I am very excited to be bringing you another fabulous extract from a brand new novel by today-you guys are so lucky! Thank you so much to SB Caves for sharing this extract today-more information is at the bottom!
Here's what the book's all about-buy links will be at the bottom!
On the tenth anniversary of her child's disappearance, Francine receives an anonymous note containing just five words: I KNOW WHERE SHE IS
When a young woman approaches her the next day claiming to have sent the letter Francine wants to dismiss it as a cruel, twisted joke. But the stranger knows things that only her daughter could know. It soon becomes clear that Francine will have to go to dark places in order to learn the truth about the kidnapping. She will discover that danger comes from unexpected places. She will do things she never imagined herself capable of.
But will Francine get her daughter back – or is it too late?
‘How’re the nuggets?’
Lena licked crumbs from her lips then sucked her finger. ‘I thought they tasted different.’
Francine wasn’t sure what that meant exactly. She let Lena dissect another three nuggets, her hand whipping out like a cobra striking to retrieve individual fries before eating them in three quick bites.
‘Where have you come from, Lena?’
‘The big house. In the woods. That’s where we lived.’ She looked up suspiciously, holding a nugget in both hands, then added in a lower voice, ‘Me and Mel. And the rest of them.’
‘Someone was holding you there?’
She nodded once, very slowly. The strange variation of fast and slow movements only served to unsettle Francine further.
‘Who was keeping you there, Lena? Do you know his name?’
‘I know all the names of the men at the house.’
‘Would you be able to tell the police?’
The girl’s lips parted and stretched into a smile, and for a second, both her eyes looked straight at Francine. A low, hiccuping chuckle fell out of her mouth. ‘They already know about us. What do you think – we just go missing and nobody knows?’
‘Why did you contact me, then?’
‘I made a promise to Mel. And she made one to me. We said that if either of us ever got away, we would contact the other’s parents. That’s what we said.’ She paused, cocking her head to the side as though listening to instructions from some unseen adviser, then added, ‘It’s difficult for me to do this. I’m very scared.’
‘Have you not been back to your own parents yet?’
‘My mom died of a stroke; not a stroke of luck, I guess. She’s long gone. Don’t have any other family.’ She shrugged, then shook her head. ‘I found you in the phone book.’
No you didn’t, Francine wanted to say. I’m not listed. She decided not to focus on the lie just then, but stuck a little red flag in it for later. If not the phone book, then how?
‘I wanted to write everything down for you, but I don’t know how to do that sometimes.’
‘When did you escape?’
‘Must have been …’ She held out her hands and began counting off fingers, staring at the spotlights on the ceiling. ‘I think two weeks now.’
‘And you haven’t gone to the police?’
‘No.’
‘Why?’
‘They’ll send me back. They know about everything. They’re in on it too.’
Francine took a break to let Lena continue eating. She stared at her own food and saw a rubbery orange triangle of cheese hanging down from inside her burger. The girl had lied to her about how she had found her address – that was strike one. But Francine couldn’t help but feel there was more that Lena wasn’t saying. She sipped cola and thought about it some more.
If you’re tired, little girl, close your eyes and go to sleep …
‘Can you tell me about the house where you and Autumn were?’ She refused to call her daughter Mel. The very notion was obscenely offensive to her.
‘It’s deep inside the woods. That’s where he kept us. There’s nobody around, nothing but trees and hills. There’s a river that goes nearby.’
‘Do you think you can talk me through how you escaped?’
Lena tilted her head to one side and then the other. ‘Leslie was saying he felt like he had a stomach ache. I could see he was sick because he kept screwing his face up like this …’ She pulled a face, her features changing so rapidly that it startled Francine. In a flicker, it was back to normal. ‘I said he should sit up if his stomach was hurting him, because maybe that would help. But he said he couldn’t sit up. Then he was like this, doing this.’ She gripped her own arm. ‘He said he couldn’t breathe. Then he just went quiet and I heard him make a mess in his trousers. That’s what always happens when people die. Did you know that? They mess themselves. So I guess he was dead.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I left him there. It was early in the morning so I still had a lot of daytime. I followed the river and it got me through to a clearing. Later that day I came out of the forest and I was on the road. So I hitched a lift.’
‘Why didn’t you take Autumn with you?’
‘She wasn’t at the house just then. They took her away for a party a few days before. I didn’t get to go because Leslie always has to be at the house and he has to have somebody to keep him company.’
One of the McDonald’s employees was going around collecting abandoned trays, spraying antibacterial cleaner on the tables and wiping them down with a roll of blue kitchen towel. He neared Francine and Lena’s table, and the girl stopped talking and bowed her head, looking at the employee out of the corner of one eye.
‘It isn’t safe to be here.’ She shook her head. ‘They could check here like that,’ she clicked her fingers, ‘like it’s nothing. They could walk in here and sit down and that’s it. They won’t like that I’ve gone.’
‘It’s all right,’ Francine said, as soothingly as she could. ‘Nobody is going to touch you while I’m here.’
‘It’s not all right!’ Lena slid out of the booth and the tray clattered to the floor, the pink milkshake slopping out of the cup. ‘You don’t know! They could be waiting for me right now!’
An old man in thick glasses looked round from a booth a few feet away. Francine stood up and put her hands out in front of her in a don’t shoot gesture. ‘Easy, Lena. It’s okay.’
About the Author
SB Caves is a screenwriter born and raised in North London and now working on a second
novel, a thriller set in the UK.
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