Blood Ransom Read online

  I waited for Milo to pretend he needed something from the boot and come back to the car. Apparently the boot operated independently from the car’s central locking system and the plan was that once Milo had opened it, he would only pretend to shut it properly, so I could sneak in.

  The two men had almost reached the toilets before Milo turned in his chair and whizzed back to the car, his wheels spinning fast. He opened the boot and fumbled inside for a bit.

  ‘Make sure you lock it!’ Paul yelled from across the car park.

  Milo nodded, then carefully lowered the boot and whizzed back to Paul. They disappeared inside the toilets.

  Palms clammy with sweat, I rushed over to the car. The boot was open just a fraction. I looked round. The car park was virtually empty, just a young woman with a baby, emptying her shopping into her car. I waited, heart thumping, while she strapped in the baby and drove off. Now an elderly couple were strolling past, heading for their car.

  I glanced over at the toilets. No sign of Milo and Paul. I had no idea how much time I’d have before they came back. I looked round. The elderly couple had reached their car. It was a couple of rows away so all I could see now were the tops of their heads. They both appeared to be bent over, looking at something inside the car.

  This was my best chance. With a quick glance around to check the coast was clear, I flipped the boot fully open and clambered inside. It was spacious enough, though it smelled slightly musty. I reached my hand round and pulled the boot lid down hard, jerking my hand away just before it slammed shut.

  It was done. I was trapped inside, my knees bunched up to my chest. My own breathing sounded loud in my ears. Suppose something went wrong – the car crashed or Milo forgot to let me out? I’d suffocate in here. How much air did I have, anyway?

  I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself. Milo had assured me that Elijah’s motorboat was tied up at a deserted beach just beyond the docks and that the journey would only take about ten minutes. I wasn’t going to run out of air that fast.

  I didn’t want to think about Theo, and how I’d missed messaging with him earlier, so I focused on Lewis instead. Lewis was a former employee of Elijah’s. He’d been sent to look after me, but had ended up working with me to defeat Elijah. I missed him a lot. I mean, he was a good few years older than me and from a completely different background, but we’d got on really well from the start. I thought of him like an older brother. A very cool older brother. Lewis had shown me quite a few fighting moves – in fact it was him who’d sparked off my interest in self-defence – but he’d also taught me a lot about dealing with my fears.

  When you feel anxious, press your feet into the ground and breathe in and out through the soles.

  I couldn’t use the ground, of course, but I pressed my feet against the side of the car and took a few calming breaths.

  A minute later footsteps and the squeak of wheels signalled the return of Milo and Paul. I held my breath as two doors opened and – eventually – slammed shut. I knew, because Milo had told me, that the front passenger seat of this car had been adapted to contain the seat part of Milo’s wheelchair and that, nine times out of ten, for short journeys Paul just folded the wheels and chucked them onto the back seat.

  I just had time to pray that he didn’t change his routine today and put them in the boot before another door opened and shut and the engine roared into life.

  Paul reversed out of his parking space and we were off. It was hot, now, in the boot. I couldn’t tell if Paul and Milo were talking or not. All I could hear was the car engine’s low rumble and the whoosh of passing traffic.

  Ten minutes later, the car stopped. I tensed, knowing that the next part of the plan was going to be the hardest to carry out successfully.

  A thud outside. Paul muttering to himself. Then the crunch of wheels on gravel. Milo’s voice sounded outside the boot.

  ‘I need the can again, Paul.’

  ‘What?’ Paul’s gruff American voice oozed irritation. ‘You only went a moment ago.’

  ‘Sorry, man.’ Milo clicked the boot open and lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘Rachel, you’ve got about two minutes.’

  He wheeled himself off, whistling above the sound of the crushed gravel. I made myself count to twenty. That had to be enough time for the two men to get out of the way. Cautiously, I opened the boot and peered out.

  Wind roared round me and the smell of rain – and the sea – hung heavy in the air. To one side of the car, about fifty metres away, was a line of trees. Milo, supported by Paul, was almost out of his wheelchair. He was going to have to pee in front of the man. Ugh.

  I slipped out of the boot, ignoring the pins and needles that ran up my cramped right leg and taking care to disrupt the gravel at my feet as little as possible. The car was parked just metres from a small jetty that led down to a stony beach. There was no one else about.

  I peered along the beach. A large motorboat was tied up at the end of the jetty.

  Another glance at Milo and Paul. I could hear their voices, though not what they were saying, drifting towards me on the fierce wind. I lowered the car boot until it was almost shut and tiptoed across the gravel. As soon as I reached the jetty and felt the firm wooden boards beneath my feet I sped up. I ran as fast as I could, grateful that I was wearing trainers with rubber soles that made no sound.

  As I reached the boat, I glanced round at Paul again. He was easing Milo back into his wheelchair. I had seconds left to get into the boat and hide.

  I stepped down, into the back of the boat, and looked round for the red tarpaulin Milo had told me about. There. It was on the right-hand side of the boat, stretched over a collection of boxes and barrels. I raced over and crawled underneath, pushing a box out of the way, then pulling it back in front of me when I was properly in. It made a scraping noise, which sounded loud to my ears. I had to hope the sound wouldn’t carry over the roaring wind.

  I stretched out as far as I could. I was having to lie curled up again, with my right leg bent at an uncomfortable angle. Well, at least it was better than lying in the boot of that car.

  In the distance I could hear the crunch of wheels and footsteps over the gravel – then thundering across the jetty.

  Grunting, Paul leaped into the boat. I guessed he was lifting Milo down, then stowing the wheelchair. I held my breath as he stomped past my hiding place. The wind crept around me, chilling me through my top. I couldn’t even move my arms to draw the hood around my face.

  For a second I thought about crawling out from behind the boxes and jumping overboard. I didn’t have to do this. In fact, surely what I was doing was insane, going right to the heart of Elijah’s new operation.

  And then I remembered Daniel’s little face and huge brown eyes and how I’d held him and comforted him when he’d cried.

  And I knew that I didn’t have a choice.

  I was Daniel’s only chance.

  10

  Theo

  Where on earth was she? I’d gone back online several times and there was no sign of Rachel in any of the chat rooms we used. I threw all caution to the wind and started asking other users if anyone with any of Rachel’s usernames had been online recently.

  Every response was a ‘no’.

  By one p.m. the lunchtime crowd were starting to drift in and the diner was filling up. Several clients wanted access to the computer, and Cheri’s boss turned up so I wasn’t allowed to use the terminal any longer.

  I went home, feeling seriously troubled. Having gone over all the options again, there seemed to be only one possibility.

  Something had happened to Rachel.

  Something bad.

  I walked in the front door of our condo just after 1.30 p.m. It was a Saturday, so Mum was at home. Her new job involved her working from home quite a lot and her boss often came round ‘to help’. He was in our living room right now, on the couch next to Mum. They were looking at a magazine together, but there was an odd atmosphere about them too – lik
e maybe I’d walked in and interrupted them and the magazine was just a cover for what they’d actually been doing.

  I really didn’t want to think about that, so I just grunted a hello and went to my room. It’s not bad, as bedrooms go. In fact, our condo here in Philadelphia is much nicer than the flat we had in London. My room’s twice the size of my old one, with a huge, light window and loads of space to hang out in. The bed’s big and so’s the couch – not that I have friends round here very often.

  I hurried over to the desk in the corner and opened my laptop. Another bonus of our new life was the money we’d been given to start us off. Mum used most of it to buy furniture and stuff, but there had been enough left to get me an okay phone and a laptop.

  Normally I wouldn’t have dreamed of trying to contact Rachel from home. I was fully aware of how easy it is to trace computer use back to physical locations – and of how dangerous Elijah and RAGE really were.

  But this was an emergency.

  First off, I went back to all the chat rooms. There was still no sign of Rachel.

  Okay, I was going to have to track her down some other way. I thought for a while, trying to remember everything Rachel had said about where she lived. We deliberately hadn’t revealed any details online but I’d picked up enough bits of information to be pretty sure she was somewhere in Scotland, near the coast.

  She was always complaining about the rain too – not that that was going to help me narrow my search down much.

  I wasn’t sure what I hoped to find out, but I had to do something. I’d start with local newspapers, then move on to schools. Maybe something on a website somewhere would give me a clue about what had happened to Rachel.

  It wasn’t a lot, but it was all I could think of.

  11

  Rachel

  It felt like hours had passed, but when I switched on my phone and checked the time, it was only 7.30 p.m. and still very light.

  Milo and Paul had left the boat ages ago. I couldn’t tell where it was moored because I didn’t dare emerge from under the tarpaulin yet.

  Milo had said that though the docking area wasn’t visible from any of the buildings on the island, there was a security camera which did a regular sweep of the bay and that I should wait till he gave me the signal to emerge – which wouldn’t be until after it was properly dark.

  I reckoned I had another two to three hours to wait until then.

  At least I’d been able to shift the boxes and barrels a little so I could stretch my legs out fully. I flexed my feet and pointed my frozen toes, trying to get some feeling back into them. I tried to breathe steadily too, mindful of Lewis’s advice about keeping calm.

  I’d never wished he were with me more than I did now. I missed him almost as much as I missed Theo.

  I felt for the chain round my neck once more, feeling my way down to the tiny letter ‘t’ at the end and remembering the last time I’d seen them both – in that hotel in Washington D.C. . . . Lewis, hugging me goodbye with tears in his eyes . . . and Theo holding me and kissing me . . .

  It was tough remembering being that close to Theo.

  The floor of the boat was hard and cold and, even though I’d pulled my hood up and covered myself with a bit of spare tarp that I found crushed up behind one of the boxes, I was freezing. And hungry. I’d gone through the small bag I had with me and chewed my way through an entire pack of chewing gum.

  I couldn’t find my purse and school identity card, for some reason. I guessed I must have left them somewhere, probably the internet café. I knew I’d taken out my purse then, because I used it to pay for my time on the terminal. Or maybe the purse and the card had fallen out of my bag when I got into the car.

  At least Paul didn’t seem to have found it. If he had he would surely be searching the boat. Wouldn’t he?

  12

  Theo

  I searched online for hours, stopping only when Mum insisted I come into the kitchen to say goodbye to her boss and get some food. The guy tried to talk to me, asking me questions about the exams I’d just taken, but I made my excuses – and a sandwich – and got away as fast as I could.

  Even though I’d been starving, the sandwich tasted like dust in my mouth. I was certain now that something terrible had happened to Rachel. Even if there’d been some kind of delay, there was no way she wouldn’t have gone online as soon as she could and left some message for me. She would know, after everything we went through last year, that I would worry. Even if she never wanted to speak to me again, I was absolutely certain she wouldn’t want to put me through that.

  But I could find nothing from her. By five p.m., I was ready to hit something.

  And then I saw the news story. It was on a Scottish local news website and had obviously only been added to the site in the past hour or so.

  Roslinnon girl in suspected suicide

  Another teen suicide brings to five the number of teenagers who have taken their lives in the Renfrewshire area this year.

  The girl, 15, is not being named at present, but is believed to have left her purse and school ID card on a beach near Roslinnon this afternoon before apparently walking into the sea. An eyewitness called the emergency services immediately but no body has yet been found. Strong currents may mean it is not retrieved for days, perhaps weeks.

  The girl’s parents have requested that their daughter’s identity not be released until all friends and family members have been informed.

  My stomach gave a sick lurch as I read the piece. Was this Rachel? I couldn’t believe it, and yet something kept me searching for more versions of the story. Within an hour I’d found three. Though Rachel wasn’t named in any of them – and I wouldn’t have recognised her cover ID even if she had been – one of the stories did publish a blurry picture of her parents getting into a car. Even though the photo was small and grainy, it was enough.

  I’d met Mr and Mrs Smith last year when I was trying to find out information about Elijah. It was definitely them.

  I stared, blinking, at the picture, letting what it meant sink in.

  Rachel was dead.

  Rachel had killed herself.

  No. Every cell in my body revolted at the idea of it. It was unthinkable. Impossible.

  I switched off my computer and paced up and down in my room. Outside, the sun was still bright and children’s voices rose up from the playground nearby, laughing and arguing.

  Somehow my world had exploded and yet everything else was still exactly the same. Rachel was gone.

  Except she couldn’t be. I knew her. And, sure, she was annoyed at her Mum and fed up with the dull, rainy town where she lived, but there was no way she would ever contemplate killing herself.

  Even as I thought this, a tiny sliver of doubt curled itself around my brain.

  How do you know what she really thought or felt?

  How do you know what she was going through?

  How do you know that she told you the truth about anything?

  I sank onto my bed, my head in my hands.

  No. I wouldn’t accept it. Apart from anything else, Rachel would never have gone away deliberately without saying goodbye to me.

  I stood up. This was something to do with RAGE or Elijah. It had to be. There was no body . . . no proof at all that Rachel was dead, other than her things being found on the shore and this eyewitness, whoever they were, telling the police what they’d seen. Anyone could have faked such a suicide.

  Yes, if somebody wanted Rachel dead, why not just kill her outright? More than ever, I was sure Rachel was alive, but in some kind of danger.

  I paced the room, trying to formulate a plan.

  I was going to have to get to Scotland without the US authorities knowing, which meant I needed a fresh passport and money for a plane ticket.

  But how the hell was I going to get hold of either?

  13

  Rachel

  I’d never been so cold in my life. It was only the thought of poor little Daniel – and w
hat Elijah would do to him if we couldn’t save him – that kept me going.

  Outside, the tiny patch of sky I could see was dark grey. Rain pattered on my tarpaulin.

  Come on, Milo, I kept muttering under my breath. Come on.

  I checked my phone again. There was no signal and the battery was nearly out but I couldn’t bear to turn it off. Out here – in what felt like the middle of a wilderness – it seemed like the only thing left connecting me to the outside world. I knew Lewis, in that kindly big-brotherly way of his, would have told me not to be so silly and to conserve its power for when I did have a signal, but I couldn’t help it.

  The minutes crawled by.

  Where the hell was Milo? Had something gone wrong? I was half tempted to go outside and attempt the break-in alone – but I didn’t know the layout of the island or where Daniel was. It would have been crazy.

  I closed my eyes, exhausted, and let an image of Theo swim in front of me . . . his smile crinkling his face . . . I wondered if he was out with his friends right now, if he was thinking about me.

  Then I wondered whether Mum and Dad were worrying. Hopefully they’d assumed I was out with friends and had forgotten to charge my phone.

  A soft shower of earth, heavier than the rain, fell on to my cover.

  I jumped, my heart pounding.

  Was that Milo?

  I crawled out from under the tarpaulin and peered over the side of the boat. It was moored to a short jetty above a sandy beach. I couldn’t see far in any direction – the coastline curved sharply round on both sides, with trees blocking the view and the island ahead rising up towards a hill.

  At the end of the jetty was a wooden shelter. Milo was in his wheelchair, huddled underneath.

  ‘Over here!’ His voice was a soft hiss, almost lost in the wind and rain. ‘Hurry!’ He pointed to a camera positioned above him. Its lens was swivelling slowly in my direction.