Sanctus

Chapter 95

From where Kutlar stood he could see the whole of the embankment curling around the base of the mountain to a row of stone buildings in the distance promising all kinds of spa treatments to heal and revive.

‘She’s not here,’ he said.

Cornelius let go of the gun in his pocket. Kutlar was stalling, he was sure of it. He opened the notebook and looked at the wire-frame map of the embankment. The two arrows almost overlapped at the centre, pointing directly to where they now stood. ‘She is here,’ he said, removing his phone from his pocket and quickly copying in Liv’s number from the search box.

He stepped forward and pressed the call button, dropping the phone down so he could listen for the sound of a phone ringing. He walked closer to the shrine, filtering out the murmur of the crowd, and heard something in front of him.

He cocked his head to one side and his eyes caught a tiny movement as the sound came again. It was down on the ground, in amongst the flowers, buzzing like a large trapped bee. Cornelius squatted down and shoved his hand into the soft petals. His hand closed around the hard plastic case of a phone. It vibrated once more as he pulled it out, leaving a crater in the surface of the flowers. From his own phone he heard a robotic voice asking him to leave a message. He cut the call and scrolled through the menu of Liv’s phone, checking the call logs, the address book, the text messages. They were all empty.

Someone had reset the phone and abandoned it.

Miriam watched the bearded man walk quickly away from the shrine. She saw him stop by the far wall, talk to another man, and look down at something that appeared to be a small laptop. Gabriel was right. They had been tracking the girl’s phone signal.

She reached into her pocket and pulled out her own phone. She headed off, towards the row of health spas and away from the men with the laptop. She switched her phone off, thought about dropping it into one of the bins that lined the moat wall, but slipped it back into her pocket and decided to leave town for a few days instead. She could always get rid of it later — depending on how things panned out. At least the girl was safe now. That was the main thing.

The motorbike rumbled down the narrow cobbled streets weaving between the tourists and the food stalls. Liv wore no helmet and the wind whipped her hair across her face as she clung to Gabriel. She could feel the hardness of his body beneath his clothes, and her legs clamped involuntarily against him each time the bike bucked and slipped on the uneven street. The scent she had noticed so powerfully when they’d met less than twenty-four hours previously now wrapped itself round her again, washing over her in a slipstream of warm afternoon air. She realized now, as her head hovered level with his broad shoulders, and she resisted the urge to rest it there, that it wasn’t cologne as she had first thought, it was the smell of him, and it was delicious.

She had no idea where they were headed, nor how she could contact anyone now she had no phone, nor anything about the man she now clung to. Nevertheless she felt strangely secure for the first time in days. There was something about his urgency that had compelled her to go with him. He made her feel as if everything he was asking her to do was for her, not for him. Like her safety was his only concern. And he belonged to the Mala. And if what she’d just discovered with the Ruinologist was true, the least she could do was take a leap of faith and go in the direction her brother had pointed her.

Besides, she thought as the bike passed through the western gate and filtered into the traffic creeping round the inner ring road and heading out of the city, what else would I do?