it, all right?” Sam hissed. Russia recoiled as if she’d been slapped.
“Jeez. No need to act like a grumpy old man. Even though that’s what you are.” She tried to nudge him playfully but was met with a withering glare and no response. “Kayla? Tell him! We have to go out for his birthday, we just have to.”
“Come on Sa—”
“I said no, all right?” Sam said, cutting Kayla’s protest off. He turned back to Russia. “What makes you think I’d listen to Kayla? Don’t treat me like a stubborn child.”
“Whoa, I’m not. I just thought that—”
“Whatever. I’m off to bed.”
“Sam! It’s only nine o’clock. Please just come for one—”
Sam slammed his bedroom door before Russia had even finished her sentence. The news reader continued her updates. Another body. Twenty now.
Bling looked up from her phone and blinked rapidly, sniffing. Her eyes were pink-rimmed and her nose shiny. “What’s with Sam?”
Kayla shrugged, trying to convey apathy, and probably, she imagined, failing miserably. “Who knows. He’s been acting weird for weeks.” Like he doesn’t even know me. Like he doesn’t even care. She cast her eyes back to the TV and immediately felt guilty for her petty troubles. ST. PANCRAS EVACUATED AND EUROSTAR LINKS CLOSED FOLLOWING KINGS X BLAST.
“Yeah, he has,” Russia agreed. “Have you got no idea why? You two used to be so close. Though not as close as he and Bling were . . .” Bling giggled through her tears and pushed Russia off her perch on the arm of the sofa.
Kayla blushed. “Nah. He doesn’t talk to me these days. I don’t really know why. It . . . sucks.” It kills me.
Russia lowered her voice, wary of the villa’s paper-thin walls. “Did anything ever happen with you two?” Kayla shook her head. Bling had turned her attention back to her phone, repeatedly pressing the redial button. “But you do like him though, right? At least you used to?”
Kayla pressed her lips together and glanced toward his door. It remained firmly shut. “Doesn’t really matter now, does it?”
The bathroom door opened and a billowing cloud of steam poured out, closely followed by Dave, who wore a towel turban and a dopey grin. “Look! I finally worked out how to do the twiddly towel thing you girls do on your head. I feel like a genie or something.”
Russia giggled. “I think that’s vaguely racist?”
“It’s all right, I’m Indian. I’m allowed to be racist. Where’s Sam? Gotta give him his birthday present.”
“In a huff. What did you get him?”
“That’s for me to know, Rush,” Dave said, winking.
“Oh God. You’re going to snog him, aren’t you?”
“Perhaps. Are we off out tonight, then?”
Kayla and Russia exchanged a look. “Sam isn’t the greatest fan of the idea.”
“So what? Majority vote. If he’s going to be a miserable sod, let’s go without him. I might even wear my turban.”
THANKFULLY, HE DIDN’T.
The strip was even busier than usual. The smell of fruity tobacco from a nearby shisha café hung in the air, and a fresh throng of party animals—completely oblivious to the terrorist attacks—had arrived since they’d last been out. Kayla didn’t know if she was simply out of practice, but the music seemed louder, the crowds more fierce, than ever before.
Bling, who’d finally got through to her completely uninjured family, was furiously sinking Jägerbombs like her life depended on it. Kayla offered to get the next round. As she was on the way back from the bar, clutching four beers and forcing her way through the crowds, someone grabbed her arm. Hard. She twirled around to yell in the face of whatever overly pushy male had taken a fancy to her but the words never quite left her mouth. She froze, her mouth hanging open.
Oliver. Since the first night they’d spotted him in Phuket, he’d kept his distance.
“Kayla,” he said urgently. “I need to talk to you. It’s important.”
“Go away, Oliver. And get the hell off me.” She tried to shake her arm free.
“Kayla, I know I’ve fucked up in the past. Believe me I know. I hate myself for it. But I really, really need to tell you something. Please.”
“What the hell—”
“Please.” His voice had an overtone of begging. “I’m serious. This is serious.” He tightened his grip on her arm. It started to hurt.
“Oliver, for fu—”
“Get the hell off her, you twat,” Sam said, barging into Oliver. Sam’s hand grasped his throat, and Oliver’s eyes looked like they might pop out of their sockets. “What on earth do you think you’re doing?”
Oliver flailed helplessly at Sam’s huge hands, resembling a weasel caught in a trap. Sam let go and yelled over the pounding music, “Get lost. Now. And don’t you ever touch her again.” Oliver obliged and trotted away, his head bowed against the bustling crowds.
Sam started to turn and leave. Kayla touched his arm. “Sam! I didn’t even realize you’d come out. I’m glad you’re here. Happy birth—”
“Yeah, well, I was just leaving.” His voice was flat. He didn’t meet her eyes. Kayla desperately wanted him to gaze back at her longingly, lovingly, like he used to. “If he gives you any more trouble, just let me know.”
Then he was gone.
She felt empty.
Chapter 29
July 29, England
“HAVE YOU SEEN the news?” Kayla asked, panting. She’d run up the stairs two at a time to grab her phone as soon as she’d heard it ring.
“Yes, I have, love,” her mother said. “Don’t worry, I’m fine. I hadn’t set off for the station yet.” She sounded a lot calmer than Kayla did.
There had been another attack. Just not a physical one.
A group of sympathizers of the Islamic State militant group had hacked all of the major travel Web sites—airlines, railways, bus timetables, car hire services—and replaced the homepage with IS propaganda videos. The message was clear: you aren’t as free as you think you are. We are everywhere.
It was even more chilling than the bombings. Even more sinister.
Still, the government insisted it was little more than a prank, an act of vandalism rather than terrorism, and that citizens should continue to travel as normal. Martha was supposed to catch a train home that afternoon.
“Please tell me you aren’t still planning to come home today?” Kayla pleaded, failing to keep her fear from seeping into her voice. She was starting to doubt her mum’s logic that lightning wouldn’t strike thrice.
“I’ve spoken to your dad,” Martha sighed. “He thinks I should stay put. Just to be safe.”
“Okay, Mum. Love you. I’ll see you when I see you.”
“Love you too, sweetheart. Take care—and don’t worry too much. Continue your day as normal, okay?”
Kayla swallowed the urge to scoff at the word normal. “Okay.”
After she’d called her nan, she stared at the phone in her hand. There was no one else to call. Nobody else in her life she needed to check up on at a time like this. The kernel of loneliness in her heart was growing.
She threw her phone across the room and pulled on her trainers.
KAYLA HAD ALWAYS thought the chilling sensation associated with being watched from afar was a myth; a paranormal phenomenon invented by horror film producers. Surely the human psyche wasn’t powerful enough to sense true danger.
At least, that was what she believed until she experienced it for herself.
She was out for a run in the woods, shards of
sunlight piercing through the gaps in the canopy, when the icy fingertip traced down her spine. It was most noticeable, she thought, because she was hot and sweaty—the goose bumps were otherwise inexplicable. How do you act in such a situation? Do I slow down or speed up? She opted to stop altogether. The air had been sucked from her lungs.
The uneasiness lingered. White spots danced across her vision from the physical exertion, and she crouched down on her haunches to try and regain a normal breathing rhythm. Fine hairs were standing on end all over her body. A branch crunched somewhere behind her; her heart skipped a beat. It’s just wildlife, Kayla. You’re losing it. Properly, this time.
She scanned the sparse woodland. Nothing. She loved this patch of woods, just a mile from the bottom of her football-pitch-sized garden, because of its lack of cameras, lack of noise, lack of company—it was as close as she ever got to pure happiness. But those very attributes suddenly felt eerie, isolating. If anything happened to her out here, she was well and truly on her own.
Shut up, you idiot. Nothing’s going to happen to y—
Something flickered somewhere to the far left of her peripheral vision. She stood up and spun around. Still nothing. Just leafy trees with sunlight pouring through the gaps between them, a light dusting of dead leaves on the dry mud carpet, and—
No, there was definitely something. A flash against something unnatural, something that didn’t belong amidst the bushes. Something metal. The sun bounced off it, reflecting back into her eyes. It only lasted a split second, then it was gone.
She could have gone over to the offending bush to investigate. After all, it was probably nothing sinister.
But she didn’t. Something in her gut told her this didn’t feel right.
So instead, she turned and ran back toward the sanctuary of her house—her safe, secure, monitored house—as fast as her feet could carry her.
OLIVER HAD LOST WEIGHT.
He’d always erred on the scrawny end of the physique spectrum, but as he stirred a packet of artificial sweetener into his black coffee, his clavicle rippled beneath the skin on his chest. He was emaciated. If he hadn’t maintained his terra-cotta tan, he would look ill. His angular collarbones jutted uncomfortably below his skeletal shoulders.
“It gives me great pleasure to tell you that you look horrendous.” Kayla struggled to conjure up a single ounce of sympathy for him. Still, it was nice to be out of the house. Away from her thoughts—and that constant feeling of impending threat that crawled over her skin like menacing little ants.
“Yeah. Can’t eat, can’t sleep. I’m a mess.” His mouth barely seemed to move as he spoke. It was as though he couldn’t muster up the energy to properly articulate.
“I have to say, it’s nice being within five meters of you and not being gassed out by that sickening aftershave you dowse yourself in. Guilt getting to you?” Kayla knew she should dial down the sass, but every time she considered it, vivid memories of that night in Sangkhlaburi barged into her brain. Being pressed against a wall, his sticky breath on her neck, begging him to stop. Him not listening.
“Look, do you want to hear what I’ve got to say or not?”
“Depends. If it’s some bullshit excuse to lure me here, then no, absolutely not.”
“Oh, get over yourself, will you?” It was the kind of sentence that should have been laced with venom, but Oliver seemed too exhausted for that. He stood up, disorientated, and bumped into the table, causing his untouched coffee to slop over the sides of the mug. The man at the next table looked up from his newspaper and glared across at them. “I’m leaving. I shouldn’t have bothered. Forget it.” He turned toward the door.
“No, Oliver, wait. I’m sorry for being a bitch.” He stopped and closed his eyes, not turning back to her. “It’s not helpful. I do want to know whatever you have to tell me, especially if it’s about Sam. Please.” And I don’t want to be alone. Not today.
Oliver sighed and flopped back down into his chair with a thump. Kayla wondered if it was because he’d actually accepted her apology, or simply because he didn’t have the strength to make it to the door. “Fine. Where do I start?”
“How am I supposed to know? I have no idea what you’re about to say.”
“Fair enough. Might as well come out and say it, then. Sam was being followed.”
“What?”
Oliver took a sip of his coffee, wincing at the heat. “This is so embarrassing. Okay, so it wasn’t exactly a secret that I’d become a bit . . . obsessed by you. You’re an amazing girl, who could blame me?” He tried for a smile. Kayla didn’t reciprocate. “I came to Phuket because I lost my job—probably rightly so, I was rubbish—and I didn’t know what else to do. Things were weird between us, I know, but I couldn’t come back to England. I’ve fucked up here too, but I won’t go into that. That first night in Phuket, it was obvious you couldn’t forgive me. Which is fair—I wouldn’t forgive me either. I should have left then. I know that.”
“But you didn’t.” Kayla found it hard to remove the bitterness from her tone. If it hadn’t been for Oliver’s constant presence during their last few weeks in Thailand, things mightn’t have been so strangled between her and Sam. He might have been talking to her, and she might have been able to see what was happening to him more clearly. Maybe.
“But I didn’t. Because I’m a royal twat. I just . . . lurked. Maybe because I had nothing else to do, and maybe because—as creepy as this sounds—I got addicted to looking at you.” He stared intensely into his palms. His cheeks were tinged with pink. “That’s why I started anyway. But then I started noticing things.”
“What kind of things?”
“That I wasn’t the only one following you. Well, not just you. Sam. There were two of them. Whenever he was working, whenever you were all out together, there they were. So I kept watching. And they kept being there. They never went close to him, really. I don’t know if that means Sam might have recognized them if they had? Then you guys went away for day or two, am I right?” Kayla nodded. Phi Phi. “Well, I didn’t see them around Phuket. I looked, you know? Went to the usual haunts, but they weren’t there.”
“Do you think that means they followed us to Phi Phi?”
He shrugged. “Possibly.”
Kayla shuddered. How could she not have noticed? “What did they look like?”
Oliver reached into his backpack for his phone. “I tried to take a picture, but it was hard. It was usually dark, and the zoom on my phone is terrible. So is the flash. It’s just all blurry, see?” Kayla looked. He was right, they were blurry. The shadowy figures on Oliver’s phone screen meant nothing to her.
“Have you showed these to the police?”
“No. I thought about it. But all the fancy gear in the world couldn’t make sense of these pictures—even the angle is bad, it’s mainly the backs of their heads. And I just . . . I couldn’t face explaining why I was there. Why I was following you in the first place.”
Kayla nodded. She understood that even though going to the police was generally considered the right thing to do, it was often more complicated than that. She hadn’t reported Oliver, after all. “Thanks for telling me. I dunno what to do with this information, though.” What does it mean, what does it mean, what does it mean? Her mind whirled, trying, failing, to slot the knowledge into place.
“It might not mean anything, but given what happened, and more importantly, what the police think happened . . .” Oliver visibly shivered, and changed topic suddenly. “God, it’s fucking awful, isn’t it. Sam was . . . well, we had our differences, but . . . he was a good guy. Thought the world of you, of course. I can’t stop thinking about it. My mind goes a million miles an hour, all the time, trying to work out what happened. What he must have been through. Poor guy.”
Kayla felt sick. So much blood. “I know. But I’m kind of jealous of your overa
ctive mind—I’m the opposite. I can’t get my brain to cooperate. I want it to move quickly, sharply, not sluggishly, ’cause I feel like there is something more to the whole thing. And it should be so obvious but—”
“It’s not.”
“Nope. It’s not.”
Perhaps she was imagining it, but at that moment, she could have sworn she saw the angry man at the next table relax his shoulders and smirk into his newspaper.
Chapter 30
June 14, Thailand
THERE WAS A tap on Kayla’s door. Soft, cautious. Unsure.
“Come in.” She sat cross-legged on her bed in the villa, reading a battered paperback she’d found in a secondhand English bookstore.
Except she wasn’t really reading it at all. She’d been thinking about Sam and chain-smoking for over an hour. Nothing new there.
The door swung slowly open and Sam himself stood there. Kayla blinked. He didn’t make a move into the room, instead choosing to peer at her through the thick haze of cigarette smoke drifting through the room. She knew she must have been quite the sight, tangled amidst crumpled, off-white bedsheets in a faded T-shirt and black boxer shorts. Her hair had been haphazardly thrust up in a messy bun, and her ashtray was overflowing. Sexy, Kayla. Really sexy.
“Sam!” She was surprised to see him. Not only because she’d thought he was at work with Russia, but because they hadn’t been alone together for nearly a week. He seemed to be avoiding her at all costs. If ever they found themselves sitting on the sofa without the others, or walking side by side toward the bus stop, he’d make his excuses and go elsewhere. Memories of how close they used to be felt alien now. Like they didn’t belong to her. “What’s up?”
“I’m sorry.” His voice was hoarse, his eyes bloodshot.
“For wha—” Before she could finish asking her question, Sam was on the bed, kissing her. His lips tasted salty and his facial muscles were tense. He pulled away, almost as quickly as he’d arrived next to her, and closed his eyes. “Sam. What’s wrong?”
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