Page 166 of Good Girl, Bad Blood
‘We’re in the kitchen,’ Ravi said. ‘It’s dark.’
Pip held the phone closer to her mouth. ‘Ravi, don’t let Connor hear this, but if you find anything of Jamie’s, his phone, his clothes, don’t touch them yet. Those are evidence, if this doesn’t go the way we want it to.’
‘Got it,’ he said, and then he sniffed loudly or gasped and Pip couldn’t tell which.
‘Ravi?’ she said. ‘Ravi, what’s wrong?’
‘Fuck,’ Connor hissed.
‘Someone’s here,’ Ravi said, his breath quickening. ‘We can hear a voice. There’s someone here.’
‘What?’ Pip said, fear rising up her throat, pulling it closed.
And then, through the phone and through Ravi’s panicked breaths, Pip heard Connor shout.
‘Jamie. It’s Jamie!’
‘Connor, wait don’t run,’ Ravi shouted after him, the phone lowering away from his voice.
Just rustling.
And running.
‘Ravi?’ Pip hissed.
A muffled voice.
A loud thump.
‘Jamie! Jamie, it’s me, it’s Connor! I’m here!’
The phone crackled and Ravi’s breath returned.
‘What’s going on?’ Pip said.
‘He’s here, Pip,’ Ravi said, his voice shaking as Connor shouted in the background. ‘Jamie’s here. He’s OK. He’s alive.’
‘He’s alive?’ she said, the words not quite clicking in her head.
And beneath Connor’s shouts, now breaking up into frantic sobs, she could hear the faint edges of a muffled voice. Jamie’s voice.
‘Oh my god, he’s alive,’ she said, the words cracking in half in her throat as she stepped back against a tree. ‘He’s alive,’ she said, just to hear it again. Tears stung at her eyes, so she closed them. And she thought those words, harder than she’d ever thought anything in her life:Thank you, thank you, thank you.
‘Pip?’
‘Is he OK?’ she asked, wiping her eyes on her jacket.
‘We can’t get to him,’ Ravi said, ‘he’s locked in a room, the downstairs toilet I think. It’s locked and there’s a chain padlocked outside too. But he sounds OK.’
‘I thought you were dead,’ Connor was crying. ‘We’re here, we’re going to get you out!’
Jamie’s voice rose, but Pip couldn’t make out the words.
‘What’s Jamie saying?’ she said, angling to watch the farmhouse again.
‘He’s saying . . .’ Ravi paused, listening. ‘He’s saying that we need to leave. We need to leave because he’s made a deal.’
‘What?’
