Read Online Dead Night by Tim O'Rourke - Free Book Online Page B

towards me. Pulling me to my feet, he stuck the gun in my right hand and curled my fingers around it. “Shoot me,” he said, his eyes fixed on mine.
    “Are you out of your freaking mind?” I gasped.
    “Shoot me,” he insisted, as he wrapped my forefinger around the trigger.
    “Why?” I begged, tears starting to well in my eyes. I wasn’t crying out of sadness, but through fear.
    “You tried to escape from the police car,”
    he said matter-of-factly. “In the struggle, you managed to take my gun from my belt. You shot the driver in the head - by accident or deliberately, I don’t know. The car crashed and you climbed free. I came after you and you shot me with my own gun.”
    “Please don’t make me do this,” I pleaded, tears now rolling freely down my cheeks.
    “You’ve got to do this,” he pushed. “I can’t afford to be unmasked.”
    “Please...” I started.
    The gun firing was like the sky being torn apart by thunder. I flinched backwards and the gun flew from my hand and clattered onto the road. The cop crumpled before me.
    “Christ that hurt,” he groaned as he dropped onto his back.
    With my hands covering my face, I peered through my fingers at him. The cop pressed his hands against his thigh and I watched as blood gushed between his fingers.
    “Why?” I murmured, not knowing what else to say. I felt numb, sick, and so scared. I had just shot a cop and he was now lying bleeding to death at my feet.
    With his face as grey as the clouds above us, the copper stared up at me from beneath his cap. His eyes rolled with pain. Then through gritted teeth, he said, “Run, Sophie Harrison. Run and don’t stop – not ever.”
    “But...” I started.
    “Run! Run! Run!” he roared at me.
    Snatching up the holdall, I looked one last time at the cop as he lay bleeding in the middle of the deserted road, then turning, I ran.

9
    Sophie
     
    For three days and nights I ran. On the morning of the fourth day, freezing cold and near exhaustion, I came to a small town named Beechers Hope. The sun was just a pink slip of a ribbon on the horizon, so I made my way through the desolate town. The streets were narrow and cobbled. There was a small town square with a library. I cut across the square and made my way along a tiny coastal path that spiralled upwards.
    There was a white-washed signpost that was partially covered by bracken. Careful not to tear my hands on the thorns, I brushed the bushes aside and uncovered the sign. Black Hill it read, and next to it was a faded black arrow that pointed up the side of the hill that I was climbing.
    To my right, the path fell away. I looked over the edge and there was a sheer drop down the side of the cliff face to the jagged rocks below. Dark green waves crashed against them, and seagulls screeched as they circled above me.
    The wind was ice-cold and had a salty taste to it.
    My thick, brown hair blew back from my shoulders and I shivered. I didn’t know for how much longer I could go without proper rest. My feet were aching and I felt filthy. I had snatched a few hours’ sleep in outhouses and barns that I had discovered as I’d made my way across the country. After what had happened with those cops, I was desperate to keep away from main roads and the bigger towns. I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about what had happened. During the short periods of sleep that I had managed, it had been haunted with images of that copper’s head bursting open like an overripe tomato. Then there had been the other one, the cop who had forced me to shoot him, and when I would wake, the smell of gunpowder wafted on the cold air around me.
    I knew that copper had set me up. He obviously had his own agenda and reasons for wanting to know about the young woman – this Kiera Hudson – who had come back to life in my mortuary and fled into the night. What was so important about her? Had what Marty discovered about her blood been true? How would I ever know now? That cop had