What You Left Behind

ALSO BY SAMANTHA HAYES

Until You’re Mine

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2014 by Samantha Hayes

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.
www.crownpublishing.com

CROWN is a registered trademark and the Crown colophon is a trademark of Random House LLC.

Originally published in Great Britain by Century, a division of Random House Group Limited, London, in 2014.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hayes, Samantha.
What you left behind : a novel / Samantha Hayes—First American edition.
pages; cm
1. Women detectives—England—Fiction. 2. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. 3. Psychological Fiction. I. Title.
PR6108.A96736W47 2015
823′.92—dc23           2014027819

ISBN 978-0-8041-3692-1
eBook ISBN 978-0-8041-3693-8

Jacket design by Oliver Munday
Jacket photograph: Massimo Merlini/iStock

v3.1

For my dear parents, Avril and Graham
.
With all my love
.

Contents

Cover

Other Books by This Author

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

ONE MONTH EARLIER

I cling to him as the wind blasts over my body, cutting through my mind, sweeping clean my thoughts. The trees and hedges are dark flashes of danger streaking past in a midnight blur. As his right hand twists the throttle, I grip his waist and press my face against his T-shirt. His back feels warm and his muscles are tense through the fabric.

“You OK?” he yells, half turning his head.

“This is am-
azing
!” I call back, but I don’t think he hears me from behind my visor. There was only one helmet dangling from the handlebars when we stole the bike. He insisted I wear it.

“Want to go faster?”

My heart kicks out a frightened yet exhilarated beat. I glance over
his shoulder at the speedometer. Fifty-six miles per hour yet it feels like twice that.

“Yes!” I scream out, nodding my helmet-head to make sure he knows I’m up for it.

We round the corner and I see the road pulling out long and straight ahead of us. They call it Devil’s Mile.

I give him a squeeze beneath his ribs, so he knows I want to go all the way, that I’m up for it. He opens up the throttle with his right hand. The bike strains, the engine noise increases, and I slide back in the seat as he releases the clutch. I hold on to him tighter and grip the bike with my legs. The road whips past us in a tarry, moonlit ribbon.

He notches up the accelerator, pushing the bike to its limits. The engine screams its power, carrying us through the desolate nighttime landscape, sucking out everything that’s been blowing up my head from the inside out. It’s the release I need.

The end of the straight section of road approaches faster than my thoughts. I feel my fingers digging into his ribs as I wonder when he’s going to brake. If we take the corner at this speed, we’ll end up in the ditch.

“Slow down!” I yell.

Immediately the engine noise decreases and I lurch forward, my hips pressing against his, my body feeling like a great weight against him. He’s laughing; half turns to let me know it. His white teeth flash sheer fun. As we slow down, my hands take hold of the curved metal bar behind me and I tip back my head.

“That was fucking amazing!” I say.

We bring the bike to a stop and it purrs throatily beneath us. His feet go down on the muddy ground to steady it. He’s only wearing flip-flops.

“You’re not exactly dressed for the occasion,” I say, swinging my leg over the back of the bike. “Nice machine, though.”

I sound as if I know about such things, but the reality is that I’ve
never really been into motorbikes. Now, after just one ride, I feel addicted to the thrill of speed and the temporary amnesia it brings. The engine makes a grumbling sound as I unstrap my helmet, pulling it off over my ears. My hair crackles with static and sticks up.

“I knew you’d like it,” he says, kicking down the stand and pressing up against me.

A white van comes slowly round the corner, the man inside texting or doing something with his cell phone. I can see the glow reflected on his face. He doesn’t pay us any attention.

“We haven’t got long,” he continues. “Someone’s going to miss this beauty pretty soon.” He strokes the bike’s seat with one hand, my backside with the other.

My stomach lurches and twists from what we’ve done, and my head spins from the alcohol and whatever it was I smoked.

People like me don’t do things like this
.

“Perhaps we should stop now,” I say. “You know, just dump it and get out of here.” I’m suddenly terrified of getting caught—police cars, blue flashing lights, officers, cuffed hands, spending the night in a cell … 
prison
.

“What? You don’t want to take her for a spin?” He sounds disappointed. “After all the trouble I went to?”

I stare at the motorbike and feel the rev of my heart again. The bike’s sleek lines, shimmering paintwork, chunky silver exhaust—the sheer thrill of its hidden power—win me over. “You think I can do it?”

His mouth swipes over mine. I’ve never felt like this before.

“Of course. Get on the front.”

He shifts aside, steadying the rumbling bike as I climb on. I pull my helmet back on, visor lifted up. The handlebars seem too far away and I have to stretch to reach them. Even just ticking over, the engine vibrates a thrill up my legs, my spine, and into my fuzzed-up brain.

“You know how to drive, right? Well, it’s not so different.”

His breath smells of beer mashed up with vodka. I wonder if mine is the same; if we’ll be locked up together forever.

I move in to kiss him
—what am I doing?
—but the opening in the helmet is too small and I end up bumping him on the forehead. We burst out laughing in uncontrollable fits of loose-limbed hysteria, which nearly causes us to drop the bike between us.

“You’d better show me how it all works before I lose it completely,” I say. Then I reach and grab hold of his wrists in a surge of horror as another moment of clarity strikes me in the face. “We’ve stolen a fucking motorbike! We’re going to get into a crazy load of trouble for this.”

My hands and arms and shoulders are shaking and even holding on to him doesn’t ease the trembling. I start to get off. This is so very wrong.

“Chill out,” he says with a cocksure laugh. “Now, do you want to have some fun or not?”

Then his hands are on the side of the helmet, gently easing it up off my head again. His mouth is pressing down on mine, searching out the fear, kissing it all away. Making everything better.

I nod. “Yes,” I say, loving him all the more, never wanting him to stop.

He shows me how to pull in the clutch, when to accelerate, where the gear and brake levers are, and, finally, how to slow this great beast of a bike with my right hand and foot. I run through it virtually, pretending to work the controls.

“I’ll be sitting right behind you and we’ll just go slowly. I’ll tell you exactly what to do. Now, put this back on.”

He gives me one last kiss, deeper and more tender than ever before, then slips the helmet back over my head, snaps down the visor, and climbs on.

I feel a brief pang of guilt that he should be wearing one too.

With his feet fixed on the ground, he helps me turn the motorbike around. Once again we are faced with the long stretch of road
ahead of us. Its slick surface glows in the moonlight, shiny from the recent rain. All I can think of are his hands wrapped tightly over mine on the handlebar controls. He tweaks the right one back and the engine immediately responds.

“Ready?” he shouts above the noise.

I nod, and allow my hands to follow his prompts. As he releases the clutch, we slowly creep forward.

I glance at the display. Thirteen miles per hour, but it feels faster sitting at the front. He’s still balancing us with his toes tapping on the ground on each side. After only a couple more bursts on the accelerator, he picks up his feet and rests them on the posts.

“Keep the revs up,” he shouts. “You don’t want her to stall.”

He still has control, even though I am the one in contact with the bike. We slip seamlessly through the gears, as he kicks down on the lever.

“This is fantastic!” I cry out, but I don’t think he hears.

I glance at the speedometer. I want to go faster, push it a bit before we hit the end of the straight, so I twist my right hand backward and feel the machine respond. As the engine begins to strain, he changes up another gear and it feels as if we must be doing a hundred.

Everything is flowing out of me as we rush to the corner. I am being cleansed, filtered by sheer madness.

“I’m doing it by myself!” I call out.

I twist my right hand toward me and the thrill in my heart kicks up with the engine. I know he will be feeling the same. A few flicks of my eyes to the display: fifty-five, and then we’re creeping up through the sixties. There’s room to push it more, a chance to show what I’m made of.

“You’re a natural!” he yells from behind.

Without another thought I turn the accelerator toward me as far as it’ll go.

There’s no time to think. No time to take action. Fear and
inexperience and stupidity blanket any chance of rationality in less than a second. The bike screams forward, smacking my head back against his face. I cling on, not knowing what to do, realizing immediately it’s too late.

The tree is a silhouette against the inky night sky. We are heading right at it, doing seventy, maybe eighty.

He’s shouting. I feel his feet searching, kicking against mine. His hands don’t reach the handlebars in time. His feet never make it to the controls.