Save Her, Abigail Osborne [ebook reader for surface pro txt] 📗

up, she felt dazed and slightly sick. Holding her hand to her head she screamed at Sophie. ‘Sophie! Sophie, what are you doing? Sam needs help.’ Flora began to cry in earnest. Tears burning in her throat and eyes, tracking down her face, into her mouth. She was going to lose control.

‘I can’t. I’ve just shot two people. They’ll put me in prison. God. This wasn’t supposed to happen.’ Sophie began to pace. ‘I don’t know what to do. This wasn’t supposed to happen.’

Flora crawled back over to Sam. Sitting behind him, she pulled him as hard as she could, so his upper body was lying in her lap. He was a dead weight and her muscles strained and popped. She buried her head in his sunflower hair, drinking in the subtle smell of coconut, his favourite shower gel. She pulled her arms around him and pressed down on the place where he had been shot. He made a small moan of pain but did not move or talk. His body was trembling, but she saw beads of sweat on his forehead.

Her mind whirled in confusion. In a few hours she had gone from drinking wine in her back garden to seeing her best friend shoot her husband. She held Sam tighter as she sobbed. She loved this man so much it felt like her heart would burst. The thought of not seeing him every day, not being held in his strong arms, not seeing him in her pink dressing gown in the mornings, it made her want to die.

A week ago, Sam and Sophie were the most important people in her life, the concrete foundations of her whole life. One of them had turned into a psychopath and the other might not live to see tomorrow. The world would no longer have any meaning. She would be alone. She cried into Sam’s hair, pressing as hard on his wound as she could.

Sophie walked over to Alistair. He had hit the wall behind him when she shot him and a trail of blood, like a gruesome arrow guided the eye to his body. She seemed to be trying to check his pulse. But then Flora realised she was checking his pockets and pulling out a wallet and a phone. She stood up and began looking through both of them.

‘We are just going to have to make a run for it, Flora. It’s the only thing we can do.’

There was no way on this earth that Flora was leaving Sam. Sophie would just have to shoot her as well. She opened her mouth to say as much when the door opened again.

The weather had worsened and a rain-soaked figure with a black umbrella entered the house. The face was hidden behind the umbrella, but Flora could have sung for joy when it snapped shut, and there stood Cecelia.

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Cecelia was the only person that could walk through howling rain and still look pristine. She closed the umbrella and neatly stowed it up against the door, on the mat so it wouldn’t drip onto the floor. Greg followed closely behind her, his hair flattened to his head, rain dripping down his face.

Sophie was pleased to see that Cecelia’s bravado faltered when she saw her son lying on the floor, bleeding into Flora’s hands. Wait, this might actually be a blessing. If she could convince Flora that Cecelia would make sure Sam was okay, then she would be able to get her to leave. It was just making sure that Cecelia did not come after them. If Sam died, there was no doubt that she would want revenge. She needed to get out of here and quick. Everything was unravelling.

‘What are you doing here, Cecelia?’

‘What have you done to my son?’ asked Cecelia at the same time.

‘It was an accident. I didn’t mean to hurt him. He’ll be fine.’ Sophie raised the gun and pointed it at Greg and Cecelia. ‘Everything will be fine.’

Cecelia looked pale and she could not take her eyes off Sam. Unsurprisingly, she did not seem to give Alistair more than a cursory glance. When choosing extracts of Cecelia’s diary to leave for Flora to find, it was hard to narrow it down to which was the more harrowing. The years of abuse this woman had withstood was inconceivable. If Sophie hadn’t shot Sam, she wondered if Cecelia would be thanking her for shooting Alistair.

Greg whispered in his mother’s ear. It made Sophie nervous. How had Cecelia got here so quickly?

‘What do I have to do for you to let me take my son to the hospital?’ asked Cecelia.

‘It’s just not as simple as that, Cecelia. I know that as soon as you take him you are going to tell the police and Flora and I will have to spend our lives in hiding.’

Cecelia paused, she seemed to be thinking hard. ‘What if I was to incriminate myself as much as you? That way, if I told the police about this, they would find evidence that makes me just as guilty as you?’

Sophie didn’t know what to think. It sounded too good to be true. ‘I don’t understand. What could you do that was worse than this? You’re trying to trick me.’ Sophie felt sick. She held on to the gun with both hands and moved it between Greg and Cecelia, worried that one of them was going to rush her. She couldn’t think straight, nothing had gone right, and she couldn’t think of a new plan. All she kept thinking of was the feel of the gun when she shot Sam; the shock and pain in his eyes as he looked at her, utter disbelief etched into his face; his lips forming a perfect O before he crumpled to the floor. She looked back at Cecelia trying to work out her angle. What was she planning?

Before she had time to react, Cecelia pulled out a small silver handgun from her pocket. She walked over to Alistair and shot