His torso was bare and bony; he looked like a prisoner on the verge of starvation.
His eyes were wide open, swimming in a pool of tears. He didn’t blink once.
Not when he turned his head to Emma.
Nor when he fixed his stare on her.
Not even when she let out a high-pitched scream and tore from the room. Along the landing, down the stairs to the front door where initially she thought she’d run slap into the two men. But it was just the wig stand, which she knocked to the ground, falling over herself in the process. She got up again at once and rushed into the street, without a thought for the neighbours or anyone else who might be watching. Emma slipped several times on the icy cobbles, but not so badly as to fall a second time.
Emma ran and ran and ran… Startled by the crunching gravel her feet was spraying up. By the panting of her own lungs.
She pressed her hand to where the stitch hurt most and kept running until she finally came to her house. The only detached building in the area, which Philipp had made as secure as a bank, with electronic locks she needed a transponder to open. This was a round, coin-like chip you had to hold beneath the lock before it beeped twice and now Emma pulled it from her pocket as she went up the steps.
She almost dropped it when she noticed that the LED light on the lock was green. And then Emma saw a dim glow coming through the curtain behind the small pane of glass in the door.
No. That’s impossible, Emma screamed silently.
That has to be impossible!
Someone had switched off the alarm system, opened the door and turned the light on inside.
And it wasn’t Philipp, because his car wasn’t there.