Ringmaster

  BRIANNA HALE

  Cale has the circus in his blood. As ringmaster and owner of Meriful’s Traveling Circus, his world is the arena, the spectacle and the heat of the spotlight. He looks out for his ragtag troupe of performers as if they’re his family, because after tragedy struck, they are.

  Ryah’s been battered and bruised by life and is ready to give up. Then Cale finds her, and she runs away to join Meriful’s Traveling Circus and becomes the horseback acrobatics star she’s always dreamed of being.

  What ultimately calls to her is Cale’s dangerous knife-throwing act, and the thrill of putting her life in his hands. Soon, she doesn’t want to be just part of his act. Cale’s doing his best to resist the fragile eighteen-year-old. He’s the ringmaster, but lately he’s been wondering… Who’s running rings around who?

  RINGMASTER by BRIANNA HALE

  Copyright © 2020 Brianna Hale

  | All Rights Reserved |

  Cover design by Maria @ Steamy Designs

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except brief quotations for reviews. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

  This book is a work of fiction. All characters, places, incidents and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any similarities between persons living or dead are purely coincidental.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  For Allaa.

  I was a fool not to love him sooner! I hope I did him justice.

  Playlist

  In the House, In a Heartbeat—John Murphy

  lovely—Billie Eilish

  Happy—Marina and the Diamonds

  Magic—Ladyhawke

  The Greatest—Sia

  Little Sister—Queens of the Stone Age

  Last Of The Real Ones—Fallout Boy

  On the Nature of Daylight—Max Richter

  Stay—Rihanna

  Your Arms Around Me—Jens Lekman

  Young Melody—PNAU

  https://spoti.fi/2VK9bcd or search “Ringmaster” on Spotify

  Damn everything but the circus!

  E. E. CUMMINGS

  Prologue

  Cale

  Yorkshire, England

  The police officer regards me solemnly, and then turns to Mum and Dad. “It’s better if your son waits outside.”

  I stare between the uniformed cops and my parents, feet rooted to the living room carpet. They’ve come with news about Mirrie, and I want to hear it. My sister’s been missing for two days. No one’s seen her since she left her job at the supermarket in the next village over on Wednesday evening.

  Mum comes over to me, her eyes watery and strained. “Do as the officer says, sweetheart.” She barely looks at me as she puts her hands on my shoulders and steers me out into the hallway. I look desperately to Dad, but he’s too focused on the cops to notice what’s happening to me. His face is gray and slack, his dark brown eyes as droopy as a hound dog’s.

  None of us have slept since Mirrie didn’t come home, and we’ve barely eaten. We just want Mirrie.

  “Just for a few minutes, lad,” the other officer, a woman, says. Her lips are pressed tightly together, and when I meet her eyes they slide away from me. A cold lump of dread fills my belly, and Mum shuts the door in my face.

  I press my ear against the wood, but their voices are muffled. As fast as I can, I run out back through the kitchen door and step quickly and quietly through the flower beds until I’m crouched beneath the open living room window.

  The female officer is speaking. “…body found up on Red Hill. We believe it’s your daughter.”

  There’s a long, animal cry. It takes a moment for me to realize that it’s Dad.

  Mum talks over the sound, shrill and defiant. “But it can’t be Mirrie! Why would you think it’s her?”

  Exactly, I think fiercely. You don’t know her. We know her. My big sister is fourteen years old and she’s got the longest, softest black hair that you’ve ever seen. She lets me watch Pinky and the Brain and South Park even though she thinks they’re dumb and she’d rather switch the channel to music videos. She makes the best carrot cake I’ve ever tasted, even better than Mum’s. And she wouldn’t have gone up on Red Hill. Not alone at night in November when it’s dark and cold.

  “There was a red anorak at the scene, matching the one you described.”

  “What about the rest of her clothes?” Mum asks, ready to do battle over details and prove that Mirrie’s fine, Mirrie’s just late, Mirrie’s not the body on Red Hill, which is four miles from here and on the opposite side of the village to her bus stop.

  There’s a pause. The male police officer says, “There were no other clothes found at the scene.”

  My father speaks for the first time today, his voice thick and confused. “She was…naked?”

  It’s not Mirrie, Dad, I think impatiently. Just some other poor girl. Mirrie wouldn’t get naked in the woods. Not in the summer, and especially not in November. It doesn’t make sense to me, but it must mean something to Dad, because he starts to sob.

  “Not my little girl. Not Mirrie.”

  “There was this as well,” the female officer says, and I hear the crinkle of a plastic bag.

  There’s a short silence, and then Mum starts to cry brokenly. I grip the knees of my jeans, wanting to leap up and see for myself what the officers have shown her.

  “George, look. The pony. The tennis racket. The ballet shoes.”

  I stuff my fist in my mouth and bite down hard. The theater masks. The oak leaf. The squirrel. I know what’s in the bag. It’s Mirrie’s silver charm bracelet. All her favorite things.

  “How…” Mum begins, but then she’s crying too hard to speak. I slump against the dahlias, tears running down my face.

  Mum takes a shuddering breath. “How did she…did she suffer?”

  The male officer clears his throat. He speaks gently, as if what he has to say might be easier to hear that way. “It appears that she was strangled. The anorak cords were wrapped around her throat. We’ll need you to come down to the station to formally identify her.”

  “And she’d been…this monster had…”

  There’s a short silence, and then the officer says, “She seems to have been sexually assaulted.”

  But assault is when you hurt someone, and sex is something grown-ups do with what’s between their legs. I don’t understand. Whoever killed her, did they hurt Mirrie between her legs? Did they use what’s between their legs to hurt her? Is that why they took all her clothes off? But why would someone do that? And if they had to do that, why couldn’t they have let Mirrie come home afterwards?

  I throw myself away from the window and run back to
the kitchen door. The light’s funny, and my head feels funny too, as if it might float right off my shoulders. I hear a roar of pain and anger. It goes on and on and I can’t escape it. Because it’s me. I’m howling and I don’t think I’ll ever stop. I run into the kitchen to grab a knife from the block as Mum and Dad hurry in. I don’t even recognize them. There’s a cloud of grief so thick around them that if I go to them I think I’ll suffocate.

  “Cale!”

  I turn and run blindly out across the garden and jump over the wall into the fields. Mum and Dad call after me, but their voices are snatched away by the wind and the sound of my pounding feet. This monster has done this to us, and I’m going to find him and make him pay.

  I run and run, across the farm and into the neighboring fields toward Red Hill. He might still be there, whoever did this, and it will have been a he. Only men do horrible things like fight wars and beat each other up outside pubs and kick you in the calf when you’re trying to change into your sports kit. Girls don’t do that. Girls are nice, like Mirrie.

  At the last stile before Red Hill, I skid to a stop, breathing hard. The path slopes up toward a heavy sky, wooded thickly with bare gray trees. There are police cars up ahead and people in uniforms standing in clusters. He won’t be here, not where they might catch him.

  But he could be nearby.

  I start to walk around Red Hill, still clutching the knife in my fist. It’s eight inches long, and very sharp and with a point. Cattle have churned up the muddy fields and I slip more than once, but I don’t let go of the knife. I walk and walk, my mind full of the awful pictures that the police have put in my head. I go all the way to the next village and around the back roads. I see some people, but they’re just farmers, and I’d know the monster who killed my sister right away, wouldn’t I?

  But I can’t find him. I can’t find him anywhere. He did this to Mirrie, and now he’s gone.

  I scream in frustration and throw my knife. It buries itself three inches deep in the trunk of a chestnut tree. I stare at it for a moment, sniffling, and I feel a little better. Blinking away my tears, I go and yank it out of the wood and step back a few paces. I throw the knife again, but it bounces off the trunk. It takes me a few goes to get the spin right, and then it sticks point-first into the wood.

  I throw the knife again, walk forward to pull it from the tree trunk, then step back and throw it again. Over and over. For a while I imagine the tree is the man who hurt Mirrie, that I’m hurling the knife at his chest and he’s screaming and begging for mercy. I don’t give it to him. Not one little shred.

  I keep throwing, and my mind clears. I don’t think of anything. Just the knife. The throw. The spin. The sight of it sticking out from the tree trunk. It gets dark, but I keep throwing, grateful that I don’t have to think about Mirrie dead and naked in the woods, and that I couldn’t find the man who killed her.

  Chapter One

  Ryah

  Nineteen years later

  I know that today is going to be a nightmare as soon as I come downstairs.

  There’s an open bottle of whisky on the draining board. Amber liquid spills down the sides and pools on the grubby stainless steel, as if someone just took a messy swig and slammed it down. I freeze, and glance around the kitchen: dirty dishes and frypans in the sink and on the stovetop; muddy boots laying beneath the kitchen table; a chair lying on its side on the floor.

  No sign of Dad.

  I let out the tight, scared breath I’m holding. I’m okay this second. That might change in an hour, a quarter hour, the next minute, but for this second I’m safe.

  I hurry over to the draining board, screw the cap back on the whisky bottle and hide it under the sink. I glance guiltily out the window at the front garden and the road, and then behind me to the door onto the stable yard. Dad didn’t see me. Maybe he won’t remember the bottle. Maybe he’ll drink coffee instead.

  I make a pot, hoping the smell will distract him when he comes back inside and that my helpfulness will mean he won’t hit me for being useless and in the way. I turn the hot tap on and feverishly start to unload and scrub the dirty sink. Dad likes to fry bacon and sausages at night while he’s drunk and makes an almighty mess for me to clean up in the morning.

  It’s a warm July day, and through the open window I hear talking and laughter. The Jones and Symes kids from the farms up the hill seem to be heading to the bus stop. They’ll board the old village bus and grind up the narrow lanes the fifteen miles to the nearest town. I suppose they’re going shopping, or to the cinema. Normal things teenagers do. I turned seventeen four months ago. This September, I should be starting my final year of school but I haven’t attended in two years. Dad says I’m needed here, especially since my slut of a mother abandoned us. His word, not mine. I watch them longingly through the window. Smiling. Happy. Free.

  There’s a deep, angry expletive from out by the stables, and I jump and get back to work. If Dad comes back inside and the kitchen’s not clean he’ll start shouting at me. Or worse. I put a stack of dirty plates into the sudsy water and grimace as several cigarette butts float to the surface.

  I’ve got the sink tidy and the table cleared and I’m starting on wiping down the counters when I hear the clip-clop of a horse. At first I ignore it, thinking it’s probably Dad with Lester, his gelding, but the sound gets louder and louder and becomes a clatter. I go to the window and see four horses in the road, hitched to a bright red wagon. Behind it is another wagon, and another wagon. They’re painted in bright colors, some emblazoned with Meriful’s Traveling Circus. There are people sitting up front of each one; tanned, happy people in bright, unusual clothes. A huge, muscular strongman. Slender, ballerina-like girls who probably tread tightropes. Lanky young men who might juggle or tumble.

  A huge chasm of longing opens in my chest. The circus appears in the village every year around this time. I want to be with them, going somewhere far from here where people are happy to see you and they applaud you and cheer. Where you can smile and do something that you love, and feel loved.

  The circus passes on, disappearing from view. A few minutes later even the sounds of the wagons and horses recede.

  I want to go out and ride Dandelion, but I don’t dare with Dad somewhere out by the stables. I end up just staring out the window. I hate that this is my life. I hate that I can’t think of any way to make all this fear and misery end. I’m only ever happy when I’m riding Dandelion and we’re performing some complicated move together. Concentrating on the feel of her bare back beneath my legs. I want to run away with her, but no one will take in a girl with no money and her horse.

  A door slams behind me and I drop the dishcloth I’m holding. I quickly bend down to pick it up. There are rapid footsteps behind me, and a hand grasps me viciously by the hair and pulls me up.

  “What are you doing just standing there?” Dad roars in my ear, blasting me with the stench of bad breath and stale alcohol.

  I gasp and come up on my toes. I know better than to try and twist out of his grip. “I thought I saw a spider. On the window.”

  “I don’t see any spider.”

  “It ran away. It’s gone.”

  He releases me with a shove and turns to open the fridge. I go to the coffee pot and quickly pour him a cup, hoping to distract him. When I put it down on the counter beside him he takes a drink, and I risk putting a hand to my hair to rub my aching scalp while his back is turned.

  Dad drinks his coffee and I start to relax a little. As soon as the kitchen is clean and I’ve put a load of washing on, I’ll go out for a ride. Maybe I can catch up with the circus and follow them for a few miles, and dream about being with them. I wish I could go anywhere far, far away from here. I wish I had one penny to my name, or some ID, or even a bank card. I have nothing. Dad’s made it impossible for me to exist in this world without him. He did the same to Mum, giving her cash to do the weekly shopping and demanding the receipts and change as soon as she got back. In the end it all be
came too much for her, and she fled when I was twelve.

  I don’t blame her for leaving. I just wish she’d taken me with her.

  “Ryah.”

  The calmness in his voice tricks me. I should know by now never to trust him when he sounds calm, but my head is filled with the circus. I turn around, just in time to see something flying at my face. The back of Dad’s hand slams into my left eye and cheekbone and I go sprawling across the floor, knocking over several kitchen chairs as I grab for anything to keep my balance.

  I can feel Dad standing over me, but I can’t open my eyes. The breath has been knocked from my lungs and my face is throbbing with pain.

  “What did you do with it?” When I don’t answer, he grabs me by the hair again and wrenches my face up to his. I scream. I can’t help it. The pain is intense.

  “I said, what did you do with it?”

  I try to hold back the tears, because he hates tears, but they spill in hot rivers down my cheeks.

  “What did I do with what?” I whisper. I’m not sassing him. I have no idea what he’s talking about.

  “You lying bitch, don’t pretend you don’t know. You’ve poured it down the sink, haven’t you?”

  He lets go of me and stomps into the next room, and it finally dawns on me what he’s so angry about. The whisky bottle. I shouldn’t have touched it. He’s unpredictable when he’s drunk, but sometimes he’s worse when he’s sober. Meaner. More calculated.

  I hear an ominous chunk from the next room, and all the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. He loved to threaten Mum with the shotgun, holding it to her throat or making her open her mouth and shoving the barrels between her teeth. Once, she wet herself she was so scared, and he made her lie in it for hours while she sobbed.

  I pull myself to my knees, every bone in my body aching. I have to get out of here, or he’s going to do the same to me.