The Stranger, Mark Ayre [microsoft ebook reader .TXT] 📗

At the end of the meal, Bobby tried to insist on paying but backed down when he heard the hardness in Abbie’s tone and saw it in her eyes.

She did allow him to walk her back to the hotel. As they walked, they held hands, and the conversation continued to flow. Still, it was easy, but something hung over them. Something like those poisonous clouds about which Abbie had earlier teased Bobby. It was the cool of the air. It Brought the heat of Abbie’s fury into sharp focus. She knew Bobby had noticed. Thought he would mention it as soon as they reached the hotel’s front door.

Instead, he kissed her. Only after thirty seconds of perfect bliss, somehow removed from the cold realities of life, did he ask the question.

“Since I told you the story of my father, and why I work so much, your mind has been churning. Why do I get the feeling you’re plotting?”

Abbie considered lying. She liked Bobby. The kiss had made her weak at the knees, and she was not used to feeling that way. After all, this wasn’t a romantic film. Not even a rom-com. She couldn’t bear the thought of the enamoured look in Bobby’s eyes changing.

Neither could she keep the truth from him.

“My life was crippled by the events that took place in the last years of my adolescence,” she said. “Any chance I had of an ordinary existence went out the window. Since then, I have lived a life of penance. Over the years, I’ve grown used to it.”

“Abbie, that’s—“

“No, please don’t,” she said. “Let me talk.”

He nodded, and he let her go on.

“I’ve come to this town and seen multiple people stuck in the centre of moments like those I was in all the years ago. A life has already been lost. Several more hang in the balance. But it’s not too late. For most of you, your lives could still be repaired. No one has to end up like me.”

Bobby stared at her. He didn’t understand but was smart enough not to interrupt. Knowing he soon might not want want to make physical contact with her again, knowing she might soon repel him, Abbie took Bobby’s hands and kissed him once more on the lips.

“Lives and futures hang in the balance,” said Abbie. “And at the centre of the darkness that threatens to destroy multiple people is Francis. He’s taken control of this town. For personal gain, he bleeds it dry, destroying souls and obliterating families so his bank balance might continue to grow.”

Unable to stop herself, Abbie kissed Bobby again. Perhaps it would be the last time. When she pulled away, she met his eye. Bobby held her gaze for a couple of seconds, then looked away. Something he’d seen in her eyes had frightened him. Maybe it was the rage, maybe the single-minded determination.

“No more good lives will be destroyed,” said Abbie. “Francis won’t get away with this any longer.”

Bobby forced himself to look back at Abbie. He squeezed her hands. Kissed her.

“I know you care,” he said. “I love that you care. But I don’t want you to get hurt over this.”

“And I won’t,” said Abbie without hesitation and with no hint of caution. “Only a few will end up hurt over this. That’s Francis and anyone who chooses to stand with him.”

She released Bobby’s hands. Stepped back.

“I’m going to destroy them all.”

Nineteen

Before Bobby could say much more, Abbie kissed him again, told him she’d had a wonderful time, and disappeared into the hotel.

Behind the desk stood Glenda. From the same place she had produced Abbie’s bag, she withdrew a brown package.

“Bike messenger dropped this off,” she said. “Never took off his helmet, never said a word. So rude.”

Abbie thanked Glenda but did not stop to discuss the decline of manners in the courier profession. In her room, she opened the package and dropped onto the bed a new phone.

Ben might have been an arsehole, but he was incredibly efficient.

With the phone came a SIM, but when Abbie retrieved and opened the handset she had earlier destroyed, she found the old one undamaged, so slotted this in before turning on the device.

As the phone came to life, Abbie dropped it onto the bed. Her hands were trembling, her mind a tornado of different thoughts.

Over the last few years, while working with the support of Ben’s mysterious organisation, Abbie believed she had developed a skill for emotional detachment. She breezed through towns and cities she had never before visited, ingratiated herself with the people who mattered to the mission on which she was working. Tried to save a life. More often than not, she succeeded. Sometimes, she didn’t. Either way, Abbie managed to leave whatever place she had entered without feeling as though the job had taken an emotional toll.

This time was different. At first, Abbie told herself she didn’t know why, but it was pretty straightforward. This town had offered her the perfect storm of emotional pressure points. The pregnant wife, who had previously miscarried and was at any moment ready to give birth to her first child; the teenager with the troubled life who was the same age as had Violet been when she died; and the first man in years to get under Abbie’s skin and make her suffer romantic feeling, from which she had for so long believed herself immune.

And of course, there was Francis, who she had not met but who polluted the town he dominated in the same way as Harry’s father had polluted the town in which Abbie had been born and raised. That vindictive bastard had not taken kindly to Abbie’s interference in his affairs. And Abbie imagined when she finally came face to face with Francis, their meeting would be as brutal as had been her final confrontation with Harry’s father, Ian, all those years ago.

On the bed, Abbie’s new phone buzzed with a