Obsession, p.1
Obsession, page 1
OBSESSION
ROB SINCLAIR
Copyright © 2023 Rob Sinclair
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The right of Rob Sinclair to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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First published in 2023 by Bloodhound Books.
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Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publisher or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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www.bloodhoundbooks.com
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Print ISBN: 978-1-5040-8593-9
CONTENTS
Love best-selling fiction?
Also by Rob Sinclair
Prologue
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
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
About the Author
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ALSO BY ROB SINCLAIR
Ryker Returns Series
Renegade
Assassins
Outsider
Vigilante
Protector
Deception
James Ryker Series
The Red Cobra
The Black Hornet
The Silver Wolf
The Green Viper
The White Scorpion
The Enemy Series
Dance with the Enemy
Rise of the Enemy
Hunt for the Enemy
The Sleeper 13 Series
Sleeper 13
Fugitive 13
Imposter 13
The DI Dani Stephens Series
The Essence of Evil
The Rules of Murder
Echoes of Guilt
The Bonds of Blood
Standalone Thrillers
Dark Fragments
PROLOGUE
The lace curtain gently flapped. Heated night-time air wafted in through the gap of the partially opened balcony doors, swirling with the cooler air-conditioned interior. Beyond the glass, luxury yachts lined up next to one another on the marina below, gently bobbing. Apartment buildings rose up around the crafts, all clustered around the water. Many windows were dark, but in others, soft lights shone. TVs flickered. Tiny shadowy figures moved about in their private spaces. Few bothered to cover their windows on such a balmy evening. Some people stood or sat in their kitchens, cooking or eating. Some lounged on sofas. Others partied out on balconies, or in rooftop gardens for the lucky few who could afford the ultra-expensive penthouses.
Lights on, curtains open in bedrooms too. A couple directly across the way, three floors down, stood at the edge of a bed. Naked? The low light, the distance, without binoculars, made it hard to tell. The woman slid down to her knees in front of her lover. The man cocked his head toward the window, looking out. A sudden pang of shyness? Or hoping to see people-watching?
A stronger gust of salty sea air caused the curtain to snap like a whip. In the room behind a piece of paper lifted from the dining table and flapped to the floor where broken glasses, plates, torn cushions lay. Much of the debris was speckled with red dots, larger smears here and there. So too the plush leather sofa, the funky, colourful art on the walls, the white walls themselves.
But the largest pool of red by far was the one edging out of the open door to the master bedroom. It hadn’t been like that before. In only a couple of minutes the blood had flowed and moved beyond the threshold, as though seeking escape, or attempting to fight back, or desperately searching for help.
It would achieve none of those aims.
The source of the blood lay crumpled by the edge of the bed. Glassy eyes stared to the doorway from a body near naked, except for the ruined white underwear. Calvin Klein. Pricey, but not extravagant. Comfortable, rather than overtly sexy or showy. Very her really. Her twisted limbs glistened, the silky skin on her body now forever tarnished.
The dark-clothed figure moved up to her, being careful not to step in the still growing pool of red.
‘I’m sorry.’ The words weren’t heartfelt. Should they have been? ‘I am sorry. It shouldn’t have ended like this.’
But of course she said nothing in return. If she could have spoken, what would her response have been?
The figure straightened up, sighed, took in one last look of her, then slowly, silently turned, and headed out into the night.
CHAPTER ONE
NATASHA
I know I have a good memory. I’ve known since I was a young kid. I was so good at recalling facts, for example. And I could remember detailed directions to places I’d been to only once, like when we travelled by car for our family holidays. Adam used to tell me I had a photographic memory. I don’t think that’s true; I don’t know if it’s even possible, or if it is, exactly what that means. I just know that I’m really good at remembering things. Well, no, not things, but images. That’s what memories mostly are, aren’t they? People talk about remembering noises, smells, tastes, feelings even, and I get that. But my memories are more like a never-ending slide show.
When we were young kids, at Christmas, my Grandma played this game with the whole family. King’s game, she called it, though I think it was supposed to be Kim’s. She’d get one of her big serving trays – she loved serving trays – and fill it with all manner of little items from coins to corkscrews to matchsticks, and cover it all with a tea towel. We’d gather around and she’d pull back the towel and we had thirty seconds to look over the tray and remember as many of the items as we could. After that she covered it again and we’d furiously write down what we could on a piece of scrap paper.
Or the others would write furiously, at least, as though the speed helped them to remember. I wrote more calmly. More methodically. Working over the image in my head. Top to bottom, left to right. Basically copying, I guess. From the very first time we played that game, when I was five, everyone was amazed by me. I got them all right. Every single item, even if I didn’t know what they all were. Small bumpy metal thing, for my Grandma’s thimble, things like that.
Anya, two years older than me, was jealous, I could tell. My parents and aunts and uncles beamed smiles at me. As the years passed we always played that game, but the congratulations and adulations became a little more muted – everyone knew I’d remember every item on the tray. We last played when I was fourteen. Anya didn’t even take part that year. By that point she hated that her little sister was better than her at something. A lot of things.
Grandma died a few months later. I’ve never played that game since, but I still have that same knack for remembering things. For storing images in my mind.
For example, I remember everything – and I mean absolutely everything – about the moment I heard my sister, Anya, had been found murdered.
CHAPTER TWO
I was still with Adam then. We’d been together six years. We met at university in Durham, in our third year, and we both stayed in the area after graduation. Adam got a job at a tech firm in Team Valley, and I got a graduate job at an actuary firm in Newcastle. Quite a jump from chemistry, but the job fit my analytical mindset well.
We moved in together a few months after graduation, but I don’t think either of us was really ready for it. He still had his big group of laddish friends who wanted to party every weekend, and go on crude drunken holidays whenever they got the chance.
I always thought I could trust Adam, but his friends were bad influences, in my eyes at least. And I increasingly had my own issues to deal with. My parents divorced, then my mum died, which took such a toll on both me and my sister, and changed us both in ways I couldn’t possibly have foreseen – and not for the better.
Then Anya went off the grid. I’d not seen her for years. None of us had. She’d gone to Greece on a girls’ holiday not long after her twenty-fourth birthday and never returned. At the time we knew why. The problems at home had taken a toll, and to top it off she had a bad break-up with her long-time loser boyfriend, Joel. A whirlwind romance in Greece kept her out there, and although it didn’t last long, the experience set Anya on a new course in life. She was done with England, done with her life here.
Done with me.
After all those troubles, Adam became my backbone, for a while at least. Even if we had our own problems, he was the one person I depended on. Perhaps I pushed too hard with him. Put too much pressure on. I don’t think I’m a needy person, but maybe I didn’t give him enough space.
He kept telling me I was becoming stupidly jealous. Obsessively so. But I just needed someone I could rely on. Just one person in my life who’d be there for me, no matter what, and not let me down.
Was I obsessive? I didn’t think so. After all, as the saying goes, there’s no smoke without fire, right?
He’d been out that Friday night and had got home a little after 4am. He didn’t come to bed. He passed out on the sofa in the living room of our cramped apartment. I found him there at eight in the morning, snoring like a wildebeest.
I put on my gym gear and left him there. When I got home nearly two hours later, he still hadn’t moved. I tried to rouse him and all he did was grumble and turn over and mouth something unintelligible. I was pissed off by that point. I didn’t want another Saturday ruined because he found more pleasure in getting annihilated with his mates than he did in spending quality time with me. I thought about getting a bowl of water and tipping it over him. I thought about kicking him in the balls and punching that increasing paunch around his gut.
What I actually did was pick up his phone. He’d changed his PIN a few weeks before because he knew I’d been snooping – though he never told me that explicitly. Just told me to stop hassling him, to trust him; that I was paranoid.
I hadn’t yet figured out his new PIN. So instead I used his limp thumb to unlock the device, and delved into his private world.
Within seconds I wished I hadn’t.
‘Hey, arsehole!’ I shouted at him.
He didn’t even stir.
‘Are you kidding me, you piece of shit!’
He did stir. Apparently even in his hungover state my angry voice was enough to rouse him.
He groaned and propped himself on the sofa. ‘Natasha? What the hell?’ His bleary eyes looked from me to the phone in my hands. Suddenly he was alert. ‘What the fuck?’ he said.
‘Exactly.’ I tossed the phone at him. It smacked off his shoulder and bounced across the laminate floor. He went after it. As though saving his damn iPhone was the most important consideration right then. Or was it simply so he could confirm exactly what I’d seen so he could begin formulating whatever bullshit he needed to say? Most likely the latter because he spent a few seconds flicking the screen with a finger.
‘So?’ I said.
‘It’s nothing,’ he said, finding my glare. ‘Just…’
He couldn’t even think of a lame excuse.
‘Get out,’ I said.
‘Jesus, Natasha, come on.’
‘Adam, get out. Now. I don’t want to look at you.’
He grumbled and shook his head and stood from the sofa and stomped to the door. I flinched when it banged shut a few seconds later.
Then I sat down on the sofa, the spot still warm from Adam’s body, me still in my sweaty gym gear and… did nothing. I just sat. Looking at the room. Our furniture. Our knick-knacks. Our pictures on the wall. Our dirty cups on the coffee table. Our plates in the kitchen. Did any of it mean anything at all? As I sat there the images from his phone burned in my mind. I couldn’t get rid of them. Of her. Whoever the hell she was.
Like I said, I remember everything about that damn morning. I really wish I didn’t.
And then came the phone call from Dad.
CHAPTER THREE
Autumn
Nearly three months after the day that devastated my life, I stepped off a plane at Malaga airport, all alone, despite the 200 people crowding around, trying to shove their way onto the buses waiting to take us to the terminal. In the middle of the school term, the only kids were babies and toddlers, the vast majority of the other travellers older couples in their fifties, sixties, seventies. A few younger ones too, but not many. I didn’t spot anyone else at all on their own.
I didn’t have to wait for any luggage. I’d only brought a carry-on bag. I had no idea how long I was staying. If I needed more things, I’d buy them here.
I’d been to southern Spain before. Holidays with Adam. We spent three summers in a row in Andalusia. We both loved it. The coastline, the mountains, the historical cities. The strangest thing was that I hadn’t even known Anya was here too, so close to where we’d been. I’d wondered over the last three months, but particularly on the plane journey this time, whether we’d even crossed paths somehow without me realising. Was that possible? Would Anya have said anything if she’d seen me? Or would she have looked the other way?
I texted Cath, my best friend, as I waited in the queue for the hire car. Simply to tell her I’d landed, as I’d spotted a couple of missed calls from her. Five seconds later my phone was ringing and vibrating. A few heads turned my way. My cheeks flushed a little though I’m not sure why.
‘Oh, Natasha, what are you doing?’ Cath said before I’d even got a word in.
‘I told you I was coming here.’
‘I know but…’
‘What? You thought I’d back out?
‘I thought you’d see sense.’
‘I don’t know what that means.’
‘Babe, why are you beating yourself up–’
She’d said the same thing so many times to me over the last three months. She’d even suggested that my refusal to move on from Anya’s death was because of my break-up from Adam – as though I wanted or needed something to occupy my ever-busy mind.
‘I’m not beating myself up. I need to find out what happened to my sister.’
She didn’t say anything for a while. Then, ‘Does your dad know?’
I rolled my eyes. My dad. I wasn’t exactly on the best terms with him. I’d only seen him twice since we were last in Spain. The days after Anya’s murder had been without doubt the worst of my life. I’d flown out to Malaga as soon as I could. So too had Dad, on a different flight, and with his girlfriend Linda, though she’d kept well away from me. Sensible. Perhaps she saw the whole trip as an unexpected bonus holiday in the sun.
Bitch.
Dad could do what he wanted with his life, but that didn’t mean I had to agree with his choices. The biggest reason I hated Linda? Dad had an affair with her. She was the reason my parents split up. Two years later Mum died of cancer. I only found out after that she’d already been diagnosed when Dad started boning Linda.
