The Hostage

By Alan Gorevan

Lindsey O'Reilly is at home, cleaning up after dinner, when she sees armed police swarming over her garden wall.

There's a noise downstairs. A knock on the door.

She opens up, but it's not the police. It's the man they're chasing. A stone-cold killer.

Now he's inside...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alan Gorevan
• Release date: Apr 21, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463027110

Alan Gorevan

Alan Gorevan is an award-winning thriller writer and intellectual property attorney. He lives in Dublin.

Book preview

Chapter One

Night is falling as Dean Cullen sprints up the lane. The pale sky is dimming. His footsteps echo off the garage doors on each side. He needs to hide. Darkness will help, but his orange jacket is a problem. It’s like a beacon.

As the soles of his shoes slap against the ground, he hears shouting behind him. He glances back. At the end of the lane, a patrol car with flashing lights is stuck behind a parked van.

A helicopter approaches from the distance, and Dean knows it’s after him too.

Hard to imagine how things could have gone worse.

He needs to disappear.

Another lane intersects the one he’s on. He takes the corner fast and hopes there’s a way out ahead. He isn’t familiar with this part of Dublin. There are a lot of big houses, and the place seems to be strewn with embassies. Solid, stone walls line both sides of the lane, and Dean suspects that gardens lie on the other side.

As a twenty-five-year-old, who hit Mountjoy Prison’s gym at least five times a week until recently, Dean is in good shape. But he’s still gasping for breath. Maybe he’s in shock.

One foot in front of the other.

Go, go, go.

He’s already been running for five minutes, since crashing the Toyota, and his body is flooded with adrenaline.

He hears the creak of a door opening.

Ahead, a figure appears out of a doorway, pushing a bicycle. Lean, lanky, face hidden by a hoodie, dressed all in black – Dean decides it’s a teenage boy. The boy starts to push the bike in the other direction.

Dean shouts, Wait.

The boy turns around, his eyes widening as Dean approaches, looking at his fluorescent orange jacket, the blood-spattered T-shirt, the expression on Dean’s face.

The boy takes a couple of steps away, still pushing the bike, as if he’s thinking of fleeing. But Dean has already reached him.

How much for your hoodie?

What?

Dean doubles over, gasping for breath. His mouth has the metallic taste of blood and he’s not sure it’s his own. After everything that has happened, he feels strangely calm. He takes a few deep breaths, then straightens up.

The kid looks younger than he thought. Thirteen or fourteen. A spotty face, a peach-fuzz moustache and watery eyes.

The hoodie, Dean says. How much?

I don’t—

What’s your name?

Karl.

Alright, Karl, I need your hoodie. And I don’t have time to mess around. Dean pulls out his wallet. He has eighty euro inside, in four notes. He shoves the money into the boy’s hands, then tears off his jacket. You can have mine.

The sound of the helicopter’s blades draws nearer. And that’s not the only sound Dean hears. The dull drumming of boots, the metallic crunch of machine guns.

They’re catching up.

Karl stands staring at him.

I had to get a freezer, Dean thinks. He’s observed that there are only three kinds of people in the world. Dean pigeon-holes them depending on how they react when everything goes to hell. There are those who act. There are those who call for help. And there are those who freeze. Karl is a freezer.

I have about five seconds to complete this transaction – and I’m not taking no for an answer.

The kid stares at the money.

For my hoodie?

And I have a job for you. Put on my jacket and cycle away from here as fast as you can.

Karl shrugs off his hoodie and hands it to Dean.

Where should I go? he asks.

I don’t care. Just keep going.

Until when?

Until they stop you.

Karl looks at the orange jacket. This isn’t my style.

Dean slips on the black hoodie. He says, I don’t care.

The boy’s eyes linger on the bloodstains on Dean’s T-shirt.

Go, Dean says.

The boy puts on the jacket and gets on the bike. Dean watches him cycle up the lane, picking up speed as he goes.

The helicopter looms into view overhead. Its searchlight blazes into action, illuminating a nearby area.

Dean has to get out of sight.

Running over to the nearest wall, he jumps up, grabs the top of the wall, and pulls himself up.

As he hoped, a garden lies on the other side. A three-floor, brown-brick house stands at the other end of the garden. Nothing in the garden but grass and a small shed.

No one around.

Dean drops to the ground, glad the grass provides a soft landing. He smells soil on the air. Sees daffodils and tulips at the side of the garden.

A lovely March evening.

As Dean jogs up the garden to the house, he runs his fingers over the semi-automatic pistol tucked into the waistband of his jeans.

Chapter Two

Lindsey O’Reilly is washing the dishes after dinner when she hears a helicopter. Nothing unusual about that. Traffic helicopters pass overhead occasionally. Sometimes she also sees the red and white Coast Guard helicopter as it heads out towards Dublin Bay.

This is different.

A column of light blazes down from the dimming sky, illuminating the rooftops of houses behind her. A search helicopter.

What’s going on?

She leans over the sink to get a better look, brushing her long hair over her shoulder, but the helicopter has moved directly overhead, and she can see nothing.

Oh god, Lindsey thinks. Who are they chasing? What’s happening?

Born in Aberdeen, Washington, twenty years earlier, Lindsey has always been a worrier. Maybe because she’s the youngest of four girls. It’s like she was always worried about being forgotten. Lindsey’s Mom jokes that her first words were, I’m scared.

Well, maybe now there’s a reason to be anxious.

Anxiety affects Lindsay’s stomach. Her sisters are like that too. When Lindsey’s grandmother died, they all had terrible bellyaches for days.

At dinnertime, Lindsey overate, finding her own pasta carbonara too delicious to leave on the plate. Now, the whoomp whoomp of the helicopter blades sends a wave of nausea through her. Lindsey has to fight it, or she’ll end up being sick in the bathroom.

She peers out the window but still can’t see anything.

Her apartment is at the back of the building, on the second floor, as Lindsey thinks of it, though Irish people call that the first floor. Whatever. Her place has a good view of the garden. Lindsey is lucky because some of the building’s other apartments have no view at all.

Noticing that she’s dripping sudsy water all over the place, Lindsey grabs a towel. Her hands look wizened and old. That’s just the cost of staying clean. And she needs to stay clean now more than ever.

Since Christmas, Lindsey has been watching, with growing anxiety, the spread of the coronavirus throughout the world. She’s just read that a second case has been discovered in the Republic of Ireland. There’s at least one case in