BACKWOODS RIPPER: a gripping action suspense thriller Read Online Free PDF

further risk. It made sense that a twenty-minute drive to Lizzy’s house to use the phone would be safer than driving Hal over rough roads for two hours. So, instead of speeding towards civilisation, they were heading farther away.
    Paige’s back throbbed and her butt felt raw from sitting on the worn rubber mat lining the ute’s tray. With each bounce and dip, her discomfort intensified. She hated herself for even acknowledging her own distress when Hal suffered so much. I’m weak and a coward. I should’ve held his hand, but I was scared. She thought of the way she’d hidden, her face burning with shame.
    She wondered if she was doing the right thing by agreeing to go back to Lizzy’s instead of the roadhouse. Was she doing it because she was too weak to argue and too tired to fight for her husband? She hoped Hal wouldn’t pay the price for her feebleness. She pulled her phone out of her bra and checked the time; five-fifteen. They’d been driving for fifteen minutes.
    Less than five minutes later, the ute veered to the left and Paige felt it make a wide arc. She turned and peered through the back window of the cab, but grime and dust blocked her view. She took her hand off Hal’s chest and leaned over the tray, drawing up her knees and swivelling her head to lean over and see the front of the vehicle, like a refugee scouring the coast for a safe harbour.
    The house took her breath away, and for a moment, her mouth hung open in disbelief. She’d expected a modest country cottage, not the sprawling three storey ornate Edwardian mansion that loomed out of the hill like a tombstone. Nothing about Lizzy and Soona gelled with the house. Their clothes were clean, but well-worn, and their vehicle ancient and on its last legs. How then, Paige wondered, did they come to live in a mansion?
    As they drew closer, Paige noticed the crumbling brickwork and the sagging roof. Even in the dying light, she could see the building needed an overhaul. Even so, the place was a monster and the thought of Lizzy and Soona rattling around in it, out here in the middle of nowhere, seemed more than a little eerie.
    The Holden came to a stop to the right of the building, where the wrap-around veranda turned the corner of the house and a ramp rose towards the back. Paige wanted to tell Hal that they’d arrived and soon she’d be phoning for help, but he seemed peaceful and blessedly pain free so she decided not to disturb him.
    The doors of the cab flung open on both sides and Lizzy and Soona clambered out.
    “Go get one of the stretchers,” Lizzy said.
    Soona nodded and lumbered towards the front of the house, her faded denim dungarees bunched up between her long sloping butt cheeks.
    “Maybe we should leave him here,” Paige said over the side of the tray. “Getting him out of the ute will be painful, why don’t we leave it for the paramedics?”
    Lizzy watched Soona disappear around the house and then walked to the back of the Holden. She unbolted the flap and dropped it down. Paige crawled towards the woman on her hands and knees, careful to avoid bumping Hal as she went.
    “I don’t think we should move him,” Paige said from the tray of the ute. “It’s too painful.”
    Lizzy had to look up to meet Paige’s eyes. The woman’s mouth thinned to a straight line and her tangled grey brows drew together in determination. Paige swallowed and continued. “If you’ll just watch him while I go inside and phone for help,” she paused and forced out a dry laugh. “We’ll be out of your hair soon.”
    Lizzy held her gaze for a second, Paige steeled herself for an argument. To her surprise, Lizzy nodded.
    “The phone’s in the kitchen. It’s quicker to go around the back and up the stairs. Door’s never locked,” she said and stepped aside so Paige could climb down.
    The area on the side of the house had probably once been lawn, now only a shambling expanse knee-high with weeds. She followed a path of broken flag stones that