Lucas opened his eyes. Was he in a forest of some kind? Tall shaded trees? He gradually worked out that he was staring at the shaded strands of carpet fibres. He stared along the fibre forest and saw the figure of James lying still. He tried to speak, but the mechanics of the body hadn’t quite kicked in yet. He had better luck crawling towards James. Pins and needles tingled in his arms but he reached James and gave a gentle shove.
There was a grunt.
He tried to speak again. “James . . . you . . . okay?”
Another grunt. James turned over and looked at Lucas, his eyes watery.
“What . . . happened?”
Lucas crawled and lifted himself up onto the couch. He looked around. The place had been ransacked. “You shouldn’t have called the lady, James.”
James, now on his knees. “What . . . lady?”
“You know who I’m talking about. They have the recording now”.
“I’m an idiot.”
“You are.”
“At least they didn’t kill us.”
Clarity of mind was returning. “No, that would’ve brought unwanted attention. Murder is a high priority crime; breaking and entering not so high. They would’ve been able to solve the crime quickly. Wherever you met the lady would’ve been monitored by cameras.”
“What do we do now?”
“Good question.” He didn’t want to tell James that he had a copy of the recordings sitting in the letter box—if it was still there. There was a lack of trust that needed to be resolved.
He picked up the remote control and looked in the battery apartment. Good. It was empty.
<°)))><
The black Mazda was parked out the front of an expensive-looking apartment block not far from where the snatch and grab occurred. They entered the appropriate code and the thick security door opened.
They handed Ava the devices—the main storage unit and a USB device.
“The first device was easy to locate, but the USB was a bit trickier. We found it in a well-thought-out hiding place. Most people hide things in the obvious place like under the mattress or floating in the toilet flusher but these people are good. They hid it in the battery compartment of a remote control.”
She was surprised such things still existed. Good to know apps hadn’t completely taken over the world. Ava always liked the professionalism of her ‘workers’, who knew there would be copies and went about locating them.
She watched the recording on a tablet device. Yes, incriminating. The USB device was easy to destroy; the other device would take a bit more work, but now there was no record of what took place in that barn. Just the memories inside the heads of the girl and the man with her. There were other files on the main storage device. It looked like it was used as a remote backup device, as it included many of Mrs Rose’s personal and work documents. They also became part of the destruction process.
There was concern as her men told her about another man with James. They showed her a photo of the man sprawled out on the carpet: Isabella’s companion. How he ended up in the unit, she had no idea. How did he survive the accident? But the girl was more important. Did she survive too? Ava scanned the news sites for any news of a serious car accident. Two police officers had lost their lives on a dangerous stretch of road outside Healesville. No names had been released. Had she mistaken Isabella for a police officer? If it wasn’t Isabella, where was she?
James had been so nervous. They’d covered a lot of trivia in their discussion—all good for giving him a false sense of a possible relationship. But she never asked him about the girl. She’d believed Isabella to be dead. But pockets of doubts were creeping in. He would know.
She needed to talk to the potato-sack man again.
She found some news on Isabella’s companion. Lucas Fell. He was a prison escapee who’d been taken into custody but had escaped again. He’d been actively involved in the previous use of the technology and the resulting disappearings and deaths, which was why he was in prison. He worked with the professor and the authorities believed the technology had been activated again to aid his escape. Ava was thankful that the media wasn’t giving it massive coverage or else everyone would flock to church again. Why had Lucas escaped? What was he up to? James might know. Just another piece of the jigsaw that she was closing in on.
Yes, she needed to talk to the potato-sack man again.
49 – We meet again
JAMES FELT SEEDY. They needed to eat, and he needed to go get some food. The small convenience store should suffice. He was struggling, and didn’t want to believe Ava was behind what happened, but who else could it have been?
He walked out of the block of units. The fresh air lifted his spirit. There was something in the letter box for their unit, but he didn’t have a key and besides it was other people’s business, not his.
The buzzer went off as he entered the store and he saw the same shop assistant, still leaning on the counter. He gave James a nod and he responded. There was a hot food dispenser to the rear of the shop. He heard the door buzzer go off again as he reached in and grabbed a couple of meat pies. Someone else had entered the shop; he hoped it wasn’t a hold-up. A natural thought process after what he’d been through.
He heard footsteps. “Hello, James.”
He nearly dropped the pies.
“I didn’t tell you I had an apartment nearby, did I? Amazing, isn’t it? Just dropping in to get some milk, and here you are. Are we still meeting later as planned?”
James watched the eyebrows rise above those beautiful dark eyes.
“Ava . . . ah . . . “
“You’re staying close by then?”
“Ava . . . “
“Something wrong?”
James looked around for a seat. There was a bench out the front. He put the pies back on the shelves, but one fell as his hands were shaking so much.
“No . . . just a bit faint. Lack of food. Could we go sit down?”
