It was Colton Banes.
Jamie felt himself plunge into utter darkness. It was like diving into a pool of freezing oil. And at that moment, he shared everything that Banes had ever felt or thought. There were pictures – millions of them – but there were also experiences and emotions: fear, arrogance, lust, anger, cruelty, hatred and much, much more. Jamie had tried to explain it to Alicia but he could never have found the words. A man’s brain is a world. That’s what he should have said. And the world in which he now found himself was beyond any imagining.
He saw the death of Kyle Hovey. Worse than that, it was his hands that were around the other man’s neck. He could feel the warm flesh and the pulsing vein under his own fingers as he squeezed. This had been the most recent killing and it was uppermost in Banes’s mind. He saw a woman watching him. She had very short grey hair, a long neck, glasses. Banes was afraid of her. Jamie felt the fear. He saw the cruelty in her eyes and for a moment she was looking straight at him, smiling while he committed murder.
But then the image folded away and he was inside a trailer. There was a young girl lying on a bed with a dazed expression on her face and long hair straggling over the pillows. She moved her arm and Jamie saw that the flesh was bruised and mauve and that there were puncture marks, some of them covered with scabs. There were clothes everywhere, crumpled beer cans and ashtrays spilling out their contents, a dirty calendar on the wall. Colton Banes at home. It was there and then it was gone. Jamie had seen it only for a second. But it felt like an hour or even a day.
And then he saw other murders; a gun fired endlessly in front of him, a whole line of people, young and old, being shot down as if in an obscene fairground gallery. Some had died quietly. Some had cried for mercy. Jamie heard them and watched them fall. Mainly men. A few women. The bullets spat out, one after another, and blood splattered a dozen different walls.
And then he came to Don White.
“Whose murder?”
“You shouldn’t have asked.”
He heard the words and saw Don White jerk backwards as the bullet hit him. Then it was Marcie’s turn. She had been taken by surprise in the kitchen. She hadn’t even heard the door open. She had just turned round and that was it.
So many deaths. A chamber of horrors.
He saw himself, chased out of the theatre. The dog – Jagger – forced to the ground. And the man who was running for president, Charles Baker. That was crazy. What was he doing in Banes’s head? But it was definitely him, raising a hand and smiling, saying something to a journalist.
Another flicker, a hundred different places, flashing past like a falling deck of cards. He had arrived in a city, maybe somewhere in China. A strange boat with dark, wrinkled sails making its way across a stretch of water. Gone. Now he was back in Los Angeles, seeing himself as he entered the office. He felt the moment of recognition, his own name whispered in anger and surprise. Jamie fought against the torrent of words, images and emotions, searching for the one thing he needed.
“Where is Scott Tyler?”
Alicia had asked the question and the answer had to be there, ricocheting through Banes’s mind. Jamie wasn’t sure how much longer he could stay there. He was going to be sick. He felt as if he was drowning.
And then he saw him. His brother. Scott.
He was lying on his back in an enclosed room, stripped to the waist. He was ill. There was a tube running into his nose, the sort of thing you get in a hospital, and another in his wrist. Some sort of transparent liquid was dripping down. Scott was covered in sweat. His hair was soaked through. There was a trickle of dried blood at the corner of his mouth. His eyes were open and filled with pain. Jamie wanted to know what Scott was thinking but that was impossible. He was seeing him as Banes had seen him. When? Not yesterday. The day before, maybe. Recently…
“Where is Scott Tyler?”
Banes didn’t want anyone to know. He was fighting it. But still the images came, one after another. Jamie saw desert. A cactus shaped like the letter Y. He saw mountains with the moon suspended eerily between two peaks. There was a loud electronic buzz as a gate opened automatically, then an echoing crash as a second one closed. Faces. Other boys, some the same age as Scott, but all of them lifeless, vacant. A security camera swivelling round. Showers, the steam rolling out. More boys, their outlines just visible behind plastic curtains. Another gate smashed shut. And there it was at last, the sign that Banes didn’t want him to see.
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.
FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES
The police had thrown a tight security ring all around the Carlton Hotel in Wilshire Boulevard, just south of Beverly Hills. It seemed to Jamie that Los Angeles had no real centre. It sprawled carelessly from district to district … but if the city had a wallet it would surely keep it here. Jamie had never seen so many expensive shops and boutiques standing shoulder to shoulder, the windows dripping with watches and jewellery and five-thousand-dollar suits.
The Carlton was an old-fashioned building, fifteen storeys high and stretching an entire block. As Alicia and Jamie drove into the front courtyard, a dozen valets in matching grey waistcoats hurried forward to help them out of the car and then to park it below. But even the valets were outnumbered by the secret service personnel, who had their own uniform: black suits, white shirts, sunglasses and earpieces. To Jamie they looked almost ridiculous, like something out of a cartoon. But perhaps that was the idea. They were advertising the fact that the hotel was protected.
Senator John Trelawny was staying here for twenty-four hours before he gave his speech at the LA Convention Center and he had taken over the entire twelfth floor for the night. There were less than five months until the general election and his campaign team numbered almost a hundred people, including media advisors, political consultants, speech writers, pollsters, personal aides and more security men. All of them had rooms, and for one night all the lifts to the twelfth floor had been blocked. To visit the senator, guests would need to show ID and then receive a pass key – provided by the secret service. Callers were accompanied all the way. If they didn’t have an invitation, they didn’t get in.
“Will he see us?” Jamie asked as he and Alicia followed a winding corridor into the hotel.
Alicia nodded. “I just have to let him know we’re here…”
They entered a cavernous lobby with a huge chandelier hanging over a round, polished table. Jamie found himself staring open-mouthed at the wealth on display. There was too much of everything. Too many electric candlelights, too many vases of flowers – at least ten of them – on the table, too many antique clocks and mirrors and display cases packed with handbags, scarves and shoes. And too many people. There was a concierge desk and a reception desk and porters and guests everywhere. Rush hour for the rich, Jamie thought. He had never been anywhere like this.
Alicia stopped and looked around, searching for someone she knew. A few moments later, she found him. “There!” she exclaimed, and moved forward.
A man was standing next to a table close to the lifts. He was dressed in the same dark suit and white shirt as the other security men, but he had a brightly coloured tie as if to announce that he wasn’t actually one of them. Even so, there was a telltale wire curling behind his ear and he was obviously doing the same job: scanning the lobby with suspicious eyes. He was at least six and a half feet tall with blond, close-cropped hair, blue eyes that were constantly on the move and the body of a weightlifter. His shoulders were huge. Either he was ex-army or a retired basketball player … or both.
The man saw Alicia and recognized her before she was nearer than ten paces.
“Alicia!” He greeted her by name but he seemed more surprised than pleased to see her.
“How are you, Warren?”
“I’m good.” He drawled the words. “I didn’t know you were in LA.”
“I didn’t know I was coming until a couple of days ago.”
Warren had noticed Jamie, who was standing a few steps behind her, trying to keep out of the way. The man frowned briefly, and Jamie was suddenly nervous that he might have been recognized.
“This is a friend of mine,” Alicia said. “His name is David.” There was a showcase against the wall, advertising Davidoff cigars. Jamie knew that she had plucked the false name from there and hoped that the security man hadn’t noticed it too. She turned to him. “David, this is Warren Cornfield.”
Warren nodded slowly at Jamie, then turned back to Alicia. “What can I do for you?” he asked.
“I want to see the senator.”
“You want to see the senator?” A slow smile spread across Cornfield’s lips. But he wasn’t amused. “You know that’s not possible, Alicia. Tomorrow he’s talking to ten thousand people. Somehow, I don’t think he’s got time to see you right now.”
But Alicia stood her ground. “When I left, he said his door would always be open to me.”
“That’s not what he told me.”
“Why don’t you ask him?”
“I’m not his assistant, Alicia. You know that. I think maybe you should ring back another time and get an appointment.”
Jamie could see that Alicia was struggling to keep her temper. “I’m here right now, asking for an appointment, Warren,” she growled. “And you’re right. You’re not his assistant. So why don’t you call up to Elizabeth, who is – and she can ask John if he’ll see me.”
“You’re wasting your time.”
“We’ll see, shall we?”
Alicia smiled pleasantly but Warren scowled. He didn’t like being talked to in this way but it was clear that Alicia wouldn’t be argued with. Warren held up a single finger and walked away, his head cocked, talking into a concealed microphone. To anyone else looking, he could have been arguing with himself.
“Warren is John’s personal s
ecurity officer,” Alicia explained. “He’s supposed to liaise with the secret service but half the time he thinks he actually runs it. We never did get along.”
“I can see that.”
“They say he was with the CIA a while ago but he got thrown out. Personally, I think…”
But Alicia didn’t finish the sentence. Warren Cornfield was walking back towards her and his whole demeanour had changed. He was like a sulky child. “He says he’ll see you,” he muttered.
“Thank you, Warren.”
“Why don’t we make that Mr Cornfield? You’re not part of the team any more…”
He snapped his fingers like an angry diner demanding a drink. One of the younger secret service men came running over. “Show these people up to twelve,” he said.
“Yes, Mr Cornfield.”
Alicia smiled at him and she and Jamie went over to the lift. The security man inserted a key into the lock and pressed the button for the twelfth floor. The doors closed. “You friends of the senator?” he asked.
“I used to work for him,” Alicia said.
“He’s a good guy,” the security man went on. “I might even vote for him myself. Charles Baker is a jerk.”
There was a silver-haired man in a suit but no tie waiting for them when the lift arrived. Warren must have radioed up from below. The man knew Alicia at once. “My dear, it’s very good to see you. How have you been keeping?” He had an Irish accent.
“It’s great to see you, Patrick. Still playing the horses?”
“Still losing.”
“This is a friend of mine.” She indicated Jamie but was careful not to say his name. “Patrick is John’s campaign chairman for the state of California.”
“Good to meet you.” Patrick smiled and Jamie warmed to him at once. He was obviously puzzled by Jamie’s appearance but had decided to ask no questions. “He can’t see you for very long, Alicia,” he said, as he led them down a corridor. “Right now the pressure’s on.”
“How is he?” Alicia asked.
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