Hikers - The Collection (Complete Box Set of 5 Books)

by Lauren Algeo

  They chose a sinister looking X-Caliber gun that came with some empty darts, but no drugs. The checkout page threw a spanner in the works by asking for a licensee number to prove they had a gun permit, however Georgie flexed her hacking muscles and bypassed the security on the amateur-built website.

  They paid for fast-track delivery, although the gun would still take a week to arrive from America. That gave them plenty of time for the next stage – getting hold of the rabid saliva or tissue. Brewer knew of some contacts from his police days, when they had sent dogs to be quarantined at kennels after house raids. There were quarantine kennels out in Essex and he knew they’d had to put down animals with various diseases there before. That was their best bet for an infected animal.

  Chapter 36

  Brewer took on the challenge this time and he talked his way into the quarantine facility. He wore one of his old work suits and left Georgie waiting down the road with his rucksack so he wouldn’t look suspicious.

  He introduced himself to the receptionist as Detective Inspector Brewer and she fell over herself to assist him. He had a hunch from her nervy behaviour that she’d been in trouble with the police before. He told her he was moving into dog training and wanted to gain some knowledge of any diseases that could affect dogs, particularly any dangerous ones he should look out for.

  The receptionist found an equally eager young graduate, with floppy brown hair and an oversized coat, to show him around. The boy talked enthusiastically about dog’s immune systems, what could affect their behaviour, and told him stories of diseases that had been found in animals quarantined after holidays abroad. It took nearly half an hour, and increasingly less subtle hints from Brewer, to get him onto the subject of rabies.

  ‘If you really want to know about rabies, it’s better to show you.’

  The kid led him through to a quieter kennelled area at the back of the compound. He pointed to an isolated cage and turned to Brewer with shining eyes.

  ‘That one was brought in a couple of days ago,’ he explained excitedly. ‘It’s so rare over here but the poor thing’s got rabies. There’s nothing we can do for him only the guy who can put him to sleep, John, is off today so he can’t be put out of his misery until tomorrow.’

  Brewer edged closer to the cage. The dog was lying in the shadows at the back with its head forlornly on its paws.

  ‘It doesn’t look sick,’ he said.

  The kid took some biscuits out of his pocket and whistled to the dog. It raised its head slowly then limped over to them when it saw the treat. It was a large chocolate Labrador that looked almost black.

  As it padded into the light, Brewer could see its blood red eyes. It was panting loudly by the time it reached them.

  ‘Here you go,’ the kid said sympathetically and tossed the biscuit in to the kennel. ‘Poor boy, his owners put him in for a routine quarantine after a month in South America and tests showed he had somehow contracted rabies while he was over there, probably a bite from another animal or something. He’s already showing symptoms so it’s too late for any treatment now ­– by the time the symptoms are out, it can only end in death.’

  Brewer looked at the dying dog. ‘I thought dogs foamed at the mouth with rabies?’

  The kid shook his head. ‘Only when their symptoms are really pronounced and they’re near death. I’ve only seen it on the internet before and it’s not a pretty sight.’

  ‘So does the rabies show up in blood tests?’ Brewer asked as casually as he could.

  ‘No, we’ve taken some samples of his saliva and tissue. I’ll show you them in our lab!’

  Brewer loved this kid. They spent twenty minutes in the lab looking at samples. It was clear the kid was passionate about his work and the animals, and he almost felt guilty about taking advantage of him.

  There were three vials of rabid saliva in a chiller cabinet, with dozens of other blood and tissue samples. They were all from the poor dog outside. Brewer made the right noises as the kid showed him drops under a microscope. He had to admit, it was quite interesting seeing the cells close up, but he hadn’t lost sight of why he was there.

  While the sample cabinet was still open, he asked for a glass of water. The kid went to get him one and he was temporarily left alone in the room. There were no CCTV cameras so Brewer quickly took two of the rabies samples and put the vials carefully into the inside pocket of his suit jacket. He hastily rearranged the other samples in the cabinet so it didn’t look as though any were missing.

  When the kid came back with his drink, Brewer pretended to be talking on his mobile.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he apologised. ‘That was an emergency call about one of my cases so I’ve got to leave. Thank you so much for all your help though.’

  The kid looked disappointed to be losing his student. ‘Come back any time you need more information,’ he offered.

  Brewer thanked him again and was out of there a minute later. The receptionist looked relieved to see him disappear out of the front door.

  He walked to the end of the road and saw Georgie pacing agitatedly in the distance. Her face relaxed in relief when she spied him heading towards her.

  ‘Bloody hell, Scott,’ she moaned when he reached her side. ‘You were in there so long I thought you’d been caught! I’ve been waiting for the police to drive past.’

  She thrust his rucksack towards him. ‘This is too heavy! I don’t know how you lug it around all the time.’

  He shrugged on the pack and they made their way back to the nearest bus stop. Georgie kept glancing across and shaking her head at him.

  ‘You look weird in that suit!’

  He studied the slightly faded, navy material. It was one of the only suits he’d kept from his old life. The jacket still fit but the trousers were loose around the waist, and he’d had to put on a tight belt to keep them in place.

  ‘I used to wear them every day,’ he reminded her.

  ‘Yeah, but I only see you in jeans and jumpers. You look very dad-like in that thing,’ she laughed.

  He smiled back however his mind recalled what he’d been thinking about a couple of days ago. A dad would be doing his best to give Georgie the stable life she needed.

  ‘So did you get enough drool or what?’ She interrupted his thoughts.

  He patted his pocket and the vials clicked together.

  ‘I got enough for two hits,’ he told her. ‘The kid wouldn’t stop talking so that’s why it took so long. They only had three samples in their little lab so I couldn’t take any more, although they did have a dog there that was full of the stuff.’

  Georgie’s eyes widened. ‘You saw a rabid dog? What did it look like?’

  ‘Like one sick puppy!’ he quipped but he was the only one who smiled at his pun; Georgie gave him a withering look.

  ‘Seriously, it looked ill,’ he said. ‘Its eyes were all bloodshot and it limped around, panting.’

  ‘What about the foam?’ she asked.

  ‘No none yet. There was some slobber but apparently the foam is a serious symptom near death. The guy that puts them down wasn’t there so the poor dog has to suffer for today.’

  ‘I guess if the rabies works we could wait until they get another infected dog in and somehow steal it and take all its saliva,’ she suggested.

  Brewer screwed up his nose in disgust. ‘That’s both sick and dangerous! Where would we keep a rabid dog? I don’t particularly fancy being the one to drain it of its deadly drool.’

  Georgie shrugged in defence. ‘It’s going to die anyway. I’m not talking about keeping it alive to suffer, we can kill it humanely, then take the samples.’

  ‘Let’s just see if it works first, shall we?’ Brewer said.

  Chapter 37

  The tranquiliser gun arrived two days later. It was an impressive looking weapon, with a sleek barrel and a compact sight on the top. Georgie held it up and pointed it around, aiming at random targets in the flat.

  ‘It’s lighter than I thought,’
she said. ‘I’m pretty sure I could fire this accurately.’

  They went to a local park for a dry run and Georgie practiced shooting at plastic bottles with empty darts. She was a good shot, far better than Brewer – he always seemed to aim too high. They kept going until he was satisfied that she could hit the hiker from a safe enough distance away. Now they had to find one.

  Brewer had ordered an inconspicuous black case online so they could transport the gun. When Georgie slung it over her shoulder by the long strap, it looked as though there was some sort of musical instrument inside. No one would suspect what it really was.

  They’d been monitoring the news for a few days and there were a couple of stories that hinted at hiker activity. One was in Poole, which was too far, but the other was in North London. A middle-aged woman had been fatally stabbed on her way home from work the night before. The details were vague, as the police hadn’t arrested any suspects yet, however the woman was a high profile investment banker, a possible motive for her to be the target of a contract killer.

  Brewer loaded a dart with the saliva from one of the vials and carefully put it in the case. They travelled to St John’s Wood that afternoon to begin their search. For once, they didn’t have to walk around for long.

  ‘Listen,’ Georgie said about half an hour into the search.

  She stood still and cocked her head in a pose Brewer was now familiar with. He knew she’d detected the faint sound of a hiker and he wouldn’t be able to hear it just yet.

  She led him until he picked up the noise too. The hiker wasn’t too far away and after another thirty minutes they could make out whispered words.

  It was a female hiker and she seemed to be whispering to a young man, one who studied at college by the sound of it. She was goading him about an exam he’d failed and telling him that he was stupid.

  They narrowed down her location to a block of flats near Willesden. There looked to be at least twenty flats in the building so the hiker could be hiding anywhere. They hunkered down on the steps of a nearby library to wait for an opportunity to strike. Georgie checked the gun repeatedly.

  ‘Stop drawing attention to it!’ Brewer scolded her when he saw her peeking through the zip of the case for the umpteenth time.

  ‘I’m just making sure the dart hasn’t leaked,’ she said sheepishly.

  He could see she was dying to fire the gun for real; at a target that wasn’t made out of plastic. They’d have to be careful about where they got the gun out. Members of the public would be nosy and they’d cause panic at the sight of a gun. They would need to wait until the hiker was somewhere fairly secluded.

  A couple of hours later, she obeyed him. Her male target emerged from the entrance to the flats dressed in grey joggers, a navy hooded top, and trainers. He walked briskly to a nearby park and began to jog a lap around it. Perhaps he hoped the run would clear whatever was going on in his head.

  Brewer and Georgie followed cautiously and sat on a bench near the park gate.

  ‘It’s here somewhere,’ Brewer said.

  They both checked around, yet there was no sign of the hiker. The park area was a decent size, about a mile circuit all the way round. There were a couple of clumps of trees in the middle, a children’s playground at the front, and a small wooded area to the right.

  ‘She’s in there,’ Georgie nodded towards the woods. ‘I can sense her a bit and she’ll be able to see him for most of his lap from a hiding place in there.’

  ‘Let’s go then,’ Brewer said, standing up from the bench.

  She gave him a questioning look – this was not his normal ‘safe’ approach. Usually he’d make them sit there for ages and observe first.

  ‘This is the best shot we’re going to get,’ he explained as they walked around the perimeter of the park, towards the tree line. ‘It’s secluded and there aren’t many people around. The hiker isn’t going to be anywhere as perfect as this for a while so we need to strike now. The boy’s not going to be running forever.’

  ‘But what if she’s watching us?’ It felt odd for Georgie to be the sensible one.

  ‘Block your mind when we get nearer and let me know if you get the slightest feeling that she’s trying to get in your head.’

  They reached the woods and stayed in the shadows, creeping slowly through the fallen leaves. The hiker was halfway along the tree line.

  She had her back to them and was partially obscured by some bushes. She was looking out at the park from behind a thick tree trunk and concentrating intensely on whispering to the boy as he ran.

  Brewer held a finger to his lips and gestured for Georgie to get the tranquiliser gun out of the case. She slowly tugged open the zip with trembling hands. She could feel her heart pumping faster. This was it – she was going to shoot one for real. The zip sounded louder to her in the quiet woods but the hiker was too wrapped up in the boy’s thoughts to hear it.

  Brewer signalled for her to move behind some thicker trees so the hiker wouldn’t see them closing in. Georgie trod carefully around the sharp branches of a bare bush. She lifted the gun slowly to its position on her right shoulder. It seemed a lot heavier than it had been during the practice run.

  Suddenly there was a deafening crack in the stillness. For a second she thought she’d fired the gun by mistake then she saw Brewer wince in horror. He’d stepped onto a fallen branch and snapped it in two. His eyes flickered shut in a grimace of frustration. The hiker spun to look at him with blazing, black eyes.

  It attacked instantly, probing into his mind. His reflexes were too slow and he couldn’t block it out in time.

  ‘It’s you!’ the female hissed in his head. ‘We’ve been looking for you.’

  He scrabbled desperately to push her out. Their eyes locked together across the undergrowth.

  ‘Georgie,’ he shouted. ‘Now!’

  Georgie settled the gun on her shoulder and peered through the sight. She got the hiker in the centre of the crosshairs and tried to steady her heart rate. She exhaled slowly and squeezed the trigger. There was a loud hiss and the dart of rabid saliva hit the hiker directly over her heart.

  The hiker howled in pain and surprise as the dart bit into her skin to release its full dose into her bloodstream. She left Brewer’s mind and struck out immediately at Georgie, trying to find out what she’d just been injected with. Georgie was ready for her. She batted away her attempts to get into her thoughts and began singing random songs in her head as a diversion.

  The hiker staggered backwards against the tree trunk and grabbed at her chest, trying to rip the dart out. Brewer was back in action and he whipped a pair of handcuffs out of the front pocket of his rucksack. He sprinted the few yards to the hiker and locked one cuff onto her wrist then yanked her arms behind the tree trunk before she could react to what he was doing. He clamped the second cuff tightly around her other wrist and jumped back a split second before her teeth bore down on his neck. Her jaw snapped shut on thin air as he sprang out of reach.

  He stood, panting, five feet away. The hiker bucked violently against the tree, trying to free herself, but the handcuffs were too tight. The trunk she was bound to was a solid elm tree so she had no hope of pulling that down, and there wasn’t enough space between the tree and her body for any manoeuvring. She was trapped.

  Georgie crunched through the leaves to stand next to Brewer. He gave her a grateful nod. ‘Well done. That was a perfect shot.’

  Georgie felt a burst of pride that was quickly shattered by the hiker trying to get into her head again.

  They retreated further away to decide what to do next. The hiker snarled and thrashed, and kept trying to find out what they’d done to her.

  The meningitis had been accelerated in the other hiker so they could assume the rabies symptoms would be sped up too. Georgie had shot the dart straight into her heart so it would already be pumping around her veins. It could still take a couple of days for her to die though.

  The woods were secluded for now. It was
a weekday and the weather was still icy cold but there would be people walking their dogs later, and other runners could come past. Anyone could find the hiker.

  ‘Are we going to move it?’ Georgie asked in a break from the mental attacks.

  ‘We can’t risk it. She’s infected now and you saw her go for my neck. If she bites one of us, we’ll get rabies too.’

  ‘But she’s so loud, she’ll draw attention to us!’

  ‘I know. It’s exposed and she can easily persuade someone to get help and release her when they come along. We need to keep her quiet until the virus takes hold properly and she becomes too busy fighting that to be any trouble.’

  ‘So what should we do?’

  ‘I don’t know yet,’ he admitted. ‘But if she’s busy trying to get in our heads to find out our secrets then she won’t be looking for other people to help her. I don’t like it, but I think we need to endure a barrage of her attacks for a while.’

  Georgie scowled. ‘What if she manages to get anything useful from us?’

  ‘Well hopefully it won’t matter – by the time she ever achieves that then she won’t be able to relay it to the Grand because she’ll be busy dying.’

  He glanced back at the enraged hiker. ‘Besides this will be good practice for when we go up against the Grand.’

  A shriek of rage from the hiker cut Georgie off before she could ask what the hell he was talking about.

  ‘Let’s do it!’ he shouted, marching back to their livid captive. ‘We’ll tag team so it doesn’t get too overpowering.’

  Georgie hurried behind him. Her mind wanted to process what he meant about going after the Grand, however the hiker was making it impossible to think.

  Brewer stood in front of the tree with his arms folded across his chest. The hiker glared back at him with naked hatred in her black eyes. Her lips curled up into a sneer.

  ‘You can’t keep me out forever.’ Her voice sounded rusty, as though she didn’t use it very often. ‘I’m going to enjoy finding out what gets to you the most, then making you suffer.’