They have your wife and son. What would you do to save them?

Introducing the gripping new thriller from number one bestselling author Simon Kernick.

Luke Jones, his wife Sofia and beloved son Max are hiking in a remote Scottish forest when they stumble across the body of a murdered woman. They’re even more terrified when the killers reappear, guns in hand.

Managing to flee, they each get separated in the dense woods – with Luke stumbling and knocking himself unconscious. When he wakes, there’s no sign of Sofia and Max. But when his phone starts ringing, the nightmare really begins…

Luke will do anything to save his wife and son. But, as a pawn in a deadly game which drags up his buried past, can he even save himself?

Start reading Chapter One now

16.10

Luke was having a playful argument with his son about who was the best striker, Man City’s Erling Haaland or Arsenal’s Viktor Gyökeres, when they heard it.

A woman crying out from higher up the bank. ‘Please help me. I’m hurt.’

Luke stopped, looking up at the thick scrub above, not sure for a moment if he’d imagined it. They were hiking deep in Scotland’s often forgotten Galloway Forest. Three of them, walking in single file along a narrow footpath above a stream that had cut a steep gorge through the forest floor. Luke was in front; Max, his twelve-year-old son, in the middle; and his wife, Sofia, bringing up the rear. The wind was strong today and he couldn’t see anything up there. The forest was quiet at the best of times, and in the two hours they’d been walking so far, they’d yet to see another person.

‘What is it?’ asked Sofia from the back.

Luke frowned. ‘I don’t know. I thought I heard something. Someone calling out in pain.’

‘I heard it too,’ said Max.

Sofia looked tired, and frankly pissed off, even though it had been her idea to come on this trip to patch things up between them after a rocky few months. She took a drink from her water bottle and looked up as well. ‘Are you sure? I can’t hear anything.’

As if on cue, the unseen woman cried out again, louder this time, her voice coming from almost directly above them. ‘Please. Help me!’

‘We’d better go see, Dad,’ said Max, staring wide-eyed up at where the voice was coming from. He was, thought Luke, such a good kid. The type of adventurer who never turned down a hike or a bike ride with his old man, unlike so many of his contemporaries, who couldn’t be dragged off their phones, and always first in line to help someone in distress.

‘It sounds serious,’ said Sofia.

Luke wasn’t usually a take-charge kind of guy. The truth was, he suffered from anxiety and would always prefer to remain in the safety of the background, but this time he knew he had no choice. ‘I’ll go see. Stay here.’ He started up the bank, having to use his hands a couple of times, conscious that both Sofia and Max had ignored his request and were coming up behind him.

‘Help, God!’ Now there was a real urgency in the woman’s voice, and it was loud, almost hysterical.

‘I’m coming!’ called Luke, increasing his pace as he tried to pinpoint where her cries were coming from, and wondering for the first time how she could have known they were there, because they hadn’t exactly been talking loudly and they’d been downwind of her.

At the top of the bank was a wall of ferns and tangled holly bushes and Luke fought his way through them, shouting out again so that the woman knew that help was on its way. Through a gap in two oak trees he could see a clearing up ahead, with a hole in the ground in the middle, earth piled up on the far side of it.

‘Where are you?’ he called, slowing his pace as he tried to work out who would have dug a hole in the middle of the woods, because it looked new, like someone had just been working on it.

No answer. And yet this was definitely where the voice had been coming from.

He called out again, and this time some primeval sixth sense kicked in, and he felt the hairs go up on the back of his neck, because the hole was shallow and the shape of a grave, and it looked like the top of someone’s head in there, with a woman’s flowing black hair.

And whoever it was wasn’t moving.

Luke swallowed and slowly approached the hole, step by step, feeling the heaviness in his legs that came from animal fear. Because he knew deep down that something very bad was happening here.

He had to stop himself from crying out when he finally saw her properly. The hole was barely two feet deep, and she was lying on her back inside, her legs slightly bent to make her fit properly and her head propped up at one end. She was naked bar a pair of filthy-looking tracksuit bottoms, and she wasn’t moving, because there was a deep and clearly fresh slash in her throat and a thick curtain of blood running down onto her chest.

‘Jesus!’ Luke recoiled, the sight of her shocking him to the core. But there was also confusion mixed with his shock, because this didn’t make sense. It had to have been this woman calling out, and yet now, moments later, she was dead.

Which meant . . .

He heard movement behind him and swung round fast. It was Sofia, emerging from the trees. ‘Get back,’ he hissed. ‘And for Christ’s sake, don’t let Max see this.’

‘Is she okay?’ asked Sofia, coming forward.

‘No, she’s bloody not.’ Luke looked back at the dead woman. Her head was bowed, but he could see her face clearly enough. Her eyes were closed and she looked peaceful in death – a sharp contrast to what she must have looked like in her final moments. She was somewhere in her early thirties and death hadn’t entirely robbed her of her attractiveness. He wondered what she’d done to deserve such a lonely death out here in the forest. The flow of blood from her neck was slowing, but it still covered most of her front, reaching down to the edges of the tracksuit bottoms. And now, for the first time, he saw the deep red cuts on the milky white skin of her arms, which looked like they’d been inflicted very recently. It was clear this woman had suffered for some time before her death. And there was something else too. Something that chilled him to the very bone.

The two biggest toes on her left foot were missing.

Not only that, but it looked like they’d been sawn off.

‘Oh my God!’ Sofia gasped, putting a hand to her mouth as she too saw the dead woman. ‘How could this have happened? She was alive a minute ago. I heard her.’

‘Because whoever killed her has only just done it,’ said Luke, unable to keep the fear out of his voice as he looked at the silent woods around them. ‘We’ve got to get out of here,’ he told Sofia. Then: ‘Where’s Max?’

‘I told him to stay back,’ she answered, turning round.

But Max wasn’t there.

‘Where the hell is he?’ demanded Luke, panic rushing through him.

‘He was right behind me,’ said Sofia, looking round wildly. ‘Max? Where are you?’

They both started back the way they’d come, moving fast, the brutal sight of the dead woman temporarily forgotten.

‘Stay where you are,’ ordered a loud but muffled male voice behind them, a cold authority in it that made them both stop dead. ‘Turn back to me.’

Luke and Sofia exchanged glances, but they both obeyed.

A man had emerged from behind a tree and stood facing them. He held a gun with a silencer attached and was dressed all in black, but with a grinning pink pig mask covering his whole head. ‘Put your hands in the air,’ he ordered. His voice was calm – the accent unmistakably Scottish – and his hand, Luke noticed, was perfectly steady.

Again, they both obeyed. Luke was in shock. This whole thing – whatever it was – felt surreal. Like part of some bizarre dream. He could still see the dead woman at the edge of his peripheral vision, the deep black blood all over her chest.

‘Please. Where’s Max?’ asked Sofia, the desperation in her voice making Luke feel even more terrified. He couldn’t bear anything happening to Max. That boy was the apple of his eye, the one thing in life that he could feel truly proud of.

‘Your son’s perfectly safe. Look round very slowly and you can see.’

‘Oh Jesus,’ said Luke as he saw a second man, much bigger than the first and wearing the same grinning pig mask, emerge from the undergrowth, holding a terrified Max in front of him, a long, bloodied hunting knife at his throat. Except as they drew closer, he could see that it wasn’t a man, but a very large, stocky woman, at least six feet tall. His eyes met Max’s and he tried to give his son a reassuring look, to tell him it was going to be all right. Except as the woman hauled Max away from them, passing the open grave, the boy could see for himself the ruined body in there and realise that no, this definitely wasn’t going to be all right. The poor kid let out a soft cry of sheer terror, and the woman holding him giggled weirdly – a high-pitched sound like one a little girl would make – as if his fear amused her.

Max was struggling and the woman tightened her grip on him. ‘Stay still, you little brat, or I’ll cut you!’ she hissed, her accent clearly southern English.

‘Do as she says, Max,’ said Sofia. ‘It’s going to be okay.’

‘That’s exactly right,’ said the gunman, still keeping his weapon trained on Luke and Sofia. ‘It’ll be okay as long as everyone does what they’re told. That includes you, Max.’

Max stopped struggling and seemed to calm down. He looked over in the direction of his father, and his expression of defiance broke Luke’s heart.

‘You,’ continued the gunman, motioning towards Sofia. ‘Walk slowly over to me.’

‘Please don’t hurt us,’ she answered.

‘I won’t if you shut your mouth. Speak any more and you’ll make me angry, and you don’t want that.’

As Sofia walked towards him, the gunman used his free hand to remove a cable tie from his pocket.

Luke knew that if they were tied up, they’d be finished. These people wouldn’t be taking them prisoner unless they planned to kill all three of them.

He had to do something, and yet he was frozen to the spot, trying to make sense of what was happening. Because one minute ago his life had been completely different, and now, whatever happened, it had changed for ever. And actually, for ever might only be a few more minutes left on earth, and please God no, it might even involve witnessing the murder of his wife and son. He wanted so badly to act, to do something. Anything. But fear enveloped him completely.

He was as helpless as a child.

And yet it was his own child who actually had the presence of mind to act, because as the knifewoman relaxed her grip just a little while she looked over at her partner, who was in the process of turning Sofia round so he could bind her hands behind her back, Max suddenly wriggled free and bolted off into the undergrowth.

Luke felt a wild surge of hope, even as the woman took off after his son in a lolloping, yet surprisingly rapid, gait.

At the same time, the gunman grabbed Sofia in a headlock, raising the gun in Luke’s direction, and started to shout something, but Luke wasn’t listening. Instead, instinct took over and he bolted in the direction of the bank, keeping low as he waited for the inevitable bullet, but feeling suddenly free. He stumbled through the ferns, almost tripping, risking one last look over his shoulder, seeing the gunman pointing his weapon straight at him, yelling for him to stop but not firing, and then, as he turned forwards again, the edge of the bank suddenly appeared like a chasm in front of him, and seeing only escape from the gun, he literally dived over it.

The next second he was rolling down the bank uncontrollably and almost vertically. A tree root struck him in the ribs, the force of it lifting him off the ground, then he was going through a holly bush, the leaves scratching him everywhere, although thankfully it slowed his descent. He hit a rock, then another one, then he was bouncing through the air before landing hard on the track somewhere near the stream and hitting his head.

Then, perhaps fortunately for him, everything went black.