Run Away (4 page)

“That sucks,” said Kayla. “Well . . . it more than sucks.”

“Yeah. It does. Don’t tell him I told you, though. I don’t think he’d appreciate pity.” Sam did a funny kind of half smile, his lips curling upward only on one side, and reached into his backpack to produce a small hip flask. “Hair of the dog? Forget all the shit in the world?”

“Good God, no. Are you mental? We’re about to go and stroke tigers. Actual tigers. You could get us all killed.”

Chapter 5

June 27, England

K
AYLA HADN’T EVEN
started her sessions with Cassandra Myers but already regretted agreeing to it. Sitting in the waiting room of the private practice, with its oak-­paneled walls and antique furniture, she couldn’t help but think that despite everything that had happened, she still wasn’t quite nuts enough to need therapy.

Glancing around the room, she took care not to make direct eye contact with her fellow patients. Was she really as crazy as the man who shook erratically and swore in a methodic rhythm? “Shit, bollock, cock. Arse, twat, fuck. Shit, bollock, cock. Arse, twat, fuck.” Or the girl who looked so thin her bones threatened to poke through her skin, her arms shredded with angry red and purple crisscrosses? Oh come on, she can’t possibly be as messed up as the middle-­aged woman she’d just seen swallow half a bottle of painkillers without even a sip of water; a seasoned professional.

She really tried not to judge ­people. Everyone had their problems, she knew that better than anyone. But she’d never felt like the most sane person in a room before. And that was worrying.

“Kayla Finch?” A pretty assistant summoned her to Dr. Myers’s office. Kayla flinched at the sound of her full name. Weren’t they meant to protect a patient’s identity at this kind of place? She didn’t really know—­it was her first time being certifiably mental.

Cassandra Myers sat behind her imposing mahogany desk, surrounded by all sorts of psychology paraphernalia: a wall of bookcases lined with medical journals and case studies, a series of awards and diplomas in proud gold frames, a model of a human skeleton in a cylindrical glass case.
Why do they even have those? They’re doctors of the mind—­it’s unlikely they’ll ever have to point out to a patient where the fibula is
.

There were no personal accents in the room, besides the diplomas. No photographs of her family adorning the desk, no jacket hung up on the old-­fashioned coat rack. The only sign she really worked here at all was the tiny gray dictaphone perched on the side of the desk, a red light flashing on its surface: paused between patients. That’s all I am to this woman, she thought. Another recording to discuss tonight as she enjoys a civilized dinner and bottle of wine with her partner. He probably worked in finance.

Dr. Myers had a dramatic black bob haircut that skimmed her sharp jawline, and some severely framed spectacles resting on her petite ski-­slope nose. She was dressed in a tailored gray suit and purple blouse. “Kayla, take a seat. Nice to meet you. I’m Dr. Myers.”

“Hi,” Kayla said, feeling suddenly shy.

“I understand this is your first visit to a psychiatrist.” Dr. Myers rested her elbows on the desk, pressed the record button on the dictaphone, and steepled her fingers in front of her.

“What gave it away? I’m not really sure how to act,” Kayla smiled.

“Just relax, and tell me a little bit about why you’re here.”

A deep breath. “Okay. Why I’m here. A little over three months ago, on March seventh, my younger brother died unexpectedly. And ten days ago, I was traveling in Thailand when I walked into my best friend’s bedroom and discovered that it was drenched in his blood. He disappeared with no explanation and more than one sign of violence. Please don’t ask me how I feel about that.”

“Of course. So what would you like to achieve while you’re here?”

Kayla shrugged. “If I knew what answers I was looking for, I wouldn’t be here in the first place. I’m not even sure there is an answer. I just figured it was better than sitting alone in my bedroom with nobody to talk to.” She stared into her hands, using her thumb to remove a stubborn fleck of dirt from beneath her index fingernail. “In a way, I guess it hasn’t sunk in yet. I’m just at a loss over what to think or do with myself. I can’t start to deal with it yet, because I still feel like I’m in a bad dream that I’m going to snap out of at any second.”

“I see. Well, that’s perfectly normal at this stage in the grieving process—­to be in denial. But that’s why I’m here. To help you work through the process. To help you understand your feelings and find a way to deal with them. Why don’t we talk a little about your brother?”

Silence. Dr. Myers waited for Kayla to fill it. She didn’t.

“Have you talked about your brother much since his death?”

“Not really. I guess it still doesn’t even feel real. I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

“Wherever you like, Kayla.” Dr. Myers smiled. Her hands were folded neatly in front of her as she peered over her glasses.
She has the mannerisms of a scary headmistress and the looks of a beautician
. “Perhaps you could begin by telling me his name?”

“Gabriel. We all called him Gabe.”

“Okay. And do you mind me asking what happened? It’s fine if you’d rather not discuss it. We’ll work at your own pace. There’s no rush.”

Kayla exhaled and leaned back in the seat. Her voice box felt paralyzed. She willed herself to start speaking, knowing that once she began, the worst part would be over. But the words didn’t come. The red light on the dictaphone was no longer flashing—­it was steady, catching the corner of her eye repeatedly.

She cleared her throat and forced the words out.

“Gabe killed himself. I found his body.”

Chapter 6

March 30, Thailand

K
AYLA HAD NEVER
seen anyone as petrified as Sam was at Tiger Temple.

They’d all been a little spooked when they were informed of a recent attack on a tourist, which had occurred at the temple the previous season. Sam apparently hadn’t thought the killer cats would be strolling around the Theravada Buddhist Forest Temple quite so casually. They traversed the sunbaked ground lazily, several resting in the patchy shade beneath the sparse trees.

“Jesus Christ,” he said, “can you imagine what the British health and safety police would have to say about this? There are tigers. Chilling. In plain air. I could practically reach out and stroke them. I mean, they could literally rip my face off, right now. What if the scent of tequila drives them wild? I’m a goner. A dead man. Tell my mum I love her.”

Kayla laughed, pointedly blowing a kiss at a passing feline. They were down by the quarry, observing the tigers on their daily wander from a mere ten meters away. “They’re perfectly tame, you idiot. Do you really think they’d let us in here if they weren’t? Last year was a freaky one-­off. Look at them, they’re properly chilled out. I can almost imagine them cracking open a cold beer and smoking a Cuban cigar. Plus, it’d be a pretty cool thing to have on your gravestone: mauled to death by a Bengal tiger. What on earth are you doing?”

Sam was standing stock-­still, unblinking. “That one is staring at me. Look. Look! I’m trying not to make any sudden movements. That’s what you’re meant to avoid, right? Sudden movements?”

“If I agreed with you, we’d both be wrong. See you back in this exact spot in about four hours, then?”

The tigers were becoming drowsier as the temple got hotter and the sun higher. Kayla knew how they felt. The girls had been made to wear ankle-­length jeans and sleeved T-­shirts so as not to offend the celibate monks who lived at the Buddhist sanctuary on site. Russia hadn’t been allowed in due to her denim hot pants, and was still in the middle of a feminist outburst toward the ticket vendor, who had long since stopped listening. Feminism apparently wasn’t a pressing issue in Thai monasteries.

An elderly member of the staff approached them. “Would you like to pet them?” He grinned at them, exposing a row of teeth that vaguely resembled a rotting picket fence: brown, gappy, and in danger of collapsing at any second. His tiny eyes almost disappeared when he smiled, turning into miniature pinpricks that couldn’t possibly have provided him with adequate peripheral vision to keep tabs on ferocious wildcats. Sam’s eyes were drawn to a deep purple scar traversing the man’s wrinkled upper arm. Kayla wondered if it had been a claw or a tooth that tore clean through his bicep.

“Erm . . . I think I’ll pass, mate. I mean, sir. Mister. I mean . . . is that even safe?” Sam stumbled over his words much in the same way he did inanimate objects—­clumsily.

“Oh come on, Sam!” Kayla said. “You’ll regret it if you don’t. You know you will.”

“No, Kayla, I’d regret having my face mauled. I’ll watch you, though, and try not to say I told you so when Tigger over there is chewing your eyeball like a stuffed olive appetizer.”

“Suit yourself,” Kayla replied, following the monk-­slash-­zookeeper toward an especially docile tiger. It was lying on the dusty ground, which was probably lush with grass during monsoon season, licking its paw. It looked remarkably similar to her beloved old Labrador, Max, whom she’d had to have put down last year. Max would lie by the French patio doors all day and alternate between licking his paws, his balls, and his arse. He was vulgar, but she loved him dearly. A tiger licking its own testicles? Now
that
she’d like to see.

She knelt down next to the beautiful Bengal tiger. She was more apprehensive than she’d expected, and glanced up at Tiny Eyes for guidance.

“It’s okay, you can stroke him. He’s friendly. His name is Mek.”

Mek’s fur was both soft and dense. He barely glanced up when her fingers glided through his coat, and Kayla couldn’t help but wonder whether he’d been drugged. Surely it wasn’t natural for wild animals to be so tame?
Stop overthinking, Kayla
.
Just enjoy the experience
. He gazed up at her, his eyes glossy and deep. She grinned, almost as a reflex. It was magical.

She turned back to the group and caught Sam’s eye, subtly jerking her head backward to summon him across. Even from a distance she saw his eyes widen, but he cautiously started to tiptoe across to her and her new friend.

“See? He doesn’t bite.”

“I’m still not convinced. Look into his eyes. Pure, unfiltered malice.”

“Don’t be ridiculous! He’s beautiful.”

“They can smell fear, can’t they? If they can, I’m screwed.”

Tiny Eyes smelt fear, even if Mek didn’t. And whether he was a cheeky rascal or just plain bored, he turned to Sam with a miniature sparkle in his eye and said, “Would you like to feed him, sir?”

“F-­Feed him?” Sam backed away a fraction of an inch.

“Here, take the bottle.”

“No, no thanks. Sorry.” But he didn’t have a choice. The bottle of formula was thrust into his hands. “I said no, I can’t do it!”

“Hey, Sam,” Kayla said. “Carpe diem, and all that. You can do it, you know you can. I know you can.”

He held her gaze. For a moment the quarry behind them disappeared, Mek vanished. Tiny Eyes evaporated in a puff of magician’s smoke. It was just the two of them, for a fraction of a second. It was all the convincing Sam would need; the first of many times that Kayla’s mosaic eyes, flecked with green, blue, and hazel, would give him a surge of adrenaline that made him feel like he could do anything.

He took a deep breath. “Okay. Okay. What do I do?”

Chapter 7

June 28, England

P
ERCHED ON A
bar stool at the marble breakfast bar in her family kitchen, Kayla pushed her soggy cereal around in the bowl. Her earlier bravado in thinking she could handle a regular portion of food had vanished around the same time she’d flicked on the morning news to see a picture of Sam. His big, brown, doelike eyes and tufty dark hair had caught her off guard. The delay had irrevocably compromised the structural integrity of her Cheerios.

Today was the day she was to go and meet the police officer who was handling the case in the UK. DCI Mason Shepherd. The Thais had originally wanted her to talk to him as soon as she landed in Newcastle, but he seemed conscientious enough to allow her to sleep off her jet lag and gather her thoughts before their debrief.

There had been no progress in the search for Sam, or what was left of him. None whatsoever. The manhunt team had quickly lost interest when they followed the trail of blood, which stopped abruptly halfway down the road outside the villa, and searched the obvious places to no avail. They’d received no tips, other than some obviously fake ones—­including a man who’d insisted that Alex Garland’s
The Beach
was real and that’s where Sam was—­and no new leads.

Nothing had come of talking undercover to the drug dealers Sam had supposedly been in contact with, or following them with Phuket’s patchy and fuzzy CCTV footage. Maybe if Greyfinch had been in charge of Thailand’s surveillance, finding a broad, six-­foot-­five twenty-­year-­old might have been a little easier.

Kayla pushed the bowl aside and slumped onto the counter, her head nestled in the crook of her elbow. It had been a long week. Now that they’d offloaded her onto Dr. Myers, her parents were largely attempting to continue their lives as if nothing had happened. As if there had never been a Gabe, or a Sam. Her dad was working fourteen-­hour days, and her mum, ever the good Samaritan, was dividing her time between charity ball committees, volunteering at an animal shelter, and teaching kids French at a series of free community night classes. Keeping busy, for them, meant avoiding what awaited them at home: a grieving daughter and an empty bedroom where their son used to sleep.

Kayla heaved herself off the stool, which was just a bit too far from the ground for her five-­foot-­four frame to maneuver with a single ounce of grace, and made her way across to the white French doors. The sun was peering lazily through the steely gray clouds, and the blustery chill of the wind bit her skin with unusual aggression for this time of year. She lit a cigarette with the oversized candle lighter her mother was forever misplacing and wrapped her spare arm around her waist, shivering involuntarily.

Still, she rather liked the sensation of feeling cold after months of sweaty, sleepless nights and muggy air so thick you could practically chew it. The climate had been one of the few things she’d missed about her family home in north Northumberland. Some, she’d forgotten about, but loved nonetheless, like the powerful, fragrant scent of the vivid yellow oilseed rape fields that scattered the countryside like a patchwork quilt. Oh, and the unrivaled taste of a good old mug of English breakfast tea—­none of that aromatic bathwater the Thais paraded as a substitute.

From inside she could still hear the chirpy northern economics journalist on the morning news questioning whether the Bank of England’s interest rates would remain low this month. Kayla frankly couldn’t think of anything more repetitious than inflation or gross domestic product. Politics, perhaps.

What bothered her most about the UK’s reaction to Sam’s disappearance was the utter disinterest from the mainstream media. For whatever reason, it just wasn’t one of those stories the major channels latched onto. Perhaps they had no emotional connection to it, or perhaps they had no element of mystery to use as a hook to attract viewers. He wasn’t young enough to tug at heartstrings, or middle class enough for the incident to be considered as scandalous as some of the higher profile cases.

“A twenty-­year-­old British man, who was traveling in Thailand on a gap year scheme, is still missing after disappearing in Phuket Town last week. Police believe the incident to be drug-­related, and are currently appealing for any witnesses to come forward with any information that may aid them in their search.” That was the ten seconds usually allocated to his story. The problem was that as soon as most ­people heard the word drugs, their compassion evaporated.

Kayla wondered what impression somebody would have of Sam who knew nothing other than what the news reader told them. Sam was a university dropout (nobody would care that he had planned to return the following fall) and a supposed drug addict. It was so frustrating to her that television, radio, and print had such immense power over public opinion, and yet only poured their efforts into the stories that really interested them. Like how many boob jobs the latest gormless glamour model had denied having, or how much a premiership football club planned to bid for an overrated striker before the transfer deadline arrived.

She buried her cigarette butt in a plant pot, pulled the doors shut again, and punched the off button on the TV remote.

Any hope she’d had of Sam being found was vanishing almost as quickly as he had.

T
HE RECEPTION
K
AYLA
received at the police station in Northumberland was much warmer (figuratively, at least—­they had functional air-­conditioning) than Niran and Seni’s in Phuket. Although she had been taken to the interview room, Kayla didn’t have that suffocating feeling that came with being interrogated. With being a suspect.

Gladly accepting the glass of water DCI Shepherd handed to her, she shuffled in her seat. She tried not to look at her reflection in the mirror on the other side of the room, which she knew, from watching crime dramas, was one-­sided. Whether or not there was anyone watching from the other side, she didn’t know. Probably.

The man standing in front of her was around her father’s age, but looked more frayed around the edges than Mark Finch. A bulging paunch spilled over his belted trousers, and his graying moustache had flecks of ginger and black sliced through it. His hairline was receding dangerously, his skin was pale from too much time spent indoors, and his blue-­gray eyes were weak and weary, fronted with frameless glasses. He looked like he desperately needed a green smoothie and an early night.

“How are you today, Miss Finch?” he asked, distractedly flicking through the file in his hands. She could smell the sour, stale coffee on his breath from across the table. He stopped on a page and frowned before moving on.

“I’m fine, thank you,” she answered. A reflexive platitude she instantly regretted.
Fine?
she chastised herself.
What kind of psychopath collapses in her best friend’s blood and admits she’s fine nine days later?

Shepherd didn’t seem to notice. “Good, good.” He dragged the chair opposite Kayla backward, the metal feet grating along the floor, and sunk into it with a sigh. “Now, although this meeting is largely a formality, and I don’t want to keep you here all day, we do have some things to discuss. Namely, your friend Mr. Kingfisher’s, ah . . . disappearance.”

Kayla nodded, unsure what to say. She pressed her lips together to prevent any more silly responses from spilling out, then realized it made her look slightly insane and quickly slackened them again.

“It looks like the Thais have done a fairly good job of covering all the bases, but let’s start from the beginning, shall we?” He looked up at her for the first time. There was no intensity behind his eyes.

“Okay,” said Kayla meekly.
Stop looking so bloody guilty, Finch
.
You didn’t do it
.
Stop acting like you did
.

A strange silence. Kayla waited for him to ask a question. He seemed off, like half his brain was in another room, another police station. Another country.

“So,” he said, coughing into the back of his hand. “Talk me through the events of the afternoon of June seventeenth.” He removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes, as though trying to rub some life back into them.

It seemed like a decade ago. Kayla strained to remember how the day had started. “Well, we woke up at around eleven-­thirty
A
.
M
.
We’d had a lot to drink the night before—­”

Shepherd started gesturing vaguely. Kayla thought he might flag up the fact they’d been drinking—­could that mean anything?—­but instead he said, “We can skip the morning. Mr. Kingfisher was reported missing at, uh, just before seven in the evening? Let’s start at six.”

She frowned. Wouldn’t he want to know about their exact movements that day? Wouldn’t it help them to retrace Sam’s footsteps? “Okay . . . if you like. So at around six, I was with Sam down by the lake. We had a lake near our villa,” she added.

“So you were the last person to see Sam alive?” Shepherd asked.

“Uh, yeah. I was.” Kayla paused, waiting for him to comment on the way that looked: bad. He didn’t. “So we were by the lake. We were talking about . . .” She gulped. She couldn’t tell the truth, but she certainly couldn’t lie. Not to a police officer. “ . . . about the last few months,” she finished vaguely.

He nodded. No further questions. He gestured to continue.

Wouldn’t he want to know if Sam seemed on edge? If he had mentioned the drugs? If there was a sense of fear?

Kayla cleared her throat. “Sam went inside at around twenty past six, and my friend Russia—­I mean, Minya—­came out to join me by the lake.”

“And that’s your alibi.”

“Yes,” Kayla replied, caught off guard by his bluntness. “That’s my alibi. I was with Minya when Sam went missing.”

He nodded again. “Ms. Pavlova corroborated this statement. Okay. Carry on.”

“We smoked and chatted for a while. Mainly about how strange Sam had been acting . . .” She paused, but Shepherd didn’t visibly react. “ . . . until I headed inside to find him. That’s when I discovered all the blood.”

“So you were the last person to see him alive, and the person who realized he was missing?”

“Right.”
Jeez, when you say it like that . . . it’s a wonder I’m not locked up
.

Shepherd stared at another page in his file.
A file all about Sam
. Kayla wondered what it’d be like to read it. To see all the cold, hard facts laid out before her. Images of blood splatters, DNA, footprints. Timelines. Evidence. The thought made her stomach turn, but a small part of her wanted to see it.

“Were you aware that Mr. Kingfisher was in debt?”

Kayla flinched, not anticipating the change of conversational pace. “No. But like I mentioned, he had been acting strangely.”

“Strangely in the way that a person in a lot of drug debt would?” He seemed to emphasize the word drug.

Kayla shrugged. “It’s hard to identify what kind of strange until you look back in hindsight.”

“You have hindsight now. Would you say that’s what it was?” he pressed.

Uneasiness crept over her. Was he trying to put words in her mouth? “Maybe . . .”

“Right, right.” Something about Shepherd’s tone didn’t sit right with her. Was it boredom? Apathy?

She pushed on. “It was more like . . . anger. Like he was angry with all of us. With the world.”

“With you?”

“With me.”

With everything
.

W
H
E
N
K
A
Y
L
A
G
O
T
back to the house, she felt a little deflated. Empty. Even Shepherd, the guy who was meant to be leading the investigation on UK soil, hadn’t seemed all that invested in Sam’s case. After and twenty minutes of lackluster debriefing, he’d let her go. His questions had seemed vague and disjointed. His eyes betrayed his exhaustion—­his desire to be anywhere but in that room, talking to her.

She’d expected—­hoped, maybe—­to meet someone as desperate to find Sam as she was. Okay, so maybe he already had all the detailed notes he needed from her interviews in Phuket. Or maybe he thought finding Sam wasn’t possible. Maybe he thought finding him would just mean finding a beaten body. The Thais could do that.

Maybe he just didn’t care.

She slung her handbag—­a knitted, rainbow-­colored hobo bag she’d bought in Bangkok—­onto the breakfast bar. It clashed horribly with everything in the sleek kitchen, which made her love it even more.

She looked around the room. In the middle of the oversized oak dining table stood a big glass vase holding cream-­colored lilies, which had bloomed a ­couple of days ago and were now a little droopy. The chrome tap dripped water every few seconds, the sound of fat droplets hitting the sink echoing around the silent kitchen. Her breakfast bowl was still abandoned on the counter above the dishwasher—­opening the door and putting it in had seemed like too much effort—­and the TV remotes were strewn across the breakfast bar from when she’d angrily punched the off buttons that morning.

Nobody had been here since she’d left. Kayla swallowed down the lump rising in her throat—­the hard knot of loneliness and grief she’d been desperately trying to bury—­and grabbed the kettle, filling it too full with water from the dripping tap. She plonked it on the stove. Coffee would help. Coffee always helps.

On autopilot, she clattered around with expensive mugs and the secret stash of instant coffee she’d hidden in the back of the cupboard. Her dad abhorred her preference for cheap coffee (“We have a thousand-­pound espresso machine and you choose that crap every time!”), which, again, made her like it even more. Some teenagers rebelled with drugs and tattoos—­she chain-­drank Nescafé Gold Blend.

After spooning granules into the biggest mug she could find, she leaned back against the counter, the ridge digging into the bottom of her spine. The water in the kettle was just starting to whir and bubble, wisps of steam pouring from the spout. The scent of freshly cut grass and lawn-­mower fuel drifted through the open window, and a few patches of sunlight were beginning to break through the fleecy clouds. It was an ordinary June day.