I DIDN’T KNOW I had fallen asleep until the sound came, a wailing, blaring siren that rang in my skull. I shot up and shoved the laptop and phone aside, almost stumbled over the pig on the ground next to Zac’s empty mattress. Kash’s bare feet thudded on the polished boards of the living room as he rushed out from the front of the house in only boxer shorts, struggling with his glasses. Lights flickered on.
‘What is it?’
‘A car horn.’ He was actioning his pistol.
‘Where’s Zac?’
‘What’s happening?’ Snale ran out of the bedroom in pink pyjamas covered in smiling, dancing pigs.
I sprinted through the house and out the front door, my partners in tow.
Zac was sitting in the driver’s seat of Snale’s four-wheel drive, leaning on the horn, flashing the high beams. His huge eyes followed me, front teeth locked together.
‘What is it?’ I called. ‘What? What?’
I reached for the driver’s side door beside him but he screamed before I could pull the handle.
‘Don’t!’ he cried through the glass, hands flat, palms out, surrendered. ‘Don’t touch anything! Look! Look!’
He grabbed a sheet of paper from where it had been stuck with tape to the steering wheel. He pressed the paper against the glass.
The words were handwritten. They read ‘DON’T GET OUT.’
Chapter 62
THEY SAT IN Whitt’s car on the edge of Parramatta Road, the hammering of rain on the roof the only sound they could hear. Though the engine was off, Tox’s hard hands gripped the steering wheel. His head was bent forwards and his jaw set, his eyes focused on the patterns the rain made on the windscreen. Whitt watched him. He could hardly see the man breathing. His own heart hadn’t stopped pounding since they’d stood in the little park inside the university. With the camera in his hands, the sound off, he sat watching the green sedan emerge from the car park driveway at the edge of the footage. There was only a shadow behind the wheel. A pair of white hands pulling the steering wheel sideways calmly, turning the vehicle left towards the science district.
‘It could be nothing,’ Whitt warned. ‘When the lab traces the phone’s serial number they might find it just belongs to some other student. Someone who dumped it there on purpose or dropped it as they were getting out of their car.’
‘ It’s Caitlyn McBeal’s phone,’ Tox insisted. ‘It’s broken because she broke it in the struggle as she was being abducted.’
Whitt sighed.
‘The green sedan,’ he continued. ‘It might just be a student leaving for the day.’
‘It’s the killer,’ Tox said. ‘Leaving with Caitlyn McBeal.’
A search on the green sedan’s registration had found it was stolen. Whitt told himself that didn’t mean anything. Students could drive stolen cars. Buy them, sell them, steal them, trade them – students and old cars had a chequered relationship. It could just have been a coincidence that the sedan was leaving the lot mere moments after Caitlyn was allegedly abducted. As much as he tried to tell himself they were probably onto nothing, Whitt couldn’t help but feel a flutter inside him that maybe that was wrong. When Tox’s phone chimed, the two men grabbed for it at the same time.
‘They’ve got the car,’ Whitt said, motioning for his partner to start the engine. ‘It’s outside the old Pinkerton Hotel. Let’s go.’
Chapter 63
CAITLYN HEARD HIS footsteps near her. Shuffling, despondent, probably relieved that she had finally expired quietly and without mess. He’d won. His game hadn’t been a fast, violent, painful end for her but a drawn-out one, one in which she would have had to actually give up, cell by biological cell, and let death take her. Now he had her remains to leave here or dispose of as he pleased.
His foot against her shoulder, shoving experimentally, once, and then again. She was limp. It wasn’t hard to relax her limbs completely. Just to stay awake was an effort, had been for weeks. She let the darkness take her, little by little.
She heard him groan as he crouched.
Yes, Caitlyn thought. A little closer now.
Hidden between her chest and the ground, Caitlyn clutched the chunky hexagonal fixture at the end of the long, thin steel rod she had extracted from one of the old beer kegs. The weapon was blunt, rusty, but it was all she had. She balled her fist around the handle as she felt his breath on the back of her neck.
Chapter 64
‘OH MY GOD,’ I stammered, reading the note in Zac’s hand. He pointed desperately to the back seat. I stepped sideways and looked in. There were three huge propane gas bottles sitting like round white passengers strapped into the seatbelts. I put my hands on the glass and Zac put his on the other side, staring into my eyes, terror making his whole body shake.
‘I didn’t see the note until I got into the car!’ he screamed. ‘I didn’t see the gas bottles!’
‘I know,’ I shouted. ‘I know. It’s OK. It’s OK.’
I looked to my partners. Snale was standing well back, her hands over her mouth. Kash was circling the car, looking in the windows. He dropped to the ground in front of the engine and examined the underside of the car. Both were panting like me, the adrenaline rushing so fast through my veins I could hardly think. My mind split into fragments, thoughts racing in different directions. Three or four times the ludicrous impulse jabbed at me to just open the door and pull the kid out.
‘ Don’t panic!’ I called, unable to keep the fear out of my own voice. My mind was begging me now to get away from the car. There was no telling when it would explode, what might cause it to go off. I stopped touching the windows. ‘Just. Just, uh. Oh God! Just don’t panic!’
I looked at Kash, and the expression on his face didn’t settle me. The back of his hand was against his mouth like he might be sick. He came to the driver’s window, his steps shaky, uneven.
‘What happened when you got in?’ he shouted.
‘I heard a click when I sat down,’ Zac called, his voice muffled by the glass. ‘Like a, like a, a sound like things snapping into place!’
‘Can you hear anything now? Like a ticking or a whirring? Anything?’
‘I don’t know! I’m scared! Don’t leave me here! Please!’
The boy burst into tears. On the front passenger seat beside him I could see the black plastic and duct-taped package. He’d tried to sneak out with the gold. Tried to take off, into the glorious sunrise, a ridiculous bid for a new life that could cost him his current one.
I backed up a couple of steps with Kash, my hands gripping my hair.
‘What is it?’
‘It could be a number of things.’ He licked his sweaty upper lip. ‘We know from the bomb on the hillside that the killer’s new at this. So I’m leaning away from complex chemical-reaction devices. It’s probably a circuit-breaker. Mercury tilt-switch, maybe.’
‘What? What the fuck? How do we disarm it?’
‘ I need to know more about it,’ he said. The big man before me was trembling gently all over, but his face was hard with focus. ‘It might be connected to the seat. It might be connected to the doors.’
‘How much time do we have?’
‘There’s no telling. We need to find out if there’s a timer and what kind.’
‘You figure that out,’ I said. ‘I’m going to do a quick lap around the immediate area. This is a spectacle. There’s no way the killer would miss this.’
I dashed towards the house, wincing as I heard Zac call out after me.
‘Don’t leave me!’ he screamed. ‘I don’t want to die!’
Chapter 65