Nightrise

SILENT CREEK.

Jamie saw it and began to back out from inside the man’s head. He couldn’t stay here any longer, surrounded by so much poison and pain. He felt himself pulling away, as if flying up through a great tunnel. More images swept past, but so fast that he couldn’t see them.

And then he was back where he had started, in the office, with Banes staring at him, open-mouthed, from behind the desk.

For a few moments, neither of them moved. Jamie couldn’t have if he’d wanted to. He was exhausted. He felt drained. Then Banes smiled. “Jamie,” he muttered.

Jamie could only watch as Banes reached into his desk and took out a gun. It was the dart gun that he had used on Scott. The man seemed to know that Jamie was helpless, that he had nowhere to go. His movements were careful and unhurried. He didn’t even stand up. He took careful aim.

And then the outer door crashed open and the security man blundered in.

“Excuse me, sir…” he said, and stopped dead in his tracks. He had come through the outer office only to find a Nightrise executive pointing a gun at a child.

Jamie saw the look on his face and realized that, although he might work here, the security man had no idea what went on behind the closed doors of the different suites. What would he do now? Jamie decided not to find out. He reached behind him and grabbed hold of the man, pulling him forward between Banes and himself. It was at that exact moment that Banes pulled the trigger. The dart flew its short distance and buried itself in the man’s arm. The security man shouted out in pain and alarm. Jamie let go of him and ran out. He heard a second dart slam into the door frame as he ran through. Then he was back out in the corridor, running as fast as he could.

He already knew that he couldn’t take the lifts. Even if one happened to be waiting for him with the doors open, they would deactivate it before it reached the ground floor. But he was heading in the opposite direction. The fire escape. Forty-nine storeys led to the street but he only had to get below the forty-fifth and he would be out of Nightrise: he would be safe.

One of the managers tried to stop him. Jamie saw a man in a suit standing in the corridor, his arms apart as if he wanted an embrace. Jamie lashed out, punching the man full in the stomach, then leapt past him as he crumpled, gasping, onto the floor. The fire exit was ahead. Suddenly there were people everywhere but none of them were moving, hoping someone else would take the responsibility. In the corridor behind him, he heard Banes shouting orders. Jamie hit the fire exit and plunged through.

And at exactly that moment, every alarm in the building went off. The air exploded in a chaos of howling sirens and bells. Jamie wondered if the door was wired up and he had triggered the alarm himself. But that wasn’t possible. He had already opened it once. It was Alicia. It had to be. She must have dialled 911 the moment after she made the call to Mr Banes.

Jamie hurtled down the emergency stairs. Below him, he heard doors bang open. Nightrise shared the building with at least a dozen other businesses and they were all being evacuated. The stairway ahead of him was already crowded. Jamie pushed and twisted his way through the crowds but, even so, it took an age to reach street level. As he broke into the sunlight, firefighters and police officers were making their way in, looking for any sign of smoke. There were two or three hundred people out on the pavement. Already, word was beginning to spread that the whole thing had been a hoax.

Jamie hurried across the road. Alicia was waiting for him in the car.

“Did you get it?” she asked.

“Let’s go…” Jamie was breathless. His heart was pounding. And he felt dirty, with Banes’s memories still clinging to him. He wanted to get them out of his system. He needed to go far away.

They drove off, looping round the block and then heading back towards West Hollywood and the house. Alicia looked briefly at Jamie but said nothing. Perhaps she understood that he needed to be left alone.

Then her cell phone rang.

She looked at it for a moment. Nobody knew that she was in Los Angeles apart from her sister – and she was probably somewhere in the air. So who…? A number showed in the screen and, with a sense of dread, she recognized it. She had no choice. She answered the phone.

“You called me a few minutes ago,” Colton Banes said. “I believe I am speaking to Mrs Alicia McGuire.”

Alicia pulled over and stopped.

His own telephone system would have stored her number, of course. How had he got her name? It wouldn’t have been difficult. The Nightrise Corporation was a huge business. It would have its own resources.

“What do you want?” Alicia demanded.

Next to her, Jamie heard the voice and knew at once who she was speaking to. But he couldn’t make out the words.

“You have a son,” Banes replied.

Alicia stiffened. Pain flared in her eyes.

“We want Jamie Tyler. He’s nothing to you. You know that. If you ever want to see your son again, give him to us. It’s a very simple proposition, Mrs McGuire. You give us this boy, we’ll give you yours. But this is a once-only offer. If you refuse me, you’ll never see Daniel again.”

Alicia wasn’t breathing. Jamie knew that something terrible had happened. She was holding her phone as if she were trying to crush it. About ten seconds went past. At last she spoke.

“You go to hell, you bastard,” she whispered.

She ended the call. Then she turned off the phone. Finally, she threw it onto the back seat as if it had bitten her.

“What did he want?” Jamie asked.

“He offered to swap Danny for you,” Alicia said.

Jamie didn’t know what to say. He knew what she must be thinking. He didn’t have any need to read her mind.

But when she turned to him again, she was smiling even though her eyes were bleak. “He’s told me what I wanted to know,” she said. “Nightrise have got Danny. Before it was a suspicion. Now it’s a fact. And that means I know what to do.”

She slammed the car into gear and once again they drove off. Jamie looked back. The sun was still shining. The office of the Nightrise Corporation looked no different from any of the others that surrounded it as they joined the freeway, leaving it far behind.

Anthony Horowitz

Nightrise