The Upper Hand - PAPERBACK - DC O'Connell Book 1

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CHAPTER 1
Three Weeks ago.

“Hey man, thanks for the night out, I really appreciate it,” Mark said, offering his hand to his friend, who took it with a firm grip.
“Not a problem, it was good to catch up, you know?”
“Yeah, it was,” Mark replied with a half-hearted smile.
“Look, don’t feel bad. You don’t owe me anything, alright? This was my treat. We all have money troubles from time to time. It’s no big deal. You’ll get through this. I know you will.”
Mark nodded and tried to give a better, more enthusiastic smile. He wasn’t sure it worked. “I hope so.”
“If you need anything, just ask, alright? I’ll see what I can do for you.”
“How about a loan?”
Adrian smiled. “I’d love to man, I would, honestly…”
“I know mate. I’m kidding. Thanks for the drinks, though. We should do it again sometime.”
“Defo. Let me know some dates that work for you, and I’ll run it by the missus.”
Mark gave his friend’s hand one more shake before he let go. “I will. Catch you later.”
“Take care of yourself,” Adrian answered, and with a final nod and wave, started off down the road.
Mark watched him go for a second before turning the other direction and making his way north, away from Guildford Town Centre towards the estates beyond the A3.
He’d only had a couple of drinks with some snacks, and could barely feel any effects from the alcohol at all. But then, that wasn’t surprising. Beer had become a close friend of his since the bankruptcy.
He’d not seen Adrian in years, but then out of nowhere, he’d got in touch over Facebook of all places. Mark guessed he’d accepted a friend request at some point, although he couldn’t remember it.
Adrian had been an old school friend, and it had been great to see him and find out what he’d been up to. He’d known a little about Mark’s own misfortune, which was the reason he’d reached out, or at least, that’s what Adrian had said.
Mark hadn’t gone into all the details about what he’d done. There was no need for that. Few people knew everything. Not even his wife knew about the drug-fuelled nights at hotels with a couple of working girls.
You bloody idiot, he thought, thinking back to the way he’d ruined everything. Taking over his dad’s business had been amazing. Suddenly he’d had money. Lots of money. But he didn’t know how to run a business, and after his dad had stepped away from it, it soon took a dive.
Things just got steadily worse as he took to drink, drugs, and just throwing the money away.
Now his family didn’t want to see him, and his wife… Well, she wasn’t exactly the most sympathetic of people.
He soon reached the footbridge that crossed over the A3 and walked up the switchback ascent to the main span that crossed the road below. The streets were fairly quiet, and just one other figure followed him up the bridge.
Mark crossed the highway and walked off into the residential estates on the other side, making a left and right, and then a little further up, walked along a cut-through between roads.
A glance behind him revealed the same man he’d seen on the bridge, still a short distance back, keeping pace with him. Mark frowned, but kept going. It wasn’t that far to his home now. The man probably lived on an adjacent street or something.
The thought of returning to the house and seeing his wife produced a feeling of dread in his stomach. He hoped Lisa was asleep. He couldn’t be doing with her tonight. He was willing to bet she’d been on the cheap wine again like she did most nights recently, and he’d likely get an earful from her the moment he stepped into the house.
Ugh, that bloody house. He hated it. It was so much smaller than the one they’d had, and on a shitty street with idiot kids who really should be at school and not riding about causing trouble.
It was all they could afford to rent, though, until he got a better job—a subject that was one of Lisa’s favourite topics. She seemed to hate him these days. She was always finding something to have a go at him about. His job. Money. The house. The bills. It didn’t seem to matter. Everything was his fault.
But then, he couldn’t really argue with that. It was his fault. He was the one who spent all the money. He was the one who’d drunk too much, got hooked on smack, and had the occasional orgy with expensive hookers.
Jeez, those had been some fun nights.
Nights he’d never have again unless something changed.
But he couldn’t see any light at the end of the tunnel. He couldn’t see much reason for hope. Not right now.
His friend, Adrian, reaching out and taking him for a drink had been the first real fun he’d had since everything had gone wrong. It had been fun to reminisce about their days at school and talk about old school friends. He wondered what some of those guys were up to now.
After another left turn, he looked back to see the same man still following him. Mark furrowed his brow as a chill shot up his spine. This seemed odd. Was this guy purposefully following him?
What was he playing at?
He shook his head. Get a grip, man, what are you thinking? Why would someone do this?
Mark ploughed on, and as he thought about walking in and getting yelled at by Lisa, he chose to take a longer route with a bit of a loop. That way he could delay getting back home and also see if this guy was really following him. Mark took a right and kept going. At the end of the street, he turned left and glanced back, spotting the man still following on behind him.
As he got out of sight, around the corner, part of him wanted to run. He wanted to sprint up the road to the next corner and try to lose him.
This was beginning to get a little freaky, and the worries of getting home to an irate Lisa began to fade away, only to be replaced with a growing, gnawing fear that he might be attacked by the man behind him.
Mark quickened his pace, walking as fast as he could. His legs pumped away beneath him, carrying him along the pavement towards the next left where he’d be doubling back on himself, and as he reached the turn, he looked back.
The previous corner wasn’t that far back, and Mark paused for a moment on seeing no one there. No one behind him.
Had the man turned away? Maybe he’d gone into a house he’d passed, and the fear he’d been feeling was totally unjustified.
The man rounded the corner.
Mark’s stomach fell, and he pressed on, starting up the next street.
He was certain of it now. The man was stalking him. There was no other explanation for it. No one would take the same route he’d just taken. No one. Mark crossed the street as he weighed up his options, taking the opportunity to look back as he checked the road for cars. The man was there again, on the same street, striding up after him.
Shit, shit, shit.
He wanted to run. He desperately wanted to run. It was a deep, guttural instinct that was shouting at him from somewhere deep inside. That man was a threat and the most obvious, and the easiest, thing to do was to break into a sprint and get the hell out of there.
But a small part of him wouldn’t let him do it. There was still a nagging doubt that this might still be all in his head, and the man wasn’t interested in him. Plus, he wasn’t a wimp. He was a grown man, not some child letting his imagination run away with him just because it was late at night and dark.
Thinking about the route ahead, he only had a couple more streets before he was home, but a small voice from somewhere in the back of his mind told him to be careful. Don’t show the man where you live, he thought.
Between here and his road, Mark remembered a public bench on a corner of the street, and an idea occurred to him.
He’d confront him. If the man really was following him, then maybe Mark should pull himself together and ask the man what the hell he was doing.
He had to admit, the thought of turning around and waiting for the man who’d been shadowing him filled him with what felt like an unreasonable amount of terror, but he did not want to lead him to his house.
Mark reached the end of the road and glanced back again. The man was still there, still striding up the road, his shoulders hunched, his head down, just a dark shadow on the streets.
Mark continued on, turning right, he spotted the bench and made straight for it. He reached it without issue, and sat, looking back up the street from the direction he’d come, waiting for the man to appear.
He felt tense as he waited. His lips pressed tightly together while his right leg bounced nervously. He glanced down at it accusingly, hating that it was giving away his nervousness.
Since when had he become so worried about confrontation? Before all this crap with the business, he’d been the confident one. He’d once thought nothing of going on the offensive in a meeting to try and get what he wanted. Going even further back to his time at school. In hindsight, he’d known for a while that he’d been a bit of a dick.
Had he been a bully? He wasn’t sure about that. That sounded like a fairly serious word for his actions back then. Actions he wasn’t too proud of.
Mark put his hand on his leg and forced it to stop bouncing as he glanced back up the road.
The man should have appeared by now. Where was he?
As the seconds passed, doubt began to gnaw at the back of his mind. Maybe he’d been an idiot. Maybe the man hadn’t been following him.
As the seconds turned into minutes, Mark’s need to know where the man was, only deepened. After a few more moments, he stood up and walked back the way he’d come, towards the previous road to have a look. As he approached the corner, he turned in a full circle, checking all around him, but Mark couldn’t see the man anywhere.
Taking a deep breath, he stoked his remaining courage as he approached that last corner and looked down the road where he’d last seen the man. But he wasn’t there.
The street was empty. No people, no moving cars, nothing.
Strange.
But then, maybe not. Maybe he’d disappeared into one of these houses.
Taking a step back, Mark shrugged. Strange, but not inexplicable, he thought.
“Mark Summers,” said a voice behind him.
Mark turned. The man was right there. Right in front of him, his face in shadow. The man’s arm moved and he felt something being jabbed into his stomach.
A sudden, gut-wrenching pain flooded his body from whatever it was that had been pressed into him. There was a buzzing noise that did not sound at all friendly as his body convulsed and locked up. He fell to the ground with a thud, unable to stop himself in any way, and slammed his head into the pavement. The buzzing stopped, but the excruciating pain did not as Mark tried to pull in a breath.
His vision swam. He had trouble focusing, but he did see the man hold up something dark and blocky. Bright blue-coloured light flared at one end of the device as it buzzed again.
A taser?
“Now who has the upper hand, hmm?” the man said as he made the taser spark a couple more times before he put it away.
Mark grunted and tried to move, but his body still wouldn’t listen to him as he watched the man pull something else out of his other pocket and hold it aloft. It was long and thin, and it glinted in the streetlight. The man pressed something on the bottom of it, and liquid squirted out of the tip.
“Time to go night-night,” the man said, crouching down beside him and stabbing the syringe into his upper arm. Within moments, darkness claimed him.