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Someone Out There
Catherine Hunt
A story of obsession, revenge and deceit, and a woman caught up in terrifying circumstances. Perfect for fans of Paula Hawkins, C. L. Taylor and Helen Fields.Laura Maxwell appears to have it all – perfect career, perfect husband, perfect life. But how well do you really know the people around you? All it takes is one tiny crack to shatter the whole façade.A series of accidents causes Laura to believe that someone is deliberately targeting her, trying to harm her. Fear starts to pervade every part of her life, affecting her work and her marriage, and she feels increasingly isolated.If no one believes Laura’s story, who will be there to protect her when her attacker closes in for the kill?
CATHERINE HUNT
Someone Out There
This is a work of fiction. Any references to real people, living or dead, real events, businesses, organizations and localities are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. All names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and their resemblance, if any, to real-life counterparts is entirely coincidental.
Harper
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
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London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2015
Copyright © Catherine Hunt 2015
Catherine Hunt asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2015
Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books
Ebook Edition © May 2015 ISBN: 9780008139667
Version 2015-11-06
Contents
Cover (#ufb9f5611-01b6-5676-8941-020203140a92)
Title Page (#u2b4ef765-53a1-5211-bab2-6afa6c3be8d4)
Copyright (#udc168d45-9ca7-5790-b30b-3b1b5504db8b)
Chapter One (#u8e8d2931-ae43-54d1-b469-3e449ad32a7b)
Chapter Two (#ud324cd67-2732-595c-afa4-36e54edbc51d)
Chapter Three (#u8013228d-616e-5ccf-910a-2f5479a662ec)
Chapter Four (#ubb2b2742-e4d8-5c0b-96c5-cd348f070f0a)
Chapter Five (#u1f6c5018-2dc6-553c-bc69-0b3d39bc7cf0)
Chapter Six (#u75b4f266-5c8b-5e30-b51d-51861cd0e69b)
Chapter Seven (#u23bec49d-4409-5a92-8c2b-87cc5dca8a1a)
Chapter Eight (#u9a6d2139-ecb4-5f75-b5dd-04f91add967e)
Chapter Nine (#ue038cc6a-ad5f-52bc-9a64-fe97a6992f1a)
Chapter Ten (#u0b604e43-05da-5864-aaf6-31da2a545d7d)
Chapter Eleven (#uaa90c1b2-1796-5685-86d9-3fe0dcc5eb29)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Killer Reads Back Ad (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#u195f25f4-df13-5fe1-a696-89f6f603e37b)
Laura was tired and she was late. Sarah had kept her talking in the office and then, because Sarah needed a shoulder to cry on, she’d gone with her to a wine bar to talk things through. Now it was almost nine o’clock and Laura just wanted to get home. The traffic lights stayed obstinately red. She drummed her fingers impatiently on the steering wheel. Rain lashed down on the windscreen.
A car drew up in the lane beside her. A four-wheel drive with tinted windows. Huge and dark and menacing. A monster. It loomed over her, music pumping – a heavy beat pulsing against her driver’s window, drowning out the rain.
It stopped very close to her, far too close, with its bonnet stuck out aggressively in front. She didn’t look across, kept her eyes straight ahead, but she had the feeling that the driver was staring at her. Another idiot, she thought, who’d seen a woman in a sports car and had decided to show her who was boss.
The lights changed and she didn’t try to race it. She would just sit back and let it burn up its tyres on the wet road.
Laura waited but the monster didn’t move. It sat there with the lights at green. A horn sounded from behind. It still didn’t move, just stayed close beside her, and that was when the alarm bell first began ringing in her head. Not much of one, no big deal, no more than a tinkle really.
She drove off then – fast, using every bit of the 0 to 60 in six-point-five seconds that the Audi TT’s engine had to offer. Off and away, leave all the trouble behind. She liked that thought; it fitted her new philosophy for life. She’d moved on, settled down with Joe, and given up the London rat race.
Out in front, she slowed down, back within the speed limit. She looked out for the four-wheel drive but it was nowhere in sight. Her mind went back to thinking about work and especially about the Pelham divorce case.
Her client, Anna Pelham, had rung that morning to say she’d had two emails threatening to kill her. She’d sent them on to Laura. They were vicious, explicit death threats and Anna was certain her husband had sent them, though they had not come from his email address. There had been other emails sent to Anna from the same address, ranting and blustering, but these were the first to threaten her life. These were in a different league altogether and it was a dangerous escalation.
Laura had reported the death threats to the police and pressed them to charge Harry Pelham with harassment. Anna was being incredibly brave. She refused to be intimidated, sticking to her guns over the divorce. In fact, the threats seemed to have made her more determined than ever to protect her interests and especially those of her eight-year-old daughter, Martha. Good for her. If Harry Pelham had hoped to beat her into submission, his plan had seriously backfired.
When Anna had first instructed Laura to act in the divorce, she had explained how jealous and controlling Harry was. His abuse and rages had got worse and worse and then he had started hitting her. She had not wanted to leave him, had tried to keep the family together, but in the end it got so bad she had no choice. On Easter Day, after he’d slapped her hard in the face and said he’d hated her for the last six years, she walked out of the family home taking Martha with her.
Laura had heard similar stories before in her career as a divorce lawyer and she thought she’d stopped being upset by them, but somehow Anna’s graphic descriptions of what she had endured at the hands of Harry had got under her skin. They brought back all the old memories of her parents’ marriage, memories she had tried to bury.
Driving on autopilot, thinking about what more she could do to help Anna, Laura turned off the main Brighton road and into the lanes that led to home. An empty road ahead, no speed cameras here, she touched the accelerator and the Audi surged forward. She liked to feel its power. She knew the road well; the clear straight runs where she could have fun and the two big bends where she had to take care. Her foot pressed harder on the accelerator, the woods flashed by on either side.
A wild wind was bringing down the autumn leaves. They danced across her windscreen, pinned down now and again by the rain, then whirled away by the speed of her passage.
