Inescapable

Chapter 1

Iris Hughes glared at the dead end in front of her.

“What in the actual fuck?” she whispered in disbelief, diverting her glare down to the satnav—or GPS as they called it here—on her dashboard.

“Please continue straight ahead for another 1.2 kilometers,” the robotic voice unhelpfully informed her. Ugh, why hadn’t she taken the time to switch to miles before starting her journey? She’d completely forgotten that South Africa used the metric system. But aside from that, she had more immediate problems.

“Straight ahead? There is no straight ahead.” Iris cast a strained look at the overgrown forest around her—the sun had set ten minutes ago—it was rapidly getting dark and the trees were starting to loom threateningly. She couldn’t afford to get lost, not at this time of day, on an unfamiliar road, in a foreign country.

“Shitshitshit,” she muttered, reaching for her mobile, hoping the phone’s GPS would be more forthcoming than the one in the car.

She peered at the screen, alarmed to note that the battery was in the red. Not great. Since the charging cable was somewhere in her luggage in the car’s boot.

“Genius move, Iris,” she groaned. When she’d picked the car up at the airport hours and hours and hours ago, she’d considered going through her bags to try and find the damned cable, but in the end had decided that getting on the road faster would be best. It now looked like that decision had come back to bite her in the bum. Her phone hadn’t been charged since before she’d boarded her flight some twenty-something hours ago. She’d used it only sparingly on the cramped, eons-long flight over, but despite her valiant attempts to save it, the battery—at only five percent—was on its last gasp.

Praying that it wouldn’t die on her, she hastily put the address into the search bar, and it immediately calibrated a different route to the car’s satnav.

“Bastard,” she growled at the car. It looked like she’d have to backtrack and take a turn she’d passed about half a mile back.

Still swearing underneath her breath, she put the car in reverse. There wasn’t enough room to turn around on this narrow, overgrown road, which meant she’d have to drive in reverse until she came to the turnoff. Thankfully, the car had a rearview camera and she periodically checked the image and the mirrors as she drove. The camera lens was foggy and didn’t provide her with a clear view of the road, and so it came as no surprise when one of the back tires hit something unseen and the car rocked alarmingly.

“Damn it,” she muttered, swerving slightly to avoid the front wheel hitting the same obstacle. The car was “limping”—for lack of a better word—along now, telling Iris that the affected tire must have sustained serious damage.

She braked and peered onto the gravel track in front of the car, looking for whatever had caused the problem. She winced when she spotted what looked like a tree branch just off to the side of the road. Ugh, it must have fallen shortly after she’d already passed this spot on her way to that blasted dead end because it definitely hadn’t been there before.

It was frighteningly windy outside—the strong gusts buffeted her tiny rental car even while she stood there pondering the wisdom of getting out and checking the tire. She couldn’t very well continue driving without assessing the damage, but the thought of getting out into the darkness that had enveloped her surroundings in such a short time was more than a little daunting. If one branch had fallen, surely there was a danger of more dropping. It couldn’t possibly be safe out there. Iris had researched the Knysna area in the Western Cape of South Africa on her flight over from London and knew that the area was populated by wild cats, caracals, leopards—and most fearsome of all—honey badgers.

What if there was a honey badger out there looking to fuck some shit up? She couldn’t risk it.

She put her foot back on the accelerator and inched along slowly, trying to ignore the flapping, grinding sound coming from the left rear wheel.

Crap, the car was starting to wobble badly. Iris braked again and this time switched the car off, before dropping her forehead and thumping it softly on the padded steering wheel.

She was going to have to get out and check.

“Dear God, please don’t let me be eaten by a wild animal, thank you, amen.” She unbuckled her seatbelt and opened the door, only to have it rudely snatched out of her grasp by the violent wind.

This was going to suck.

The wind tore at her clothes, snatched her breath from her lungs, and extended icy, intrusive fingers into any gaps between her clothing and skin.

It was ice cold. This was South Africa; shouldn’t it be warm or something? Why was it so damned cold? She felt cheated and indignant about this shitty weather. Were all those pretty pictures she’d seen of Cape Town during her quick online research of the area a total lie? So far, she wasn’t at all impressed with anything about the place. Nothing but gray skies, overcrowded roads, and stormy oceans.

Oh, and really rude, impatient drivers.

She could get all of that back home.

She glared down at the completely flat rear tire balefully and screamed in frustration. Annoyingly, the sound was torn away by the wind.

Jesus, had her biological father ever had to work this hard on any of his assignments? Because this felt like piling on.

She knew the car had a spare. It had been drilled into her by her dad—the one who’d raised her—to always check for that when renting a car, but she doubted she’d be able to get the tire changed in this crazy wind. Her best option was to walk while she still had enough battery power on her phone to follow the GPS.

She checked the map again… it looked like a ten-to-fifteen-minute walk. Probably closer to half an hour in this weather, lugging her small carry-on bag that at least contained a pair of clean undies. She could call a tow truck or mechanic in the morning and get the rest of her stuff then too. For now, it would be best to get to the house and shelter.

Provided the GPS was right this time. And her phone didn’t die. And she didn’t tumble off a cliff in this blackness—because putting on her phone’s flashlight when the battery was this low was not an option.

God, maybe she should just stay in the car, dig out her cable, charge her phone, and call for help in the morning. Surely that would be the best option?

But it had only just gone six p.m. and the sun wouldn’t rise until just before eight in the morning, and she was not keen on staying out here for fourteen hours. Also—she checked her phone—yeah, there was no mobile service out here. Which meant she’d have to trek to Trystan Abbott’s place before calling for a tow truck anyway. Might as well bite the bullet and do it now. Better than spending an uncomfortable night in the car.

“This is so dumb,” she told herself as she got her carry-on wheelie suitcase out of the boot. “This is how people get murdered. Or eaten by animals. Or abducted by aliens. Or attacked by sharks, or zombies, or frikking vampires.”

Still, she was going to do this. She had to do this—it was the shittier of the two options available to her, but the most logical one.

She zipped up the puffer jacket she’d bought at the airport after discovering how cold it was, and put one resolute foot in front of the other as she continued to backtrack until she came to the turn she hadn’t even noticed earlier.

A reckless five-second switch to her phone’s flashlight told Iris that the road was lined with tall skeletal trees whose bare branches entangled many meters above her to form a brittle canopy above the road. The branches squeaked and scraped against each other in the strong wind, which was now blowing straight at her. The occasional gunshot-loud crack warned her that more branches were likely breaking and falling, making this foolhardy course of action even more treacherous.

One bright spot, the GPS didn’t seem to indicate any cliffs in the surrounding area, but that didn’t preclude deep ditches and holes, of course.

And now that the thought had crossed her mind, she kept imagining herself plunging into one with every step she took.

Thankfully, the howling of the wind was loud enough to drown out any potential howling from animals, which meant it was easier to put the threat of death by animal mauling and predation from her mind.

Sometimes she cursed her over-active imagination.

In fact, it was the absolute worst thing for her to have. She was trying to be a journalist over here, not an author of gruesome horrors.

She could use this in her feature. Set the scene…

It was there—among the dead trees, stormy seas, and wild animals—that I finally tracked down the elusive Trystan Abbott. The legendary actor hiding in a remote cottage in the wilds of?—

What was that?

She stopped dead in her tracks and canted her head to the side as she tried to ignore the wind and listen for the sound she thought she’d heard beneath the cacophonous wind.

A growl. She was sure of it—a low, menacing growl that?—

There it was again.

Oh God, she glanced down at her phone. According to the map, the house was straight ahead, just fifty meters away. She couldn’t see it. But it had to be there. It just had to.

She picked up the pace, but felt almost certain she was being stalked. She was practically running by now and when the trees abruptly ended and the gravel road changed to paving beneath her feet, she let out a grateful cry at first sight of the huge, creepy house, with its unlit windows, and dropped her case as she darted through a small garden toward what looked like a back door.

She pounded frantically at the door, but the lights remained dark.

She hammered on the door again.

“Open up. Please. Open the door!”

She heard the growl again, louder, closer. She gulped in terror and switched her phone to flashlight mode and swung around. There! By the fence. Eyes, illuminated by the light. She kept the flashlight focused in that direction, striving for a better look, when the phone finally died on her, plunging her into absolute darkness with a creature that looked about waist high to her five-foot-four-inch height.

She mewled in terror and plastered her back to the door, her left hand reaching for the doorknob, hoping that someone who lived this far from the rest of humanity would keep his doors unlocked. But the doorknob didn’t turn and the door wouldn’t budge.

Iris closed her eyes and asked for forgiveness for all her sins. She hoped her parents would understand what had driven her to come all this way. Hoped they wouldn’t be too disappointed in her… chasing a man, a story, a dream she wasn’t even sure was her own.

She was only twenty-six. She still had so much she wanted to do, so much to see, so much to?—

The door swung inward behind her back and Iris, weak-kneed and terrified plummeted backward into the void.

She hit the floor—arse first—hard and sat there for a moment trying to get her bearings. It was still dark and something huge stood above her, and for a second’s blind panic she was sure it was the creature, until she recognized the two tall, solid structures straddled on either side of her waist as legs.

Long denim-clad legs.

“Oh, thank you, Jesus,” she breathed the reverent prayer as she smiled up at the man standing above her. She couldn’t quite see his face or expression in the dim light, but knew it had to be Trystan Abbott.

“Not quite.” The curt voice was at odds with what she’d been expecting, and she blinked up at him.

“What?”

“Not quite Jesus,” he elaborated. “Probably the exact opposite.”

Huh?

“Mr. Abbott?” She pushed clumsily to her feet, a little put out when he didn’t offer to help her up. For that matter, had he stepped aside when she’d lost her balance at the door? It had all been quite confusing in the moment, but now that the panic was receding she was almost certain he had. When he could easily have caught her.

He answered her question with two of his own. “Who the fuck are you? And what are you doing here?”

She lifted her head to meet his gaze—able to see much better now that her eyes had adjusted to the gloom—and couldn’t stop her mouth from dropping open in shock. She stared, aware that the astonishment on her face had to be insultingly apparent to this hulking man in front of her.

“M-Mr. Abbott?” Her voice trailed off uncertainly and she continued to stare, looking for anything familiar in this man’s face. This couldn’t possibly be the same man who’d been voted Sexiest Man in the Universe three years in a row.

ThatTrystan Abbott had the kind of classic leading-man good looks that harkened back to an era when Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn had lit up the silver screen with their charisma and incomparable allure.

Thisguy—looking much older than his thirty-one years—had a long, unkempt beard and shaggy hair just brushing his big, broad shoulders and—while appearing clean enough—neither looked like they’d seen a comb in weeks. His lips were pressed into a thin, bloodless line, and his eyes—those familiar, famous molten silver eyes, the only things remotely resembling the man she was here to speak with—were narrowed into an intimidating glare. None of the magnetism and charm Trystan Abbott was famed for was evident in that frosty gaze, and a shudder of unease crept down Iris’s spine. She’d had fond imaginings of witty discourse over cozy cups of coffee or tea. Free-flowing conversation, punctuated by the easy chatter and frequent laughter that had characterized all of the man’s previous interviews.

“Who are you?” he asked again, impatience rippling along the edges of the question.

“M-my name is Iris Hughes.” She fumbled around in her jacket pockets, hoping to magically produce a business card, but all she could find was used, crumpled up tissues, the receipt for the jacket, and a crisp pink South African banknote with a lion and cub printed on one side and a benevolently smiling Nelson Mandela on the other.

She stared blindly down at the useless bounty in her hands, wondering what her next move should be.

Don’t be silly, Iris,she scolded herself. Just tell him why you’re here.

That was easier said than done when one of the most famous men in the world was looming above her with that formidable glower marring his brow and narrowing his eyes. Her tongue and brain both seemed to have deserted her—not awesome when she’d hoped to dazzle him with her professionalism.

“Your, uh, that is, Mr. Quinn said he’d cleared this with you? The interview? I’m here for the interview?” God, why did everything she say have to sound like a nervous question.

The chill that shuddered down her spine had little to do with the weather and everything to do with the added layer of frost that instantly transformed his silvery gaze into ice.

“Fuck off,” he instructed with a snarl. “You’re not welcome here.”

He stepped back and moved to shut the door. Iris panicked and reacted without thinking, wedging her foot in the door before he could close it. She muffled her pained yelp when he slammed the damned heavy door on her trainered foot.

His glower got even darker when he grasped what she’d done and he—thankfully—eased the door back, removing the pressure. It had been an idiotic move and she had no one but herself to blame for her throbbing foot. But she refused to remove it, knowing that he would have no qualms about closing the door in her face.

“I have nowhere to go,” she told him before he could say another word. Her words were rushed, desperate. “You have to let me in.”

“I don’t have to do a goddamned thing. You, on the other hand, need to remove your grubby self from my damned back porch.”

“No, you don’t understand. I can’t leave. My car has a flat.”

“That sounds like a you problem.”

“Mr. Abbott… Look, your manager, Hunter Quinn, told me where to find you. It’s my understanding that he’d arranged for me to stay here for the next three weeks. He said you were fine with that.”

The sound torn from his chest could conceivably have been considered a laugh, if Iris hadn’t—like the rest of the world—been very familiar with Trystan Abbott’s infectious chuckle. Instead, the noise he produced sounded menacing and feral and she flinched in reaction.

“I won’t tell you again,” he warned. “Fuck off, or I’ll physically toss you out on your ass.”

His words made her pause as she wondered if this hulking man was capable of physical violence. She took an involuntary step back and he slammed the door in her face, the wood coming within an inch of her nose.

She gasped in outrage and—as she cast a quick glance around at her dark, blustery surroundings—no small amount of fear.

She thumped at the door with the side of her fist.

“You can’t leave me out here! Open up, please. Call Mr. Quinn… he’ll clear this up.”

The door remained firmly shut. She tried the handle.

Locked.

She redoubled her efforts, knocking and kicking at the wooden door in fear and frustration.

She heard a low, ominous growl from much too close behind her, and it reminded her that she was not alone out here and she screamed, the sound high-pitched and bloodcurdling.

The door was immediately snatched open again and she sagged in relief.

“Please, I think there’s a wolf or wild animal out here. Let me in.”

He peered into the darkness over her shoulder and refocused on her face with a sinister little sneer.

“Well, try not to let it eat you! You might give it indigestion.”

“You can’t leave me out here to face whatever that is,” she said in horror. “It’s illegal.”

“So’s trespassing, but that doesn’t seem to bother you.”

“You invited me to come.”

“I did no such thing.”

“Well, your manager did. He speaks on your behalf, right? I never…” Her voice trailed off on a helpless whimper. “Oh God, please just let me in. I’m sure it’s a wolf. He’s been watching me from the treeline.”

“For fuck’s sake, just piss off back to where you came from.” His accent was mostly Americanized, but—despite her distraction and distress—Iris could still pick up an Aussie twang beneath that meticulously cultivated Hollywood drawl.

“We’re in the middle of nowhere. My car is half a mile away. My phone is dead. I have nowhere to go and no way to get there. Just let me stay the night. If you really want me to leave I’ll make a plan in the morning.”

He laughed again, the same awful sound as before.

“Yeah right, and let you snoop around my house tonight? I don’t think so.”

“At least let me charge my phone, I can call an Uber or something.”

“Again… these are not my problems. You got yourself here, you can get yourself the hell out of here too. I don’t care how you do it.”

“Without a GPS, I’ll get lost. I could fall off a cliff. Die. That wild animal could maim or kill me.”

“Don’t worry, I’m sure the people who give a fuck about you will eventually send out a search party to find your corpse in the woods.”

“That’s not remotely funny.”

“I look like I’m kidding?” he asked without expression.

He looked as serious as a heart attack and that terrified her. He could quite conceivably leave her out here to fend for herself.

What a nightmare.

Strengthening her resolve, Iris allowed her shoulders to drop and in a quick move taught to her by her younger brother, feinted to the left and—when he reacted by instinctively moving in that direction—ducked under his arm and into the kitchen. Once safely inside, she immediately darted behind the kitchen counter in an effort to put a barrier between them.

His back stiffened and he clenched his fists before turning to face her, murder in his eyes.

“Just one night. I’ll sleep on the floor. I promise not to make a sound. Just call Mr. Quinn, he’ll clear this up.”

“You’re trespassing and if you don’t get out of my house right fucking now I will have you arrested.”

“Oh, please do,” she invited with an insouciance she didn’t feel. Truthfully, the thought of being arrested and locked into a small space made her hair stand on end. But she wouldn’t let him see that. “At least then I’d have a ride out of here and a place to sleep tonight.”

He stared at her for an interminable moment and nodded decisively. He dragged his phone out of his front jeans pocket and swiped at the screen before he tapped a few times and then lifted the device to his ear.

“Although,” she said, and his arm halted halfway up to his ear. “If you do call the police and someone recognizes you, how long before your private and cozy little hidey-hole is inundated by the public and press?”

“What the hell do you call this, if not an invasion of my privacy?”

“I’m one person, here to conduct an interview on your and Mr. Quinn’s terms. You have all the control. You lose that the second you lose your anonymity.”

His lips tightened and she felt a little thrill of victory when his thumb viciously jabbed at the call end button. He shoved the phone back in his pocket and nodded.

“Fine… follow me.”

Go, me!Iris’s inner voice cheered, as she meekly followed the big man out of the dark kitchen. He led her down a long, poorly lit hallway, into a darkened room, toward a closed door. Once there, he stood aside and held out a hand inviting her to open the door.

“You can stay there.”

“Thank you so much, I promise I won’t be a bother,” she said, her giddy relief evident in her voice. “In the morning, perhaps you’d be willing to revisit the idea of an interview, especially after you have a look at my correspondence with Mr. Quinn, which will clear up this misunderstanding.”

She pulled the door inward, still earnestly speaking to him over her shoulder as she walked through it. “And if you agree to…”

She stopped talking as she registered the cold air on her skin. A hand on her back shoved her roughly all the way through the door. It took her brain a second to absorb what was happening and, by the time she understood that she was outside again, the door had been shut and the lock engaged.

She appeared to have been led through a side door into a dark garden. She took a second to get her bearings—she had to be on the side of the house somewhere. She wasn’t entirely sure how to get out of this space. There seemed to be a high hedge surrounding the patch of grass and trees, but there was no shelter from the elements. She’d been better off on the back porch, which had some cover and a swinging love seat.

But that… that creature was there. And Iris wasn’t sure she wanted to venture back there again. There had to be another way into the house. Returning to the car without even the meager light of her phone was not an option, and she wasn’t entirely confident of how to get back to the vehicle anyway. It was sleep outside in the cold and wind and, possibly, rain, with a wild animal on the loose, or do some actual breaking and entering.

Trystan Abbott had changed his mind about calling the police earlier, after she’d mentioned the possible loss of privacy if he did so. His reaction had revealed more to her than he’d likely intended to. He didn’t want anyone to know he was here. And he wouldn’t call the police because of that.

Which meant he wasn’t likely to have her arrested for making her way back inside. And if she was wrong about that, then Iris only hoped that the police would be more reasonable than the elusive celebrity. They’d likely believe her story once she provided them with the correspondence between her and Hunter Quinn. It was irrefutable evidence of her right to be here.

Iris thumped at the door in frustration.

“At least turn on the outdoor lights!” she yelled, more irritated than scared right now.

Seriously, what a dick. To think, she’d once been a fan of this arrogant arsehole. Not anymore. How excited she’d been when Hunter Quinn had agreed to allow her exclusive access to his most prized client. What an idiot she’d been.

She hadn’t once stopped to wonder why her? An unseasoned journalist with zero bylines to her name. He’d taken one look at her, listened to her eagerly espouse her admiration of Trystan Abbott’s phenomenal talent, and had leaned back with a sharklike smile and said that she was the exact type of writer he needed to do this in-depth piece.

Naturally, Iris had leaped at the opportunity. What a feather in her cap. Now she suspected that he’d chosen her because he thought she was easily manipulated. After all, an obvious fangirl like her would never have a bad word to say about his problematic client.

But that was before Iris had realized what a surly, uncommunicative hermit Trystan Abbott had become. Now she was intrigued to find out what had happened to cause this change in him. Unless . . . she tilted her head, brain working overtime as she thought about it, had he always been this way? Had that handsome, genial, joking man been the facade behind which this antisocial grouch had been hiding all along?

She thumped at the door in frustration.

“Come on. Turn the lights on. Please!” she demanded again, but it remained pitch black. She hovered uncertainly, not sure which way to turn or where to go.

This was terrible and Iris literally had no clue what to do next. Oh, how she wished she were back home, having dinner at her parents’ house, fighting over the last roast potato with her brother. She would happily listen to her dad champion the benefits of running the business with him if it meant no longer being in this place.

The wind gusted around her, tearing at her clothes and hair, stealing the breath from her lips. She hugged herself in a futile attempt to trap the warmth and stamped her feet as she tried to think.

It was hard to concentrate when she was terrified. She kept looking back at the door, hoping he’d be standing there with a hah, gotcha! grin on his face, but as the minutes ticked by she resigned herself to the fact that this was not going to happen.

In fact, she wouldn’t be surprised if he’d dismissed all thought of her from his brain and gone to bed.

“You can’t stand out here all night, Iris,” she berated herself. “Just move. In any direction. Anything is better than this.”

She took a step forward and her foot immediately sank into something icy and wet.

“Fuck, shit! Fuck!” She lifted her foot and shook it. Her trainer had offered absolutely no protection from the water and her foot was completely soaked. Her toes had gone instantly numb from the cold. Probably a good thing, since it meant she no longer felt the pain after having it slammed in a door. God, this was just what she needed.

She took a couple of steps backward, away from whatever the hell body of water lay in front of her, and once again stood there indecisively.

She heard a sound to her left and her head swung in that direction, but all she could see was the dark, high outline of the hedge against the slightly lighter sky. The sound came again, rustling in that hedge, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up straight.

“Go away,” she whispered. Then raised her voice and tried again. The thready, quavering sound that emerged from her throat was embarrassing, but at least it could be heard over the wind. “Go away!”

There was a soft, chuffing, animalistic sound in response and she backed up slowly as a dark shape separated itself from the hedge and prowled toward her.

“Get back,” she implored, taking another step backward, but this time her wet trainer skidded against something slick on the paving and she lost her balance, and fell .

She impacted the hard ground with a pained oof and the massive dark silhouette saw its opportunity and surged toward her with a whining growl.

This is it, she lamented to herself, terrified as she lifted her arms to her face to protect her head from harm. She curled into a ball, hoping to make herself as small a target as possible. This is how I die.

Once again Iris’s thoughts swirled to her family, her parents who had sacrificed so much for her and her brother. Her brother, who liked to act like a tough, independent guy but who called her every Sunday, just to talk. This would destroy them.

She mustered up enough resentment and anger to consider Trystan Abbott’s role in her downfall and she cursed him with every fiber of her being, but she refused to allow her last thought to be of that horrible man, and instead held the image of her family bright in her mind.

The massive thing stood above her, four paws straddling her body and Iris braced herself for unimaginable pain. She would have screamed if she’d had the breath for it, but she had none.

She would go out with not even a whimper.