The Kill

Evie Hunter

Description

The gripping new revenge thriller from the bestselling author of The Scam!

Secrets can't stay hidden forever...

After six years in prison for a crime he did not commit, Sebastian Carter is out and determined to get answers about who set him up. He knows it’s someone close to him and Sebastian will make sure they pay.

Ava Harper is living a lie. Although she loves her job caring for young Lily Carter, her real reason for being in the Carter household is to get answers of her own – from none other than convicted murderer Sebastian.

Sebastian hates liars, but he’s intrigued by Ava. As he gets to know more about her, he wonders if the answers she’s looking for could solve his mystery too.

Or will getting too close to Ava risk them both getting killed…?

Praise for Evie Hunter:

'A brilliant read that hooked me from the outset. I couldn’t tear myself away!' Bestselling author Gemma Rogers.

Sujets

• Policier & Thriller
• Policier
• Thriller
• Mashups
• Psychological
• Women Sleuths
• Private Investigators
• Hard-Boiled
• Amateur Sleuth
• Traditional
• Thrillers
• Adventure (Guyana)
• Suspenso
• Reino Unido
• 21st century
• Psychological thriller
• United Kingdom
• Psychology
• City Life
• Great Britain
• Adventure
• Crime
• Suspense
• Noir
• Fiction
• Royaume-Uni

Informations

• Publié par: Boldwood Books
• Date de parution: 13 mars 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781802802931
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE KILL


EVIE HUNTER
CONTENTS



Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19


Acknowledgments

More from Evie Hunter

About the Author

The Murder List

About Boldwood Books
1

Sebastian Carter fixed Henshaw, a screw who’d had a hard-on for Seb throughout the final phase of his incarceration, with a cutting look. Dismissing the man from his mind as an irrelevance, he stepped through the unlocked gate and embraced the sweet, fresh taste of real freedom for the first time in six years. The majority of the prison officers had treated him with respect. Money talked, even behind bars.
Especially there.
Henshaw had made it clear that he bore Seb a grudge. He had probably been paid to make his life difficult by one of Seb’s father’s rivals. Seb’s reputation had preceded him throughout the prison system, inflated no doubt through his father’s influence, despite that interference being unasked for and unappreciated.
Henshaw had it in for Seb, no question about it. Probably had a death wish too, given Seb’s father’s long reach and hard reputation. Henshaw was definitely on the take, Seb knew, but then who wasn’t? Every man for himself in this dog-eat-dog world. Henshaw had made sure that Seb was alone in the shower block when his father’s rivals had wanted a quiet word. But the prison guard’s jaw had dropped open when Seb walked away from the confrontation whistling and unscathed, which was more than could be said for the two men who’d launched a clumsy attack. Seb winked at the bent screw and Henshaw knew his card had been marked.
Seb had kept his head down and avoided confrontation whenever possible, unless it came looking for him, and had done his time quietly. Henshaw was the only thorn in his side in this open prison, his last accommodation at His Majesty’s pleasure before they were obliged to release him. There had been others in the Cat Two jails he’d occupied though; inmates who wanted to prove how hard they were. Screws who enjoyed their little bit of power and liked to enforce it.
There were always others.
Seb could have walked free three years previously, had he admitted to the crime he’d been found guilty of committing and shown suitable remorse.
But Seb hadn’t done it and was buggered if he’d take the credit.
‘Be lucky, Carter,’ Henshaw said in what was for him a conciliatory tone as he pulled the gate wide for Seb to walk through.
Seb didn’t even look in his direction as he straightened the collar of the leather jacket that had festered in the prison store for the duration of his incarceration. It was loose around his waist; he’d lost weight but had toned up in the prison gym. His shoulders were as broad as ever, filling out the worn leather, and his mind was still a steel trap. Six years was a long time to contemplate the form his revenge would take for being fitted up for murder and eventually going down for manslaughter. Seb had every intention of exacting that revenge but without landing himself back inside.
Outside the gates, Seb paused to throw back his head and breathe deeply the crisp autumnal air that kissed his face and brought his dormant body slowly back to life. A sleek black car with tinted windows glided up to his side. The back door swung open and Seb slid onto the soft leather.
‘Okay, boss?’ Seb’s right-hand man, Patrick Risdon, asked from his seat beside the driver.
‘Never better, Pat,’ Seb replied, his voice a low, gravelly rumble. A man of few words as a general rule, he had exercised his vocal chords even less frequently over the past six years, speaking only when he had something worth saying. The constant noise inside didn’t need any contribution from him. The place was never quiet: arguments, shouting, fights, men jerking off in the middle of the night. Others crying for their mothers.
Seb had survived by allowing it all to wash over him and for his reputation as a man to be reckoned with to do the talking for him. He was afforded respect, for the most part, and left to his own devices.
To a degree.
‘Good to see you, boss,’ said Mark from behind the wheel. A bull of a man who could intimidate even when smiling – especially then – Mark was as loyal and dependable as they came. Seb’s time inside was made that little bit easier by the knowledge that Mark was looking after what mattered the most to Seb.
Mark would kill any man with his bare hands if he came within spitting distance of Seb’s sister Lily, or even looked at her the wrong way.
‘Mark,’ Seb replied. The two men exchanged a nod and a significant look. That was all it took. Normal business was resumed, and the first item on the agenda was for Seb to discover who’d fitted him up.
Given that he’d had little else to think about for six years, he already had a pretty good idea where to start looking for answers. Pat did too but Seb had made him hold off. This was Seb’s mess, and he would deal with it. He didn’t need anyone else to fight his battles for him and land inside themselves. This was personal.
Besides, Seb had held onto an idealistic hope of not only uncovering the guilty party but of clearing his own name too.
That dream had helped him to get through.
‘Welcome back to the land of the living,’ Pat said. ‘Straight home? Got a surprise waiting for you.’
‘Better not be a fucking party.’
Pat chuckled. ‘Do I look like I’ve got a death wish?’
Seb settled back and watched the passing scenery as he was driven in smooth comfort towards his palatial home outside of Chichester. A home that had been polluted by the police when they tore it apart looking for material evidence of his guilt in the murder of that slimy scrote, Paul Blythe. Evidence that wasn’t there to be found, hence the reduction in the charges to manslaughter, given the circumstantial nature of the CPS’s case. The jury had clearly thought the case flimsy too since he’d been convicted by a split majority. Seb reckoned the judge had shared their doubts, hence a relatively lenient sentence for a capital crime.
A career criminal, Blythe was no loss to society; the judge would have known that too. Seb’s only regret was that he hadn’t sent the man to the hereafter himself. Had he done so, he would have managed the job with more finesse and certainly not left an obvious trail that had led directly to his door.
One of the reasons why Seb hadn’t appealed his sentence was that Blythe was now fish food. Couldn’t have happened to a more deserving scumbag. Even so, he reasoned, appreciating the simple pleasure of watching the trees shedding their leaves in a kaleidoscope of colours as the car sped along a country road bordered by woodland, he hadn’t been responsible for the bastard’s demise. It had been clumsily done; a deliberate attempt to get at Seb’s father through his estranged son. A father who was a career criminal; Jason Carter, a name that was feared and respected in equal measure on the streets of South London and beyond. A father with a criminal empire that Seb wanted no part of.
But by using Lily to get to Jason Carter, the perpetrators had crossed a line.
A line that Seb now fully intended to redefine.
He thought of Lily and firmed his jaw. The time had come to get to the truth and if that meant cracking a few heads, then so be it.
Seb and Lily would enjoy walking over the leaves, he thought, as he continued to watch them fluttering down. Hearing them crunch beneath her boots would make her smile and that thought brought a rare smile to Seb’s lips too.
His half-sister was everything to him. The only female in his life who mattered.
And thanks to Blythe, she was now damaged goods. Even more so than she had been before the brutal rape. A beautiful woman with the body of an adult trapped inside the mind of a child. If he’d had any doubts about rooting out those responsible – and Blythe, he knew, had been acting on orders – then thoughts of the damage done to sweet, innocent Lily drove them away.
Seb caught sight of his image in the tinted window. Now thirty-five, he knew he’d changed; he was harder, uncompromisingly tough and obviously older, as evidenced by the lines etched into his features. His hair was still thick but the blond was now threaded with the odd strand of grey. He pushed it away from expressionless blue eyes, uninterested in what he absently knew to be a handsome face that before his incarceration had attracted all the female attention he’d ever wanted, and then some.
Keeping emotions locked up tighter than the prison’s population had become the new norm, the only way to survive in that hellhole and to remain relatively sane. Having a reputation as a hard man, well able to handle himself, had been helpful. His bland expression gave nothing away but he knew the experience had changed him – would change any man – both inside and out. His father had embraced the criminal world and Seb had grown up surrounded by villains. Despite that, or perhaps because of it, he had been determined to remain on the straight and narrow and make his own way in the world without any help from the financial coffers stoked by his father’s illegal activities.
He now knew that life wasn’t that simple.
Mark, as always, drove on in silence and Pat had the good sense to leave Seb to his cogitations. Pat had been Seb’s only visitor these past six years. He had refused to see anyone else, especially Lily. Whether she would know him now, after six years, was the burning question. Perhaps it would be better if she didn’t. He’d received regular reports and knew she was happy in her own private world, cared for twenty-four seven in the fortress that doubled as Seb’s home.
How anyone had got to her in the first place, Seb had yet to discover. He suspected inside help but had trusted everyone who worke