the glass. The building was instantly filled with the scream of an alarm.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘Let’s get everybody out of here.’
‘I thought we’d said we couldn’t evacuate the building,’ Ianto pointed out, ‘in case we lost the shapeshifter.’
‘That’s right,’ said Jack. ‘But on the other hand, look at the size of this place. We could be here months and never find it.’
‘I don’t follow,’ said Gwen shaking her head.
‘I do,’ said Owen. ‘This is its hunting ground. We reduce the food supply.’
Jack grinned. ‘Exactly. With the residents gone there’s just us.’
He looked pretty pleased with his plan; the others looked at each other. They would become the hunters and the hunted. It made sense. The only problem was that from the way Owen had described what attacked him, it didn’t sound like bullets were going to have a whole lot of impact.
But that was going to have to wait now; there were people showing up from their apartments. Owen saw Wendy and Ewan Lloyd running towards them. They had hurriedly dressed and had Alison between them in her dressing gown. She held Wendy’s hand with one hand, the other clutched the pixie doll to her chest, intent on saving her own most treasured possession.
‘What’s going on?’ Ewan demanded, looking flushed with barely controlled panic.
He was looking at Owen, but Jack answered. ‘There’s an emergency. You have to get out now.’
‘Is it a fire?’ Alison gasped, her eyes large with excitement.
Owen bent down to her. ‘No. It’s not a fire, but you have to get out of the building as quickly as you can. Don’t worry, you’ll be safe.’
‘If it’s not a fire, what’s happening?’ demanded Wendy. ‘And who are you people?’
‘Everything is going to be fine,’ Gwen told her. ‘Just get into the lift and leave the building.’
As she spoke, she was easing the family towards the elevator.
‘No,’ Ewan said, suddenly defiant. ‘Not the lift. Not if there might be a fire. It’s dangerous. We’ll take the stairs. Come on, Wendy.’
‘There isn’t a fire, Ewan,’ Owen said quickly. ‘The lift’s quicker.’
‘We’re not using the lift!’ he snapped.
The elevator doors opened, and Andrew and Simon went for it without a second thought, taking the whimpering beachball man with them.
‘Well, we are,’ said Andrew. He lashed an accusing look at Simon. ‘I always told you there was something wrong with this place, but you wouldn’t listen, would you?’
Ewan was drawing his family towards the stairs. ‘Come on, Wendy, Alison. This way.’
Owen strode after them. ‘OK, if you want to take the stairs, I’m coming with you.’
Ewan glared at him. No way did he want Owen with them, but right now he didn’t seem to have any choice. Owen didn’t stop to think about it. If Ewan wanted to be an arse, that was up to him.
As they went through the doors to the stairwell, Owen turned back. ‘Make sure you get Tosh, Jack.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Gwen told him.
And Owen was gone.
Jack turned to Ianto and told him to take the elevator down to the ground floor with Andrew, Simon and the beachball man. ‘Pull up the records on the desk computer in the reception hall – there’s got to be a list of everyone who lives here. Check them off as people reach the ground. I want to know that everybody is clear.’
Ianto nodded and jumped into the elevator cabin. Andrew glanced at him appreciatively, then caught Simon’s look. Ianto just hoped it was a very fast ride to the ground.
He saw Jack wink at him as the door closed on the elevator cabin and it began to descend.
At the same time Jack checked the cylinder of the Webley .38. All six chambers were loaded.
‘OK,’ he said to Gwen. ‘Item One – let’s get Tosh back.’
Gwen pulled her own automatic out.
And then the fire alarm stopped. And the lights went out.
EIGHTEEN
The sudden silence was deafening; the darkness, blinding.
Jack and Gwen threw themselves against the walls. It was an instinctive reaction. Made them a harder target. It was only a half-second later that they both realised that this time, in this building, the walls might not be such a good place to go for cover. They looked at each other from opposite sides of the dark passageway as their eyes grew accustomed to the night light that fell through a window further along.
‘Maybe not,’ said Jack.
Together they stepped away from the walls and went back-to-back, their eyes searching the darkness.
‘What happened?’ Gwen whispered.
‘At a guess, we just lost power.’
As he spoke, emergency strip-lights at the bottom of the walls started to flicker into life, giving the passageway a muted green illumination.
‘Yeuch,’ said Jack. It sounded like he’d just stepped in something.
‘What?’ Gwen hissed.
‘I do not look good in green.’
‘Jack?’ It was Ianto’s voice in his ear. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Where are you, Ianto?’
In the elevator cabin, Ianto ran his eyes down the string of floor numbers.
When the power had gone the lift had lurched to a stop and for a few seconds they had been plunged into total darkness. Andrew had squealed with fright, and Simon told him to grow up. Then a small emergency light had come to life on the ceiling, so Ianto could make out the numbers.
‘I think we’re between the sixth and seventh floors,’ he said at length. ‘That’s just a guess.’
‘Everybody OK?’ asked Jack.
Ianto looked at his cabin mates. Andrew’s eyes behind his red frames looked like they’d been drawn by Chuck Jones, but he was OK. Simon had an arm around the silently heaving shoulders of the fat man that he occasionally called Ryan. The fat man was the only one Ianto worried about: he was already stressed, having seen his wife get pulled through the wall, now he was trapped in a lift between floors. He could have a heart attack. Or he could turn crazy.
‘So far, so good,’ he told Jack.
‘Sing a few campfire songs. We’ll get to you soon as we can.’
Jack turned to Gwen, she had taken a hand-held module from her jacket pocket and was running quickly through screens.
‘What have you got?’ he asked.
‘The SkyPoint blueprints. Besnik Lucca has the whole of the twenty-fifth floor, penthouse suite, roof garden…’
‘Has he got a jacuzzi? I bet he’s got a jacuzzi. Maybe if we get this sorted in double-time…’
‘Doesn’t say anything about a jacuzzi. What it does say is there’s no way up there other than the lifts.’
Jack wiped his mouth with the back of his gun hand, feeling the humour drain out of him. ‘So we can’t reach Tosh while the power’s down and, you know, that gives me a really bad feeling about what’s going on here.’
Jack spoke into his comms again. ‘Owen. Are you there?’
Owen and Toshiko had decided not to wear their comms while they’d been playing Mr and Mrs in case someone had noticed them, but he had taken the earpiece from his pocket when the lights went out. He was there when Jack called him.
‘Here, Jack.’
He was two floors below with the Lloyds. And Ewan had a broken ankle. When the power went they had been hurtling down the concrete steps, in the sudden darkness Ewan had lost his footing and gone down heavily. The
