“Anything’s possible. But we can do the post-mortem later. Let’s get our kit.”
A scream from below made me swivel in a heartbeat. A quick scan of the plaza around the sphere didn’t reveal the source, but then Carmen elbowed me in the side.
“¡Qué hostia! She’s insane.”
Now what? When I turned, I saw Ana had pried open the hatch on the glass pod she was in, and now she was halfway along one arm of the wheel with her arms stretched out to the sides like a high-wire artiste. Bloody hell.
“Can’t disagree with you there.”
Bradley was busy sealing the pod with what looked like neon-pink washi tape while Josh and Tabby sat on the bench seat. Bradley may have been a lunatic, but in a situation like this one, he’d step up to the plate. And I was glad Ana would have my back when we went into the sphere. We connected. I knew how she’d react in any given situation and vice versa. If I couldn’t have Black by my side, then Ana made a worthy substitute.
Gasps came from below as she slid down a vertical support pointing to six o’clock as if it were a fireman’s pole, and she neatly sidestepped when a ranger tried to speak to her. Moments later, she disappeared into the milling crowd. Nicely done.
Of course, she didn’t come in our direction. No, she’d drawn too much attention to herself and we didn’t need any extra scrutiny, not with what we were about to do. The lack of activity around the sphere suggested nobody except us had realised what was going on in there. That gave me hope that we could do a quick smash-and-dash. Get in, get our kids, get the hell out of there, then leave the cops to clear up the aftermath.
Dan’s phone rang.
She already had it in her hand, and I caught a glimpse of the name on the screen. Vine was calling. Dan didn’t put him on speaker for obvious reasons, but I squashed in close enough to hear.
“Vine?” she whispered. “You okay?”
He didn’t answer, but we did hear another voice in the background. Male but shrill. Agitated.
“Shut up. Shut up! Everybody shut up and we won’t need to hurt anyone.”
Smart kid. Vine, who was suspiciously proficient at being sneaky and also had enough guts to disobey the kidnappers, had managed to open a line so we could hear what was going on. Had he used his smartwatch? Dan had gifted it to him for his birthday last month so he could listen to audiobooks—his dyslexia meant reading was a chore rather than a pleasure for him, and she didn’t want him to miss out—and I suspected the investment had just paid off big time. We’d have ears for as long as his battery lasted.
“Keep your hands where we can see them! In the air. Higher!”
That was the second time the unsub—the unknown subject—had referred to “we.” There was an outside chance he was bluffing, but for now, we had to assume we’d be dealing with more than one person when we got inside. And if this guy’s demeanour was anything to go by, they’d be nervous and slightly unstable.
“Stay here and listen,” I told Dan. “I’ll take Carmen with me. Plus if you can, have a mooch around the sphere while you’re waiting. See if you can spot another door.”
“What if Caleb tries to call again?”
“I’ll text him and tell him to call me instead, and if he does, Carmen can phone Mack with any news. Once we get back, we’ll have proper comms gear. Mack, can you get onto the research team and find out who owns this place? If we’ve got hostages, then I’d expect some sort of demand. Money is the obvious one, but they may have a different objective. We need to know what it is.”
“I’ll call Luke.”
“I thought he was sick? Practically on his deathbed, you said.”
“Uh…”
“You fibbed?”
Mack raised a finger to her lips. “Don’t tell Bradley, okay?”
I just rolled my eyes and set off for the car park.
Black had been drilling the importance of being prepared into me for sixteen years, and good little Girl Scout that I was, I’d brought enough gear to start a small war and finish it too. Ana had done the same, and Carmen’s trunk resembled a sporting goods store. Dan’s kit wasn’t quite so useful today, but if you ever needed to do a forensic investigation, she was your girl. Ana was already packing goodies into a slim black backpack when we arrived.
“Claustrophobia got to you?” I asked.
“I don’t do singalongs.”
That was probably for the best. Dan could hold a tune, but for the rest of us, a karaoke session would breach the Geneva Conventions.
We loaded up with what we needed, fitted covert earpieces and linked to Mack via the headset she was already wearing, then trekked back to the park. We’d got our hands stamped for re-entry on the way out, but Sod’s Law dictated we got checked by the jobsworth who wanted to search our bags again before we went back in.
“It’s park policy,” he said, attempting to stare me down.
Amateur. I locked my gaze onto his until he took a step back, then I glanced over his shoulder.
“Is that a monkey?”
He whirled around. “Where?”
“In that tree over there. Looks as if it’s wearing some sort of harness. A green one. Is it supposed to be running around like that?”
Just as I’d hoped, he forgot all about the bags and got on the radio, calling for reinforcements. Super—the fewer people near the sphere, the better. Wherever Jimbo was, I liked to think he was enjoying himself.
I was jogging past a life-size T-Rex when my phone buzzed with an incoming call. Race’s name flashed up on the screen, and my heart lurched. We couldn’t afford to fuck this
