Safe House

Prologue

PROLOGUE

SIX MONTHS AGO

They came for Jackson Traynor at three o’clock in the morning, the time it was believed most people reached the deepest phase of the sleep cycle. There were two of them. The raid was well planned and, up to the point of entry into Traynor’s home, it was well executed. From that point onwards, however, it all went to s**t.

Jackson Traynor, more commonly known as ‘Jack’ to his friends and colleagues, was not at home; that was the first set-back for the intruders. He should have been home, all the research leading up to the raid suggested he would be, but sometimes plans have a way of going awry.

Jack did not sleep well. Having lived with chronic insomnia for many years, he was well acquainted with a pattern of poor sleeping. The night they came to his home in the pre-dawn hours was just another example of the hundreds of sleep deprived nights he had endured over more years than he cared to remember.

Jackson went for a run, something he did often when he couldn’t sleep. Before he left, he leaned over the sleeping body of April, his wife of fourteen years, and kissed her lightly on her forehead. Careful not to wake her, he climbed out of bed, dressed quickly in the dark, and crept silently from their bedroom. He moved quietly along the hallway and paused outside the door to his twelve-year-old daughter’s room. The door was slightly ajar; Jessica liked it that way when she slept. He pushed it open, just enough to get his head around the opening, and listened for a few seconds to the soft sleeping sounds coming from Jessica’s bed. Satisfied she too was sound asleep, he gently pulled the door back and continued along the hallway. In the small laundry attached to the kitchen of his home, he slipped into his sneakers and left by the back door, locking it behind him.

He found them when he got home, following an hour’s hard run around the perimeter of the suburban football ground at the end of his street.

He knew someone had been there as soon as he reached the back door. It was wide open. Jack never left it open. He distinctly remembered locking it when he left. In light of recent events relating to his most recent career, he was way too security conscious when it came to leaving the house late at night with his wife and daughter home alone.

He had a g*n, one of two he possessed, buried under a pile of rarely used hand-towels in a laundry cupboard high on the wall above the washing machine. His wife knew it was there and, while not happy about guns in the house at any time, she accepted they were a necessary part of her husband’s profession. His daughter, however, did not know. As far as Jack was aware, Jessica never went to that particular cupboard. There was nothing inside she would conceivably need and, besides, she couldn’t reach it even if she wanted to. It seemed, at least to Jack, it was a safe place to keep it. His second g*n, a Glock 9mm, he kept locked in the drawer of his bedside table, just in case he reasoned to his wife.

His heart racing, he opened the cupboard, reached in, fossicked under the hand-towels, and found the g*n, a Smith and Wesson, 38 calibre revolver with four-inch barrel. He fumbled deeper in the cupboard, and found a box of ammunition, flipped open the revolver cylinder, and began loading six rounds.

It took time, too much time. In his haste, two rounds of ammunition slipped from his fingers, bounced noisily off the washing machine, and rolled onto the floor. Conscious his clumsiness may well have alerted any intruder, he quickly loaded two replacement rounds, clicked the cylinder closed, and stepped silently into the kitchen.

Jessica’s bedroom was the first room on the left, off the short hallway running through the centre of the house. The light was on and spilled from the room casting a dull glow over the portion of the hall immediately in front of the door. Further along the hall, on the same side, light also spilled from the master bedroom. At that hour of the night, these two peculiarities were so far removed from the norm that Jack almost called out but held himself in check. The gut feeling was stronger now. Something was wrong, terribly wrong.

With his back to the wall and his heart pounding a staccato rhythm in his chest, he edged stealthily along the hallway, his eyes darting ahead and behind. He held the revolver in a two-handed grip, his finger outside the trigger guard, and the barrel tracking the movement of his eyes.

Jessica’s door was open. Bracing himself, Jack crouched low, and sprung into the room, sweeping the area with his eyes and the g*n. Jessica was not in the room. Her bed was unmade, and her fluffy, pink slippers on the floor at the end of the bed immediately rang alarm bells in Jack’s mind. Jessica loved her slippers. She almost never left her bedroom without them on her feet; it was one of the little, endearing, childhood idiosyncrasies Jack loved so much in his only child.

Maybe she woke early, and climbed into bed with her mother, Jack wondered. She did that sometimes, especially when he was working the ridiculously long hours his job demanded. Accordingly, Jessica not being in her room would not normally be the cause for concern, but this was different, and Jack didn’t know why.

Jackson Traynor was a suspicious man. He had to be; his job demanded it. His mind replayed his movements from when he arrived home from his run. Finding the back door open was wildly at odds with the security precautions he was always re-enforcing in his family and, when taken in conjunction with Jessica’s vacant bedroom, the light burning within, and Jessica’s abandoned slippers, his instincts would not accept that what he was seeing was as benign as it might otherwise appear.

He stepped back out into the hall and moved towards the main bedroom. Outside the door, he paused and listened. He heard no sound from within. The whole house was silent. He glanced at his watch; the digital display read 3.55 a.m.

Slowly, carefully, and totally unprepared for what awaited him, he peeked around the door jamb, and glanced into the room.

April and Jessica Traynor were laying on the bed, on top of the covers, both n***d, and both covered with blood, lots of blood.

Subsequent investigations would reveal both April and young Jessica were savagely r***d, and then stabbed to death in what was forensically described as a frenzied, unrelenting attack. They died as a result of massive blood loss from multiple stab wounds to their respective faces, chests, and genitals.

Their assailant, or assailants, left the house as silently as they came, and Jackson Traynor’s life would never be the same again.