Crossfire Read online

  ‘God, no. That’s the last thing I want.’ Tobey now looked directly at me.

  As we regarded each other, I felt yet another crack ripple through my heart for what might have been.

  So many wasted years. So much wasted time.

  ‘Why did you want to meet here of all places?’ I had to ask as I took another look around.

  ‘Restaurant tables can be bugged. Outdoor listening devices have a range of one hundred metres and more; some can pick up conversations through walls. Museums and art galleries tend to have scanner jammers and disruptors built into the fabric of the building so that no one can bypass their security. When I want a truly private conversation, this is where I come. And it’s close to my office.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’

  Nothing to do with the current exhibition then, I realized.

  ‘I’m surprised to see you alone. Don’t you have minders?’ I couldn’t quite believe that Tobey wandered the streets and went where he liked without bodyguards and security up to his armpits. God knows, there’d been enough threats against his life from the headbangers who believed that being Prime Minister and a Nought should be mutually exclusive. There were even some Nought nutjobs who considered Tobey a traitor for engaging in what they considered ‘Cross politics’.

  ‘They’re here, don’t worry.’ Tobey gave a faint smile.

  Ah! I should’ve known. There had to be upwards of fifty people in the gallery, but Tobey didn’t seem at all concerned. That meant his security detail had to be top-drawer. So good in fact that, as I looked around the room, I had to work at guessing who they might be – there had to be more than one. A Cross woman with braided hair and glasses studiously examined the painting to my right. I’d put money on her being one of Tobey’s bodyguards – or close-protection officers, as they preferred to be known. I continued to look around. A suited Nought man by one of the middle installations kept throwing careless glances in our direction. He wore wireless earbuds like he was listening to music, but I knew better. He was definitely another of Tobey’s close-protection officers. I had a nose for them, like I had a nose for undercover cops, guilty clients and bullshit.

  And that nose didn’t lie or steer me wrong.

  Tobey and I were getting some curious glances – Tobey more than me. He was instantly recognizable. Famous and powerful – a killer combination. In the years since school, any doors that hadn’t opened for him automatically, Tobey had kicked in. Hard. A couple of people, when they recognized him, immediately tried to make their way over, but they were diverted by a tall, beefy Cross wearing a suit, sunglasses – indoors! – and earbuds. The sunglasses indoors were a dead giveaway.

  ‘So why did you want to see me after all this time?’ I asked. ‘Shouldn’t you be off somewhere being interviewed to within a millimetre of your sanity?’

  ‘I should but I need you, Callie. Look, I’d love to play catch-up and then honey-coat this, but I don’t have the time.’ Tobey sighed. He took a deep breath, looking into my eyes. ‘The thing is … I … Well, I need your help.’

  I bit the inside of my cheek to suppress a grin. ‘Wow. Those are obviously some rusty words.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘You’re not used to asking for help, are you?’ I teased.

  Tobey’s smile faded as quickly as it had arrived. ‘You’re right, but I really do need you. The thing is – within the next week to ten days, I’m going to be arrested for murder and I require a good lawyer. The best. And that’s you.’

  What?

  Well, damn! Whatever I’d been expecting, that wasn’t it.

  I stared. ‘Who are you supposed to have killed?’

  Tobey didn’t flinch, didn’t look away. He didn’t even blink. ‘Daniel Jeavons.’

  My eyes were starting to hurt from staring so hard. A super-surreal conversation in an unconventional setting. Come to think of it, there was no better place for this revelation.

  ‘Dan? Dan is dead?’

  Tobey nodded.

  Daniel Jeavons, ‘ex’ criminal and shady AF kingmaker, was dead. Stunned, I tried to process what I’d just heard.

  Dan was dead.

  ‘Did you do it?’ I asked, the words falling out of nowhere.

  The art gallery, the capital, the country, the whole world fell away until there was just Tobey and me watching each other – and the question pushing, pulsing, between us.

  NOW

  * * *

  two. Troy

  * * *

  OW! A cascade of pain volley-punches me awake. With a groan, I slowly open my eyes. Damn it! My wrists, my shins, knees, neck, even my backside ache. The jabs and stabs of pain overlap and keep coming. And my head … That hurts worst of all. My head is in a vice and, with each beat of my heart, the vice tightens – gripping, squeezing. I stare up at the ceiling, its sickly yellow-brown colour telling me nothing, before closing my eyes again.

  Where the hell am I?

  I remember walking back to school—

  ‘Troy! Wake up, damn it. Troy—’

  I try to sit up, only to groan again as the vice tightens its grip on my skull in response. The pain is now so acute I feel physically sick from it. I lie back again and, swallowing down the bile now filling my mouth, concentrate on my breathing. In. Out. Rinse. Repeat. Rolling in the direction of the voice, I try to focus on the person lying on the ground over a metre away.

  ‘Libby?’ I whisper, stunned.

  A juggernaut of memories slams into me. A dusty, dirty grey van … The doors at the back bursting open … Two men wearing animal masks – a rabbit and a tiger – jumping out … an arm round my throat … struggling for air … wrists cable-tied behind me, the plastic biting into my skin … a filthy cloth pushed into my mouth, a canvas bag pulled over my face … being dragged backwards and thrown into the rear of the van … my head hitting something hard. Pain ricocheting around my skull as the van pulls away at speed.

  I stare at Libby as more jarring memories crash through my mind. I relive them all.

  Being dragged out of the van by my feet, the canvas bag pulled further down my face so I can’t see where we are. I try to run, though I can barely make out shapes through the bag over my face. A crippling punch to the side of my head comes like an explosion inside my skull. I drop to my knees. Flashing lights strobe before my eyes. While I’m dazed and doubled over, my phone is removed from my trouser pocket, my smart watch from my wrist. I’m half hauled, half carried into this place – wherever and whatever this place might be. Though my face is still covered, I know I’m being taken inside some kind of building. Sounds echo differently. The very air around me morphs into something stale and rank. I buck and kick and twist like a snake shedding its skin, but the two men carrying me never loosen their grip.

  Moments later, I’m dragged down a couple of steps. The canvas bag is pulled off me, then there’s a brief feeling of weightlessness as I’m pushed and fall the rest of the way down the stairs. The crack of my knees as I hit the hard floor sends a flare of white-hot agony shooting through my body. There’s a sharper crack as I pitch forward and my head hits the floor.

  Then … nothing.

  Until now. Here I am, hurting and with many more questions than answers. All I know for certain is that Libby and I are in the same place. And where’s that? A world of trouble I didn’t volunteer to visit. I force myself to try sitting up again. Every muscle braced and clenched, I push myself upright.

  ‘Libby, what – and I sincerely mean this – the actual bollocks is going on?’

  ‘We’ve been snatched off the street and brought here. Now you know as much as me,’ Libby replies. ‘Hang on. Let me try to get you free, then you can do the same for me.’

  For the first time, I notice that Libby’s wrists are bound with a cable tie in front of her. I try to stand, but my head immediately starts to swim again. All I can do for the next few moments is kneel as if in prayer and wait for the pounding in my head to lessen. She shuffles over to kneel behind me. Though he
r wrists are bound, I feel her hands moving over the ties around my wrists. I’m so glad to see her, hear her, feel her fingers against my skin. I’m not alone.

  ‘Are you OK? Did you … did you faint or something in the van?’ I ask, recalling how still she was in the van after we were abducted.

  ‘No. A cloth smelling of something sweet was put over my mouth and nose,’ says Libby. ‘That’s all I remember until I woke down here. Now the skin round my mouth and nostrils is burning.’

  ‘They drugged you?’

  ‘Must’ve done.’

  ‘Why you and not me?’ I ask.

  ‘No idea. Ask me another,’ says Libby.

  ‘Ow! I don’t know what you’re doing back there, but you’re making things worse,’ I tell her as the cable ties tighten.

  ‘Patience.’

  I’m about to yell at her for trying to slice my hands clean off my arms when suddenly I’m free.

  ‘My turn,’ Libby says.

  Vigorously rubbing my wrists, I turn towards her and start pulling at the tie around her wrists.

  ‘Not like that, you idiot,’ she says. ‘You have to stick your fingernail in the recessed bit and push it down, then you can slide the tie out. Don’t you know anything?’

  Glad to hear her? I’m beginning to rethink that one. I frown, my fingers still on her wrists. Shaka on a unicycle! Even when I’m doing her a favour, she still manages to make it sound like the other way round.

  ‘I’m doing my best.’

  Libby sniffs. ‘Do better. You’re hurting me.’

  Breathe, Troy …

  If it wasn’t for the fact that I might need her help to get out of this room, I would’ve happily left her wrists tied. Would it kill her to be a little more pleasant? After a lot of prodding, poking and pulling, I finally manage to loosen the cable tie enough for Libby to slip her hands out. The look she casts at me as she rubs her wrists tells me she is less than impressed with my efforts. What does she want? My fingers aren’t as slender as hers and besides, when fastened, these bastard cable ties are designed to stay that way.

  Now that Libby is free, I take a proper look around. We’re in a dark, dank, dingy room filled with crates and boxes. And it stinks of things dead or slowly dying. A single light bulb hangs from a frayed wire on one side of the room, close to a wooden staircase that’s seen better days. The bulb’s sickly yellow light barely makes it to the nearest walls, casting the rest of the room in lurking shadows and creeping darkness. A windowless, confined space. A walk-in coffin with a light bulb. Not good. I swallow hard.

  ‘Where exactly are we?’ I ask again, failing to disguise the tremor in my voice.

  ‘I don’t know,’ says Libby. ‘How long were we in the van?’

  ‘About thirty minutes, maybe more, maybe less,’ I reply.

  ‘Well, as an answer, that’s worse than useless.’

  Thanks, Libby, but I already knew that. I didn’t exactly have a chance to set the timer on my phone.

  The pain in my head slowly begins to subside – thank God. I head up the rickety wooden stairs.

  ‘I wouldn’t bother,’ Libby calls after me. ‘Whoever kidnapped us locked and bolted the door when they left.’

  I try the door anyway, turning then rattling the door handle. I push against the door, then shoulder it. It doesn’t budge. I kick it a couple of times. It barely moves. It sure as hell isn’t made of MDF or chipboard. The ache in my toes and my bruised shoulder informs me that it’s solid wood, no messing about. I head back down the stairs.

  ‘Feel better for that?’ asks Libby.

  Ignoring her snide comment, I concentrate on using another sense. There are no ambient sounds – no cars, no voices, no plane noises. Nothing.

  ‘You still got your phone?’ I ask Libby. ‘They took mine.’

  She shakes her head. ‘They took mine too.’

  ‘So we’re locked down here with no phones and no means of escape?’

  ‘That’s about the size of it,’ Libby confirms.

  No phone? I’m never without my phone. I even sleep with it under my pillow. Damn it! Why didn’t they just take one of my arms and have done with it?

  ‘Did you see or hear anything useful when they brought us in here?’ I ask. ‘Anything at all?’

  Again Libby shakes her head. ‘I mean … I thought I heard … seagulls of all things. But I can’t be sure.’

  Seagulls? Surely we hadn’t driven anywhere near long enough to have made it to the nearest coast? Thirty to forty minutes was, however, plenty of time to get us somewhere near the capital’s river. And the fact that I couldn’t hear any traffic or people noises must mean we’ve been brought to one of the many areas of the capital that are derelict and deserted, earmarked for renovation that’s been a long time coming. If we’re banged up in one of those districts, we’ll be skeletal remains before we’re ever found. My heart bounces, super-ball-style. I’ve been concentrating on anything and everything except the reality of our situation. That’s not working any more. Our predicament begins to well and truly sink in. This isn’t a prank. Or a dream. It’s as real as my last breath, as true as my next one.

  ‘This has to be the basement of a house.’ Libby says what I’m thinking.

  I nod. ‘But whose house? Have you had the chance to check out down here yet? Maybe there’s a window or another door—’

  ‘Yeah, of course I did,’ she exclaims. ‘The moment they threw me down here, I sprang up with my hands still tied and sprinted around the room twice, whistling the national anthem. Give me a minute to catch my breath and then I’ll punch right through a wall and fly us out of here.’

  Sarky trout. ‘For Shaka’s sake! A simple no would’ve done, Liberty.’

  ‘Don’t ask stupid-ass questions then.’

  We scowl at each other. I have to bite my lip – literally – to stop myself taking her head off. Then it hits me. She’s as scared as I am. That’s why she’s being so vicious. But she’s always vicious. She must be scared all the time.

  Let it go, Troy. You’ve got more pressing things to worry about.

  Time to put some space between me and the poison mushroom – as Libby is affectionately known at school by all those who’ve been lucky enough to meet her. Finding a way out of this place is the top priority.

  I don’t do well in confined spaces.

  I head away from the stairs towards the darker recesses of this dank basement. Libby follows. More boxes. More debris. Where I can actually get to the walls, there’s just icy-cold, rough brickwork scratching at my fingers – and nothing else. At one point, something skitters past my foot. I only just manage not to squeal. I can imagine how that’d play with Libby. She’d never let me hear the end of it. We edge around as best we can, feeling our way where the light doesn’t quite reach and shadows like snatching fingers claw at us.

  As I feel my way along walls that are shrouded in gloom, I ask, ‘Libby, did you notice anything about the scumbags who grabbed us?’

  Behind me, Libby sighs. ‘I caught a glimpse of the driver when I was thrown over the shoulder of crapstick number one.’

  She pushes past me to feel her way along the crates against the wall. Obviously I wasn’t moving fast enough. I scowl at the back of her head, but she’s oblivious. Naturally. When Libby looks at me, she sees a Cross and then she stops looking. She doesn’t see anything else; she doesn’t want to see anything else because, as far as Libby is concerned, there’s nothing more to see. Remembering how she used to be when we initially met during our first year at Heathcroft High makes me shake my head. The difference between Libby then and Libby now is startling and wider than the Grand Canyon.

  I resume my search, examining each crate we pass. Some have lids; most don’t. Every single one is empty. As I feel along the walls, I’m checking for draughts that might indicate another door or painted-over window. Occasionally, I tap the walls, listening out for a hollow sound that could mean there’s a forgotten room beyond. The solid cold of the rough
brick is a constant beneath my fingers.

  ‘Did you see the driver’s face?’ I ask.

  In front of me, Libby nods. ‘He was skinny and wearing a black leather jacket and a fox mask covering his whole head. The one who carried me in here was taller and broader and wearing enough aftershave to choke a horse.’

  At once I remember the aftershave. It was so strong it caught in the back of my throat. But that doesn’t move us any further forward.

  ‘How can someone drive along the city streets wearing a fox mask and not get pulled over or at least noticed?’ I frown.

  Libby shrugs. ‘Maybe he put it back on once the van had stopped?’

  Which I have to admit sounds more reasonable. Time to stop skirting round the issue.

  ‘Why are we here? D’you know?’ I ask. ‘What do they want with us?’

  Libby turns to me, shaking her head. Even in this half-light, I can see her blue eyes shimmering with unshed tears. She turns away, embarrassed.

  ‘None of them said anything?’ I ask.

  ‘A lot of cussing from the one who carried me down here. That’s it.’

  A couple of minutes later, we’ve explored the entire basement. No windows. No doors. No cupboards. No hidden alcoves. The boxes and crates are all empty, and the bucket and two rolls of toilet paper in one corner of the room shout that we’re not about to be released any time soon.

  We are in a world of trouble.

  I regard Libby, refusing to believe that our situation is as hopeless as it appears. Tears are spiking her lower lashes now. Her lips are quivering. She’s that close to breaking down completely. Oh hell, no!

  ‘You’re not going to start blubbing, are you? That’ll make your cheeks wet, but how will it help our situation?’

  Libby shakes her head, her expression dripping annoyance. OK, so that worked!

  ‘I would get stuck with you, of all people. You’re not exactly one of those guys, are you?’

  I frown. ‘What guys?’

  ‘Those guys who can take a box, a paper clip and some chewing gum and build a tank to get us out of here.’ Libby looks me up and down, unimpressed.