The Jump Read Online Free PDF Page B

thought about the bloodstains on Sam’s T-shirt. Looked at the knife in the man’s belly. It had a serrated edge, wooden handle, she had one similar at home.
    ‘Mr McKenna?’
    He gave out a breathy moan.
    She stood absolutely still, trying to think.
    The man’s fingers twitched again and one eye opened. He looked at her, but his gaze was unfocussed. She didn’t know how conscious he was, how aware. He grunted again then his eye closed and he gave a heavy sigh, as if the effort was all too much.
    Ellie heard another noise. The scrape of a key in a lock, then the front door opening, a bag being dropped on the floor.
    ‘I’m home.’ A woman’s voice, shouting up the stairs. ‘You lazy gits up yet?’
    The man on the floor wheezed.
    Ellie stepped over him, careful not to stand in the blood, and ran to the patio doors. She slid the snib up then pushed the door open just enough to squeeze through, gliding it shut behind her.
    She ran to the side of the house, out of view, then climbed over a low fence of wooden slats into the neighbours’ garden. At the bottom of the garden were a couple of cooking-apple trees. She sprinted down to them and launched herself at the stone wall behind, scrambling up and over. She dropped down without looking, desperate to get away. She hoped no one was in the neighbours’ kitchen or she was spotted for sure.
    She glanced around as she got her breath back. She recognised where she was, Ferrymuir Gait. Over the embankment across the road was the A90, heading to the bridge. Further round the road she was standing on were the visitor centre and the offices for the new bridge. Back the other way was the cemetery where Logan would’ve been buried if they hadn’t decided to have him cremated and scattered in the Forth. Everything so close by, everyone in the Ferry living in each other’s pockets, the road and the railway and the bridges slicing through it all.
    She waited and listened. After a few minutes she heard a siren, and imagined the ambulance arriving.
    Now she had her bearings she knew there was a quicker way home, past the visitor centre and down the access road, the same road she’d walked with Sam earlier today. She headed in that direction.

7
    She let herself in the back door and went through the rooms, checking Ben wasn’t there. She hadn’t come directly back to the house, instead ducking left off Hopetoun Road on to Shore Road, then cutting down to the beach, avoiding the police station two minutes away from the front of her house.
    The house was silent. She listened for sirens from the cop shop. Nothing. You hardly heard them here, the Ferry wasn’t exactly a hotbed of crime. No sound from upstairs either. She went up and stopped outside the door to Logan’s room. Rested her fingers against the chunky wooden letters that spelled out his name. She ran her hand from the L to the O and slowly onwards, stopping with her fingers pressed against the N. The sign had been on Logan’s door for ten years, and he’d moaned about it being childish when he hit his teens, but he never took it down and neither did she.
    There was a rough splinter of wood at the end of the N, it had been like that for as long as Ellie could remember. She deliberately snagged her thumb on it, feeling the skelf push against her skin. She remembered for the hundredth time that day that her son was dead, that she would never see him again, then she breathed and pushed the door open.
    Sam was still asleep, blanket pulled over him. Ellie sat on the edge of the bed and ran her hands through his hair, brushing against his ear.
    He moaned in his sleep.
    She moved up the bed, still stroking his hairline along his forehead, behind his ear, letting her hand linger on the nape of his neck for a moment, before starting again. She breathed in through her nose, caught the smell of Lynx and urine and something underneath, his unique scent.
    He was coming round. She didn’t want to disturb him, but she had a stronger