Whisper For The Reaper, Jack Gatland [good books for high schoolers txt] 📗

tracking it through his phone, most likely.’

‘You don’t mean car drive, do you?’ Monroe replied as he paused, a sudden thought coming to him.

‘Tracking. We can track Declan’s car.’

‘It’s still at the house,’ Freeman replied. Monroe shook his head.

‘We have that doorbell camera footage from across the road, right? Can you bring it up?’

Bullman nodded. ‘He seems to have logged off again,’ she replied as she brought up the image. It was a doorbell camera from earlier that night. Declan’s car wasn’t in the drive, so before he arrived. However, there was a car on that side of the road, parked in front of the house.

‘There,’ Monroe tapped the screen. ‘He’s in that car.’

‘How do you know?’ asked Freeman. Examining the screen, Bullman nodded.

‘When Declan was on the run, Karl loaned him a courtesy car from his garage. A Peugeot 308. That’s the same car.’

‘Okay, but that doesn’t really help us.’

‘It does, actually,’ Monroe smiled. ‘A lot of garages put trackers in their courtesy cars, so they can ensure they’re not nicked. And if Karl had Declan take this one, I’d bet a month’s salary that he’s got some way to track it, to make sure Declan didn’t do anything he shouldn’t. All we have to do is find the tracking signal, and we find the car. And when we find the car, we find Declan.’

In the car park of the Dew Drop Inn, Declan watched as Karl Schnitter drove in, parking up on the opposite side before exiting his vehicle and walking towards Declan’s car, lit up by the headlights of the Peugeot 308. Looking to the dashboard, he saw it was just shy of midnight.

Always punctual.

Climbing out to face him, Declan walked in front of the lights, casting a shadow across Karl as he stopped about twenty feet away.

‘I did what you said,’ Declan said. ‘I didn’t alert the police. I told them to stand down.’

‘Good man,’ Karl replied.

‘So let Jess go, yeah?’

‘In good time,’ Karl nodded. ‘First, we must do something together.’ He pulled out a coin from his pocket, holding it up, allowing the headlight to catch the face as it glinted in the lamplight.

‘First, we must dance with the Red Reaper one last time,’ he finished.

28

Midnight

Declan stared across at Karl with an expression of frustrated annoyance.

‘You’re bloody kidding,’ he snarled. ‘You want to play a suicide game with me? After all of this?’

‘I felt it would be the fitting way to end this,’ Karl replied with a shrug. ‘The end of the chase, so to speak.’

‘You can go to hell,’ Declan snapped. ‘All I want is Jess.’

‘She is not here,’ Karl waved a hand around the car park. ‘But my daughter is with her still, and she is waiting for a message from me. One that says to either release her, or execute her.’

Declan shook his head. ‘You were our friend,’ he muttered. ‘We broke bread with you.’

‘That is on you,’ Karl replied. ‘And for what it is worth, I am sorry, Declan. Your parents were good people. But they needed to move on. Their pain was simply too much to bear.’

‘What, so you were helping them? Like an angel of mercy?’ Declan laughed bitterly. ‘You’re insane. And you’re going to pay for what you did.’

‘Oh, I am well aware of this,’ Karl replied. ‘But not right now.’

Declan looked around the empty car park.

‘Fine,’ he said. ‘I’ll play your stupid bloody game. But first, you’re answering some questions.’

‘I am an open book,’ Karl nodded. ‘Whatever you want.’

‘Did you kill Karl Meier?’

‘Yes. He thought he could cuckold me. I proved he was wrong.’

‘Why pretend you were him? Why all these lies?’

Karl shrugged. ‘When you spend so long pretending a lie, you believe in it,’ he explained. ‘For a while, I forgot I had been Wilhelm Müller, and genuinely believed that I was Karl Meier, reborn as Schnitter.’

‘Bullshit,’ Declan snapped. ‘You always knew who you were. A murdering sociopath.’

‘I murdered no one,’ Karl protested. ‘I gave them a choice.’

‘You gave them no choice!’ Declan shouted back. ‘You placed them into a corner! Told them that if they didn’t do this, you’d kill their loved ones slowly!’ He spat the words out at Karl, furious. ‘You may not have pulled the trigger or used the blade, but you killed every one of them.’

‘Not quite,’ Karl looked around the car park, still not fully comfortable about the setting. ‘I do not know if it was I or Ilse that helped Patrick to pass, and Ilse was the one to stand vigil over Nathanial.’

‘Stand vigil?’ Declan was appalled. ‘Is that what you call this? Watching a terrified teenager slash his own wrists open rather than see his parents die?’

Karl’s eyes darkened in the headlights.

‘I knew you would never understand,’ he said.

Ilse was pacing now, nervous, muttering to herself. Jess chuckled through the gag.

‘What are you laughing at?’ Ilse snapped, looking to her captive. ‘What do you possibly see as funny here?’

Jess continued to chuckle, shrugging before looking away, effectively dismissing Ilse with her eyes. Unable to accept this, Ilse stormed over to Jess, ripping away the tape, pulling the gag out of Jess’s mouth.

‘Tell me!’ She ordered. Jess looked up at her.

‘You’re supposed to kill me,’ she said. ‘But you’ve never done it before, have you?’

‘I killed Nathanial Wing,’ Ilse said proudly. ‘I helped—‘

‘Did you though?’ Jess raised her eyebrow at this. ‘I mean, I saw the reports. He killed himself, right? You just watched like some sick voyeur.’

‘Shut up,’ Ilse muttered, but she didn’t replace the gag. ‘You don’t know.’

‘I don’t know what?’ Jess laughed now. ‘How to scare someone into killing themselves, rather than doing the job itself?’

Ilse glared at Jess now, her eyes not moving from her gaze as she pulled out the sharp, folding knife once more, opening it up.

‘I’ll show you just how good I am at killing,’ she snarled. ‘I’ll slice up your pretty—‘

She didn’t finish the statement because at that exact moment, as she leaned