Run Away

by Laura Salters

  “You thought I was the spy?”

  “Well, what would you have thought?” Kayla shrugged. “You were missing.”

  “I suppose it was the logical conclusion. Though I can’t believe you’d ever doubt my intentions,” he said, grinning despite the situation. “I actually have no idea where Bling is. I kind of hope she’s okay, and that she got away safely. Is that weird? Yeah, it’s weird. The massive amount of blood I lost must have messed with my head. But we’ll get to that.

  “So anyway, over the course of the next few weeks, I started doing some investigating. I went to Internet cafés and read up on your dad’s company, all the controversy surrounding it . . . and your brother’s death. I figured it had to somehow be related to the fact your own family had sent somebody to spy on you, just to make sure you didn’t figure out a secret of theirs. I just couldn’t work out exactly what. I desperately wanted to fill you in on everything I’d learned and see whether you had any idea what it could all mean.”

  “So why didn’t you?” Kayla stroked his hands with her thumbs.

  “Because one day it hit me: telling you could put you in danger. It seemed an outlandish theory, but I started thinking, ‘What if Gabe was killed because he found out this awful secret?’ It seemed completely ridiculous, but the more I thought about it, and the more I monitored Bling’s behavior, it made sense. For a brief time I also thought Oliver might have been paid to follow us to Phuket too—­that’s why I freaked out on him so aggressively. In hindsight, though, I think he’s just a creep.

  “Then I noticed I was also being followed. I kept seeing the same two guys everywhere we went. Bling must have reported back that I was acting strangely and that I might have started to figure it all out. After they almost knew for certain that I had, I saw them just before we went swimming with sharks—­”

  “Is that why you didn’t feel well out in the water? And we had to go back to shore?”

  Sam nodded. “Yes. That, and I’m shit-­scared of sharks.”

  Kayla laughed, a girlish giggle that made her sound like a love-­struck teenager. Which was exactly how she felt. “So how did you eventually work it out?”

  “I couldn’t. I drove myself crazy, dreaming up these fantastical theories that I’d never be able to prove. I thought it might have something to do with Greyfinch, as a business like that, by its very nature, was just waiting to succumb to corruption. And what other secret would be more worth killing for than one that proved your family guilty of treason? So in the end I took a risk. I set up a new e-­mail account almost identical to Bling’s address. I started sending progress reports on your activity, in exactly the same format as the ones I’d read on Bling’s phone. It worked, and your nan never noticed the difference. Then, after about a week of fake reports, I sent an e-­mail saying I didn’t feel like I could accurately report on whether you had figured out their secret, when I myself had no idea what the secret was. It was a massive risk—­what if they’d already told Bling and they realized I was a fake? But they hadn’t. Your nan confessed everything about the blackmail to me without realizing. I filled in the blanks about Gabe.”

  “Holy shit. Nice one, Sherlock.” At the mention of Gabe’s name, a fish hook pierced her heart. Gabe. I love you. I love you for trying to put a stop to this. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for what our family did to you. Kayla could hardly breathe. She wondered if she’d ever be able to think about her brother without crippling pain again.

  Sam rubbed his face, hard, like he was trying to scrub the memory away. “But I wished so much that I’d never found out. You can’t unlearn that kind of knowledge. A girl you’re rather fond of’s family played a part in some of the biggest domestic terrorist attacks in years? I put myself in massive danger, and even worse, I put you in danger as a result. I knew I couldn’t tell you, or God forbid you’d meet the same fate as Gabe. But I couldn’t spend every day with you and not tell you either. I’d be betraying you every single second, and I just couldn’t do that.”

  “So why didn’t you just fly home, escape the whole mess and forget you’d ever met me?”

  “Because Greyfinch found out that my e-­mail account was a fake. Bling must have sent something that contradicted what I said, because I woke up one morning to an e-­mail demanding to know who was behind the account. That night, when you came into my room, was when the threatening phone calls started.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah.” Sam looked away bashfully. “Kayla . . . the day you chose to sit with me by the lake and tell me how you felt about me, it killed me that I couldn’t tell you that I felt the same. That I’d never thought it possible to love someone as much as I loved you. But I knew it was only a matter of time before Greyfinch shut me up permanently, and I couldn’t complicate things any further.”

  “So, logically, you faked your own death and disappeared to Daen Maha Mongkol.”

  “Yup. I planted all the drugs so the cops would think that was an appropriate explanation, sent those messages to my phone, where even the most moronic detective would find them—­”

  “Wait, how did you plant messages on your phone?” Kayla asked.

  “Really? That’s what you wanna know? Well, I actually did contact the dealers to buy the drugs to plant—­most terrifying thing I’ve ever done in my life, by the way. They aren’t the friendliest ­people!—­then I just used this app that lets you fake iPhone messages. And I called my mother to ask to borrow some money, so that when the drugs theory came to light, she’d believe it. Knowing it would kill her—­that hurt more than . . . you know. The blood. I left a drastic enough amount in the villa for them to assume me to be dead. Though I very nearly messed it up and actually killed myself. I cut a little too deep—­I’m obviously not the greatest med student in the world. Luckily there was a medic at Daen Maha Mongkol. He was about a thousand years old, but handy with a needle and thread.” Sam rolled up the sleeve of his navy hoodie, revealing an angry scar running across his wrist.

  Kayla shuddered, tracing her finger over the length of the cut. It looked so deliberate. “Didn’t it hurt?”

  “Of course it bloody hurt. Have you met me before? I’m a complete wimp. I nearly bailed after the first millimeter.”

  Kayla planted several soft kisses along the scar. “I’m sorry, Sam. I’m sorry you had to do this to yourself because of my messed up family. I’m sorry you did this for me.”

  “I’m not that much of a hero! I did it to save myself too. And my family. I’m actually not a hero at all, when you think about it.”

  A lump formed in Kayla’s throat. “I—­I thought . . . I thought you were dead, Sam. I thought I’d lost you.”

  Sam got to his feet, stepped forward and wrapped his arms around Kayla, stroking her hair softly. The air was warm and still. “I know.”

  A hiccupy sob. Kayla’s. “I’m glad you’re not. Dead, that is.”

  Sam chuckled quietly. “Me too.”

  A thought dawned on Kayla. Sniffing tears away, she looked up at him. “Hang on. Does your mum know you’re alive and, for the most part, well?”

  Something flashed across Sam’s face but disappeared too quickly for Kayla to work out what it was. “Yeah. I called her from Thailand a few weeks ago, once everything died down a little, on the condition that she didn’t tell a soul. I thought she might expire with happiness. She asked me to come home, of course, but I think she understood why I couldn’t.”

  The penny dropped in Kayla’s mind. “That explains why she stopped talking to me!”

  Sam cocked his head. “Hang on, you and my mother had been talking?”

  “Sam, after everything that’s happened, are you really still going to freak out about me meeting your parents?” Kayla laughed.

  “My parents? Plural? Kayla. I mean, I think you’re cool and everything, but this is all moving a bit fast—­”

  “Oh be quiet!” Sh
e pulled out of the hug and slapped his unscarred arm. “So why did you come back from Daen Maha Mongkol? You couldn’t have known it was safe to return?”

  “I knew the story had died down, and nobody was really on the lookout for me anymore. But I had no way of gauging the situation from over there. I desperately wanted to come back home to see my mum, to show her I really was fine, but I didn’t want to put her—­or myself—­in any danger. I’ve been hiding out in a dingy little hostel in London, keeping my head down, trying to work out my next move. Then I saw the story on the news—­that the secret we were all running from had been made public—­and nearly cried. Because of the pain you’d be in, and because it was finally over.”

  “And you came to see me before your mum?”

  Sam squeezed Kayla’s hands. “I knew you’d need me more. She already knows I’m okay—­I called her in the taxi on the way up.” He swallowed and bit his lip. “And . . . I never told you I love you. So I needed to do that.”

  He stood then, took Kayla’s hands and pulled her up from the swing to stand in front of him. He cupped her face in his hands and in the softest voice Kayla had ever heard him use, said, “I love you too, Kayla.”

  Then he kissed her, with the passion of a man who’d spent the last six weeks in a Thai monastery dreaming of this very moment.

  Chapter 42

  September 14, Turkey

  “SO, HOW MANY ­people have died doing this?”

  Sam’s knee bounced up and down; an old nervous habit.

  Ali, their new Turkish friend, sat in front of them. His eyes darted frantically as he tapped the last of his cigarette ash out of the bus window. “Here? Four or five. Something like that.” With one last puff, he flicked away the glowing remains and reached into the pocket of his khaki trousers for another.

  “Re-­Really? That many?” Sam choked back his horror and tried to gaze nonchalantly out of the window. The falling temperature sent a shiver down Kayla’s bare forearms. The violent lurching of the twenty-­year-­old minibus careering over boulders and potholes rendered any attempts to relax futile. In any case, the three-­thousand-­foot cliff edge beginning half a meter left of the semiflat tires was enough to twist even the steeliest of stomachs.

  Ali nodded gravely. “One guy had a heart attack halfway through. Very sad. Very, very sad. Cigarette?” Sam shook his head. He’d never been a smoker, ironically preferring to err on the side of caution for the majority of his life. Kayla accepted the offer.

  Ali inhaled deeply on the white stick dangling out of his mouth. Kayla was sitting with her back to the driver, and Ali was sitting opposite. His eyes looked like lumps of charcoal set within his cappuccino skin and had too much white surrounding the pupils, giving the impression that he was constantly a combination of surprised and manic. When he smiled, his blindingly bright teeth and obscenely wide grin made him look more like a cartoon villain than a middle-­aged Turk who Kayla and Sam had entrusted with their mortality.

  Erkut, the grey-­haired mountain of a man next to him, decided to elaborate. “Another was impaled on a tree.” His eyes remained firmly shut behind his thickly framed glasses. He did not smoke, instead opting to gently hum an improvised tune and tap his index finger against his bicep in time with the repetitive rhythm. “Gruesome.”

  Sam’s knee began to bounce with increased velocity. Despite the cool mountain air and the goose bumps speckling every inch of her exposed skin, beads of cold sweat started to trickle down the back of Kayla’s neck. What had previously felt like flutters of excitement in her stomach had now evolved into intense cramping, similar to the sensation she usually experienced after one too many cups of coffee. The dense cloud of tobacco smoke clinging to her nostrils and lungs did little to alleviate her panic, instead adding to the sensation of being smothered by a lethal combination of ash and fear. They were only fifteen minutes away. She kept smoking.

  Ali suddenly erupted into raucous laughter. It was a chesty cackle, evidence of his three-­packs-­a-­day habit, and caused Kayla to leap out of her seat in shock. “Why the sad faces?” he roared. “It’s only life. So what if you die? We all do someday.” He delved into his backpack and emerged with a camera, attached to the end of a metal pole with peeling duct tape. “SMILE!”

  Kayla wasn’t sure what she thought the build-­up to running off a 6,500-­foot mountain, supported by a single parachute, would feel like. Perhaps she had never truly believed they’d go through with it. In fact, she still wasn’t sure. Ascending this mountain in a minibus whose last MOT couldn’t have been more recent than 1992, accompanied by four mentally unstable Turkish strangers with no insurance whatsoever, was slightly out of her comfort zone.

  After Kayla’s father and nan had been arrested, Sam suggested they get away from England for a while. Not on another epic adventure. Not yet anyway.

  They’d invited Dave and Russia to join them in Turkey, but since the happy ­couple was currently traveling through India—­exploring Dave’s heritage, he in a wheelchair, until he couldn’t explore anymore—­they were preoccupied. Bling was somewhere overseas too, though neither Sam nor Kayla had any idea where. Shortly after the Greyfinch scandal leaked into international news, Kayla had received a text message from her.

  Kayla, there aren’t enough words in the English language to explain how sorry I am. I had no idea what I was agreeing to—­if I had, I never would have done it. I really hope you’re okay. I would love to meet you in person to apologize properly, but for now it’s not safe for me to return to England. I truly hope you can forgive me, even though I wouldn’t. Lots of love, B x

  Kayla had replied maturely, much to Sam’s utter amazement, with genuine gratitude for Bling’s apology and well-­wishes for the future. Maybe Cassandra wasn’t such a bad shrink after all.

  One day she and Sam would return to the university to pursue careers of their own. Sam? To take another stab at med school, yes, but ultimately to dedicate his life to finding a cure for ALS. Her? Crime scene investigation and forensic science. Joint honors.

  But for now it was all about the present. About love, and about adventure.

  THEY HAD SPENT the first three days of their holiday in Olü Deniz sipping lukewarm beer by the pool and admiring the paragliders overhead as they descended onto the pebble beach a hundred meters away; silhouettes of fearless fliers strapped onto the bottom of brightly colored parachutes, gracefully weaving their way down through the gusts of wind that kept them airborne. From the ground it had looked almost peaceful.

  Much to Sam’s horror, Kayla introduced the possibility of doing it themselves. He came up with thousands of reasons not to: it was too expensive, too hot, they were too hungover from last night’s abuse of the all-­inclusive bar. It was a bit cloudy that day. Kayla was much more proactive. As usual.

  Polishing off the last of her postbreakfast vodka, she stood up from her sun lounger and wrapped her stripy beach towel around her midriff.

  “Right. Let’s go and find out how much it costs with one of those street vendors on the beachfront.” She deftly twisted her thick, Bourneville chocolate-­colored hair around in her fingers and tied it up out of her face.

  “But if we go with them, we won’t have insurance. At least with Thomsons, we know we’re covered if something goes wrong.”

  “Yeah, and they charge over a hundred quid for the privilege. Realistically, if something goes wrong at six-­and-­a-­half-­thousand feet, we’re dead anyway. Don’t really need insurance for a mild case of death, do we?”

  “I s’pose not. How do we know if the guys on the street are legitimate?” Sam sat up on his sun lounger, took a gulp of beer and put down the dog-­eared crime thriller he’d been reading.

  “Well, that guy we met in bar last night seemed nice, if a little odd, and he’s a paraglider. Let’s go and find him.”

  “Do we even remember what he was called?”

  �
�Andy or Ali or something. I don’t know. Shall we go?”

  “What, now?” Sam hastily threw his feet into his battered, sand-­dusted flip-­flops and readjusted his faux Ray-­Bans, which regularly slid down his heavily sunscreened nose.

  “Well, why not?” Her logic was flawless.

  “Because I don’t have any trainers. And we’ll miss lunch. And it’s cloudy.”

  “So? We just had breakfast.”

  “You have to wear trainers. I don’t have any.”

  “It’ll be fine. I bet Dave wishes he could do something like this. Let’s go.”

  Bloody Dave. Sam sighed. “Okay. Just let me nip to the toilet first.”

  Ali had pointed at them and shrieked as they walked through the shop front, presumably in the place where the door should have been, and announced that they’d like to go paragliding with him. “NO WAY! Are you serious? Shut your face. I saw you drinking last night. You’re not serious!”

  But unfortunately they were serious. And forty-­five minutes, fifty pounds, and some alarmingly casual paperwork later, they were clambering into their rusty white minibus armed with some parachutes, borrowed trainers and a hipflask of Raki. The bus smelled like sweaty socks and laundry that had accidentally been left in the washing machine overnight.

  “Does anybody ever get to the top then change their minds?” Kayla asked.

  “No, never. Because the ride back down the mountain in this old thing would be ten times worse than running off the top. You’ll see.”

  He wasn’t wrong. The dirt track that led up to the summit barely seemed wide enough for a Mini Cooper, let alone a rickety old bus full of equipment and ­people. With every rock the bus hit, the wheels lurched to the side, and at one point Kayla was certain they tilted over the edge. She made a mental note never to allow her future self to indulge in the luxury of fear again. Rather like when you have the flu and would trade anything for normality and fully functioning sinuses, she really missed being at sea level, and swore she’d never underappreciate being at a sensible height again.