Free Give Yourself Away by Barbara Elsborg Page B

until we’d at least discussed it. You didn’t even fasten yourself on. Have you got a fucking death wish? This isn’t the first time you’ve risked your life.”
    “We all risk our lives every time we go out.”
    “You know what I’m talking about.”
    Yeah, I do.
    Brian sighed. “Until I’ve talked to Richard, you’re suspended.”
    March almost laughed. Two suspensions in one day. Maybe he should try to get banned from the pub and make it three. He put his pager on the table.
    “Go home and think about why you volunteered for the RNLI,” Brian said.
    “I don’t need to think about it. I did it to save lives.” March walked out.
    I am such a fucking liar. A byproduct of volunteering to be a member of the lifeboat crew was that he might stop people dying, but it was his own life March was trying to save, or maybe end in the process. This is not living.
    March strode to his car. He’d give the pub a miss, just in case.

Chapter Seven
    “I’m sorry,” Tye whispered, trying not to cry.
    Baxter wiped the blood off Tye’s face with a few sheets of wet toilet tissue. “Don’t be. You did your best.”
    Tye wanted to believe that, wanted Baxter to believe that, but he kept thinking if he’d run the other way, gone down the drive, seen that log before it tripped him… “There weren’t any other houses. This place is all on its own. I saw a wood, that’s all. I ran into it but…that’s where he caught me. I got the license plate of his van. TY4 76RP.”
    They both flinched at a loud bang. The scrap of light from the window disappeared.
    Tye took a deep breath. “I’ll stay with him, and you can go.”
    Baxter pulled Tye under the blanket and lay close to him on the mattress. “He isn’t going to let either of us go.”
    “But he said he would.”
    “He won’t because we’d go to the police. He’d warn us not to, threaten to hurt the one he still had, but our parents would make us tell the police everything. We can identify him. He isn’t going to risk that.”
    Tye gulped. “What’s he going to do then?”
    “I think he’ll kill the one he takes away from here.”
    Tye clung to him, buried his head against Baxter’s chest as he shook, and Baxter wrapped his arms around him. Tye loved him so much. He couldn’t bear the idea of Baxter being dead.
    “The only way out is through the door,” Baxter said. “We can’t set up a trap to trip him or overpower him because he can see exactly what we’re doing. So we have to trick him. We have to persuade him to let us both out of the room and while he’s…busy with me, you have to escape. Look for a window to get through. He’ll have locked the doors. Maybe take his phone if you can, but don’t waste time looking for it.”
    “No. You should run this time.”
    Baxter shook his head. “I know what he wants. I’ll let him do it.”
    Tye knew what Liam wanted too. Tye had had his chance. This one was Baxter’s.
    * * *
    Caleb was relieved the paramedics hadn’t insisted he go to the hospital. Well, they had insisted, but he’d been adamant. He didn’t want any more questions, the cops putting two and two together and concluding he had tried to kill Mike and then tried to kill himself. When Caleb took his phone from his pocket, it showed no glimmer of life. One of the policemen called him a taxi.
    The money in his wallet was as wet as he was, and he gave the driver a hefty tip for the short journey back to his car. It was the only one left in the car park. When the taxi had gone, he stripped and put on another set of clothes, including socks, and threw his last dry pair of shoes into the passenger footwell. His wet things went into a plastic bag, which he stowed in the boot after taking out the sleeping bag and pillow. He’d lost his lenses at some point. Maybe there were a few friends he could have gone to, but Caleb wanted to be on his own.
    The police had accepted his story of stumbling into a crevasse and pointed out he should have