Emilia hasn’t moved all night. She has stayed locked in this position on the sofa beneath her parents’ living room window, knees tucked up to her chin, staring out into the night. Waiting. For what exactly she doesn’t know. For them to come and hurt her parents. For them to call. For lights to blaze in through the window, their masked faces appearing on the other side of the glass.
She had raced to her parents’ house, fear thrilling through her, expecting the worst when she arrived: a broken window, a door forced open. She stepped inside, her breathing shallow. But her parents were asleep – their chests rising and falling peacefully as they lay beside each other, Mimi curled up at their feet.
She was sure that the phone would ring again. But it has stayed silent. Two missed calls and nothing more.
Her dad’s laptop is beside her – the Confession Room fixed to the screen. Every time it goes into hibernation, the image turning black, she runs her finger frantically over the trackpad. She can’t miss it. If a post goes up, she has to see it. She needs to know. Did her rebellion make any difference at all?
They snatched Emilia just minutes after the confession was posted. So if they were planning on taking Harris Keaton in the midnight hours, the post naming him should have gone up by now. But it hasn’t. The forum is silent. But there are thousands of people on there, just like her, watching expectantly. The system has always worked the same way. Once a survivor and a victim are found, it’s less than twenty-four hours before the next victims are named. So why haven’t they posted? Did she really make a difference?
Or have they simply changed the rules?
Emilia straightens her back, her eyes watering as she once again squints into the distance, searching for movement in the growing light. Why can’t she calm down? Why is adrenalin still running through her? It’s relentless, this level of fear. The fear of the unknown, the unpredictable. The fear of two people who are seemingly capable of anything.
A door slams.
A new post. Is it them?
Is it him?
Anonymous 01
We’ve given enough warnings. And even with a head start, you haven’t been able to stop us. No more. But the killings will not stop. The confessions will now come when it’s already too late.
Good luck.
Emilia stares at the screen, her shoulders curling inwards as she brings her trembling hands to her forehead.
They’ve changed the rules.
Is she the only person in the world who knows that Harris Keaton is their next victim? What if he isn’t any more? Maybe they weren’t able to capture him without her. But no matter who it is, now nobody will know until they are already dead.
Has the next victim already been killed? They haven’t confessed yet, so maybe there’s still time.
Emilia grips the edges of the laptop, her knuckles turning white. Maybe this is her chance. Her chance to stop them.
Isabella’s scared, frustrated face appears before her.
If you do it on your own, you’ll be making that choice for all of us. That isn’t your choice to make. And you’ll be putting our families in danger.
Isabella was so fearful of what might happen if they tell the truth. And Emilia felt the same – her parents are everything to her. But she can protect them. She’ll make sure that the police keep them safe. If she doesn’t do something now, there will be more deaths, more victims. Just like they said: the killings will not stop.
Maybe they deserved it … That’s what Isabella said. And that’s the thought that crossed Emilia’s mind last night when she was with Harris Keaton: maybe he deserves this.
She shakes her head furiously, anger bubbling up. Nobody deserves this. Who are they to do this to people? To act as judge, jury and executioner? When she ran away last night, she made the decision: she cannot be a part of this. And she won’t be.
No more.
She stands quickly, running to the front door. She peers through the small glass window to her car, her eyes darting around the dark, searching for their looming figures in the shadows.
She can make it.
She opens the door and runs, pelting to the back of her car, throwing open the boot. She pulls out the holdall that she takes with her on jobs, growling with frustration as the handle catches on the umbrella next to it. She yanks it free and races back to house, her footsteps echoing beneath her.
Crossing the threshold, she closes the door quietly behind her before making her way back to the living room and setting her holdall on to the floor.
If she goes straight to the police and reveals she knows more than she has admitted, she’ll be taken to an interview room, and it will take too long for her to give them the information that they need. Hours maybe. But if she figures it out here, she can have it ready for them. Quickly, without hesitation.
Because her insistence that she didn’t remember anything after she was removed from the Room was a lie. Ciaran was right – he knows her so well. She has always had a good memory, taking in the smallest detail. Her investigative mind didn’t shut down with fear, didn’t collapse under the pressure. It was heightened. So maybe … maybe she can figure it out. Not who they are. That one is trickier. But where they are … maybe that she can solve.
She digs deep inside the bag, moving aside her camera and binoculars, until finally she grips the edge of the map. This will be easier to remember if she works on paper. Pulling it out, she flicks through the pages, searching for the location she needs.
There! There it is –
The police station. The one she ran to when they let her out of the van, Ryan’s body discarded on the road.
That’s the end location. That’s where she needs to work back from. If she follows her memories in reverse, it should lead her to the Confession Room.
Emilia pulls out a thick black marker from her bag and neatly marks an X on the map on top of the police station. She marks a second X a short way down the street where they stopped the van.
They travelled for approximately twenty minutes. That she is sure of. She knows, because she made sure to count. Steady, rhythmic, focusing on keeping the time.
The van never felt as if it was travelling at speed. And they wouldn’t have wanted to do anything to attract attention. And on motorways, there are regular cameras, automatic number plate recognition … No. They kept to the country roads. Between thirty and forty miles per hour if she had to guess.
Flipping over the map, she makes a quick calculation, her handwriting unwieldy as she sets out the equation.
Distance = speed multiplied by time.
She reaches for her phone, opening the calculator. Tapping quickly, her mind racing, she presses the equals button and then scrawls the result on to the map, circling it wildly.
13.3333 miles.
That’s the furthest they travelled in any direction. Retrieving her compass, she measures the scale on the map, and quickly calculates again before stabbing the needle into the X, her hand sweeping round in a steady circle, the pencil scratching against the paper.
She looks down at the map, the hairs on the nape of her neck standing on end.
Somewhere within the perimeter of that circle is the Confession Room.
But now she needs to rely on something not as reliable as mathematics; not as straightforward as an equation. Human memory. It is known to deceive and misguide, to inflate some details and diminish others. But she has spent her entire adult life focusing on the detail. Every minute element. Scolding herself for missing anything. Priding herself on her precision. If anybody can remember with accuracy, it’s Emilia.
She closes her eyes, forcing her mind to delve back into its memory, to a place where, until now, she has refused to let it travel. She has blocked the path, refusing to acknowledge that if she searches hard enough, the answer might have been here all along.
Focus, Emilia. Focus.
When they stopped near the police station, the back of the van was facing the station. So they had turned left before coming to a standstill.
Before the left-hand turning, they had travelled straight for a while … But they’d stopped for a minute or so. She remembers thinking that they must be at traffic lights. She drags the pen down the road, coming to a four-way junction. She crosses the junction with her pen.
What happened before the traffic lights? She blinks rapidly, searching her memory. There was something … something happened that sent Ryan’s body sliding across the van, his cold bound hands colliding with hers.
Yes. That’s it. A sharp right turn.
Emilia searches the map, her eyes following the streets as they twist like offshoots from the main road.
There it is – a sharp right turn, almost sending them back on themselves but taking them into the country lanes. And there – there is the point where the road swung away to the left in a wide arc.
She smoothly draws a line on the road, her pulse building – she’s remembering, she knew she could remember –
She stops suddenly, the force of her abrupt movement pushing the pen through the paper and on to the wooden floor beneath.
There’s a fork in the road.
One path leads east. The other north-east.
Which way was it? What direction did they come from?
Emilia’s hands clench and release, her fingers curling into fists and then releasing as she tries to remember.
She frowns, her whole body falling still. She was so sure that she would be able to do this, that it was all there, hiding inside her. She hangs her head, pinching the bridge of her nose.
What was it that Ciaran used to say to her? Where memory fails, allow logic to take over. There is an answer to this. There always is.
She pushes the lid back on to the marker and takes a deep, steadying breath. Allow logic to take over.
The road twists back and forth, steadily worming its way east before abruptly turning towards the south and finally emerging to join a dual carriageway.
A dual carriageway.
Here it is. That’s the answer. They never travelled on a big road like that. She is as sure of it as she was before. They never travelled that fast. And the roads were quiet – there wasn’t the sound of other cars rushing past them.
Her eyes dart quickly to the other option: the road to the north-east.
This one continues straight for a number of miles, the country road cutting through fields and farmland. It comes to an end, running directly into another country road. A smooth turn to the right or a shorter, sharper turn to the left.
Yes – this is it. This is the road they took.
And that sharp left turn – that wasn’t too far into the journey. It was when Ryan shifted from the centre of the van to the other side, his body slamming against the metal. Emilia had winced, her hands flying up to her ears to block out the sound. She had to remind herself to keep counting. Keep the time. Keep your mind.
From there it was straight – just bends in a meandering road but no turns. Nothing except the one turn that led them out of wherever the Confession Room is hidden. And that … that was a left turn.
Emilia’s pen comes to a sudden halt. With a wavering hand, she marks the page with an X.
She stares down at it, the colours of the map blending together before her eyes, the lines and markings swerving together like a kaleidoscope.
Is that it? Is that where it is?
She rushes to the laptop,
Her eyes dart from one side to the other, and she circles the coordinates. Then, carefully, she types them into the search bar.
The location loads, the map on the screen mirroring the one spread out on the floor. Holding her breath, Emilia leans in, swiping her finger until the mouse is hovering over another symbol:
Street View.
She clicks and the image buffers. At first it is blurred, a small circle whirring in the centre. But suddenly it is crystal clear. Moving even closer, her nose just inches from the screen, Emilia narrows her eyes. The image is showing a thorny hedgerow and the edge of a road. No kerb. She moves the mouse, clicking slowly on the arrow on the bottom right of the screen. The image rotates. More of the road appears, and then more, until she is staring down a narrow country lane that hits a dead end probably no more than a hundred metres further down. She keeps clicking. Click – more hedgerows. Click – an evergreen towering above. Click.
Emilia holds her breath. There, between the tree and a long line of bushes on the other side, are two iron gates. Partially hidden with overgrown plants, nature attempting to take over. But they are there. She closes her eyes, placing herself back in that van, her eyes covered, her hands bound.
Concentrate, Emilia.
A sound echoes just next to her ears. So real it could be right next to her, in this room: the slow creak of an electric gate.