Impostor (Alexander Gregory Thrillers, #1)

by L.J. Ross

Fear was a living, breathing thing inside him, and he battled to keep it at bay as he dived into the trees and made for the pathway that would take him past the tennis courts and towards the town centre. Pine cones scattered as he half-walked, half-ran through the forest, keeping to the worn pathway. The trees rose up all around him, like silent sentinels that seemed to contract and move. It’s only your mind, playing tricks again. There, beneath the forest canopy, he could have been anywhere in the world. With only Nature as his companion, it might have been ten, twenty or even a hundred years ago, and the landscape would have looked much the same as it did then. It was as though Alex had stepped into a kind of ether; a halfway place, or No-Man’s Land, with only himself and his demons as a guide. They’re only projections, he told himself. Not real anymore. He heard his breathing quicken and saw it cloud on the air before disappearing again, swallowed up by the surrounding darkness. Suddenly, there came a flash of lightning piercing the sky, followed immediately by a deafening rumble that seemed to shake the very foundations of the trees. The storm had come. * * *