Excerpt:

“Actually Mr. Darling, I’m not going to take much of your time I just need something from you. And Laura and Adam should probably come along as well.”
David refocused on the woman in surprise and tried to place her. There was nothing familiar about her at all, and certainly something unsettling.
“I’m sorry, do I know you? Are you a solicitor?”
The woman gave a tight smile. “Do I look like a solicitor?”
“She has something to tell us too,” said Adam, pulling on David’s arm.
“No, I really think you two ought to get inside. Whatever Miss… I’m sorry, you didn’t tell me your name.”
“That’s really not particularly important at the moment, just… come with me.”
Without warning, the woman reached out and grabbed David’s hand. It was such a casual gesture and it seemed so familiar that David, with Laura and Adam following behind, was halfway down the walk before he realised what was happening.
“Look, see here,” he started, completely flustered. He quickly pulled his hand away. “You’re a complete stranger. We don’t even know you!”
“You know Dad, I think if it came to a fight you could take her,” laughed Laura, staring with interest at the woman.
Laura wasn’t wrong. In addition to looking quite young, the woman was nearly a foot shorter than David. Although she was muscular, she was slim and she was holding her left arm awkwardly, as if it had been recently injured.
“No one is going to be fighting anyone. Now you two get inside right now while I sort this out. Listen here, I’m quite a busy man, I’m in the middle of a government contract for the London parliament and I don’t know what this is regarding but if you don’t explain yourself I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
“It’s a government contract about paper,” Adam added in a spectacularly unhelpful comment. The woman’s face relaxed slightly as she smiled at him, then returned to its dead serious expression as she face David again.
“Right, in that case I won’t waste any more of your time. I need you to give me your ring.”
There was a pause while David looked at the stranger in shocked silence.
“What is this, some sort of robbery? Like, a mugging or something?”
The woman put a hand to her head in exasperation. “Look, first of all, can we please move a bit farther away from the house, this isn’t a safe place to stand. And second, I’m sure that ring is very important to you but….”
David cut her off. “Very important to me? Important? This ring, young lady, is all I have left of my wife who, if you must know, died in a very tragic airplane accident three years ago and if you think for one second that there is anything in this world that could convince me to give you this ring then you’d better think again. I’m calling the police right now.” With a final glare, he firmly gripped Adam and Laura’s arms and turned back towards the house, hoping very much that by the time he reached the door, the strange woman would be gone. He hadn’t taken two steps forward, however, when there was a muffled sound, a bit like a clap of thunder from a long way off. The ground trembled slightly and David looked up in complete shock as, with a fantastic explosion, his house blew up.