She pulled her jumper over her head and grabbed back her things. She took a deep breath.
The lift doors opened. The lobby looked a lot smaller in real life than through the monitor. It was dusty—Jason needed to hoover down here. Was there a power connection? There must be—
Jason opened the door.
The street outside was lit by streetlights and the gibbous moon. There were parked cars and moving cars and a cat and two cats and...
“Oh fuck,” she murmured. “Fuckity-fuck.” She started to fall, her knees giving way and all-consuming terror replacing every ounce of blood in her body. She clutched at the door frame, old paint splintering under her fingernails.
She couldn’t leave. She couldn’t even move.
Above their heads, the glass of the front window shattered.
Jason stooped and threw her over his shoulder. Amy yelped, barely holding on to her things as he slammed the front door and carried her onto the street.
She was outside. Holy fuck, she was outside.
He unlocked the passenger seat and threw her in it, before circling the car. Across the street, another car turned on its lights.
“Police,” she muttered.
“Probably. Seat belt.”
He was already in the driver’s seat, belt on, ready to go. He drove off as she was still recalling how exactly seat belts fastened.
“I was coming home from the doctor’s.”
“What?” Jason glanced across at her. “Were you meant to take that many of those?”
Amy realised she’d missed out several parts of the conversation. “When I was last in a car. My father’s car. They took me to see a shrink. He said I had bipolar and prescribed me lithium. I spat it out.”
“You have bipolar?” Jason sounded taut, and she realised he was worried.
“No. He was wrong. I have agoraphobia and social phobia. Probably depression too. But I’ve never been high. Not on life, not on drugs. That’s a shame, isn’t it? What’s it like? Being high?”
Jason now sounded amused. “You never ask this many questions.”
“Then indulge me. What’s it like?”
The streets slipped by like midnight oil, the lights all streaking together like a wormhole through time and space. A siren in the background was wailing mournfully, like an air raid, and then it was far away.
It didn’t feel quite real, the journey. It was like a TARDIS, in a way—you stepped into the car in one place and you stepped out again at another, in another time. Time travel, travel travel—all the travel.
Maybe she’d taken too many pills.
Jason was talking. “—a long time ago. And two, I think you’re pretty high right now.”
“Oh.” She’d been lamenting her lack of substance misuse all this time and she had the means to get high in her kitchen cabinet. How exciting.
Something started ringing. Jason fished a phone out of his pocket and chucked it at her. She vaguely caught it with her knees and then held it up to her eyes. “It’s Bryn.”
“Answer it then.”
“Oh. Right.” She pressed the green button and held it to her ear. “Hello, Detective.”
Bryn’s voice blasted out and she held the phone away from her head. “Why is Jason’s car driving out of Cardiff?”
“We are going to find drugs,” Amy said in the direction of the phone.
Beside her, Jason groaned.
“We? Amy, are you in the car? You realise there’s a police car tailing you?”
“Men broke into our house. That wasn’t very nice.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Jason interrupted. “Bryn, we think we’ve found the stash of a new online drug dealer connected to Damage’s murder. We are following Mickey’s boys there now. Some backup would be nice.”
There was a long silence. “Obviously, I’m hallucinating, because that is definitely not Jason Carr I’m talking to.”
“He isn’t on his phone while driving,” Amy swore solemnly. “I am holding the phone. He is holding the wheel. It’s all sound, Bryn.”
“I think he means that I’m an escaped convict,” Jason said.
“Why the hell couldn’t you stay hidden, boy?”
“Because there are gangsters in our house and gangsters going to this farm, and if we catch them, we clear my name, Owain’s name, everyone. And we catch the bastards who killed Damage and those guards.”
“Quite the charmer, aren’t you?”
“He is,” Amy declared.
Beside her, Jason appeared to be having some kind of fit, before he guffawed with laughter. “I suggest you chase us down.”
“I’ll email you!” Amy hung up the phone and chucked it into the glovebox. “Lizzie says I like you, but it’s not like that.”
“What? Amy, seriously, you need to snap out of it. I wanted you mellow, not stoned.”
“She’s wrong, that’s what I’m saying,” Amy said, sinking back into the chair. She could be mellow. Mellow was cool. The car was contained, safe. It smelled of chips and vinegar, and Jason. The iPad claimed it still had 3G, so she sent Bryn the promised email containing a link to her research files. It gave away the server location, but she thought they were a bit beyond worrying about that.
“Sure she is,” Jason said, and Amy struggled to remember what they were talking about.
“It’s not that I don’t like you,” she continued. “But I don’t. Not in the way she was saying. I just want that to be clear, between us.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Good, good.” Her eyes fell closed. It was quite comfortable, this car. Small.
“Amy, wake up. I need you to pay attention.”
“Mm?”
Something rammed her from the right. She opened her eyes and rubbed at her shoulder. After a minute, she said, “Ow.”
“You need to stay awake. Put the radio on.”
Amy jabbed at one of the buttons on the radio and the tape clunked, playing some kind of classic rock. “This is the song from Robin Hood.”
“No, it’s from Highlander.”
“‘S’good.” Amy nodded along to it, the world around her getting flatter and flatter until there was nothing left at all.
“Amy, wake up. I’ll shove you again.”
“‘M’wake.”
“Amy, what’s in the box? Tell me what you’ve got.”
Amy opened one eye to look at the box. She picked it up and shook it. “Satellite modem. Expensive, but worth it.”
“So you can get internet anywhere?”
“That’s the idea. Even when it’s cloudy. But not stormy.”
“Why would you need that? You don’t usually leave the house.”
Amy frowned, trying to remember exactly why she’d bought it. “More covert? But it was hard to run the encryption and muddy the waters. They could see me, and it was expensive. Not that money is a thing but it is a bit of a thing.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
Amy turned to look at Jason. “Do I pay you enough money?”
“To put up with this? Not nearly enough.”
“Would you like a raise?”
Jason laughed. Amy didn’t think it was all that funny. “Maybe we should talk about it later? When you’re sober.”
“I only had one bottle of wine when you were in prison. It was a red one.”
“And how many little blue pills?”
Amy frowned. “How do you know about those? I don’t need those anymore.”
Jason looked at her incredulously. “Amy, you just necked about ten of them!”
“This is an extenuating circumstance. This is a once-in-a-decade phenomena. That is worth eight blue pills.”
�
��You counted them?”
“With my tongue.”
The soupy feeling of the world outside was already dissipating. Maybe she had been taking a few while Jason was inside. Maybe she should slow down on the benzos. After she had gotten over the fact she was speeding away from her refuge and into a den of drug dealers.
There wasn’t enough diazepam in the world.
“Junction 36 of the M4.” Jason took the exit and drove them away from the cars and the lights. “I guess we’re taking the third exit, as it’s to the north?”
“Then five miles,” Amy said, dredging that up from somewhere in her memory. “Pen-y-Bryn Farm.”
“We’ll go four and a half, then walk.”
“I have the Land Registry map.”
Jason glanced over at her as he followed the dark, winding road and flicked on his full beam. “Where?”
“iPad. I hope the bastard thing doesn’t run out of battery. I’ll turn off the Bluetooth.”
It took her three attempts to get the Bluetooth off, and another two to turn off the Wi-Fi. By that point, Jason had stopped the car and parked it up in a gate. “This is his land, right?”
Amy brought up the PDF of the map. “Yes. Back field. There should be some outbuildings.”
“How can we tell which one they’re using for drugs and which one for turnips?”
“I hate turnips.”
“Amy, concentrate!” Jason snapped. “If they’re using phones, can you find them?”
“Would you like the short answer or the long one?”
“Amy...”
“No. No, I can’t find them. The signal is too dodgy to find phones and do they even have Bluetooth? I don’t know. I don’t have an app for that.”
Jason grinned. “What about GPS?”
Amy brought up the tracker on the iPad, pulled out the satellite receiver and clumsily plugged it in. The signal was weak as a newborn kitten and she tutted. “There’s a storm coming.”
“I hate the rain,” Jason said with feeling.
The tracker obligingly updated its position. The van was stationary and two fields across from them. Amy flicked back to the Land Registry map and marked the spot with a pin. “There is also a compass.”
Suddenly, bright lights filled their rear windscreen, blinding in their intensity.
“Shit.” Jason opened the driver’s-side door and looked over at Amy. “Come on!”
Amy stumbled out of the car on Bambi legs, trying to shield her iPad and modem from the spots of rain starting to fall. The lights winked off, leaving an orange glow behind her eyes, before Jason reached for her and dragged her round the bonnet and through the gate.
Her slippered feet sank into the mud, as Jason pulled her towards the hedgerows. “Under here—quick!”
But another light danced over them and Amy felt caught, like a fragile moth trapped in the bright lure of the fire. She stared beyond the flashlight and then she saw him.
“What are you two doing out here?” Sebastian Rawlings said.
Chapter Forty-Five: Knight’s Move
Jason stepped between Amy and the police officer, holding up his hands. “I surrender. Don’t shoot her.”
Sebastian’s grim visage burst into laughter. “Shoot you? You think they let me out with a gun?”
He came closer and silently herded them against the hedge, clicking off his flashlight.
“You were the one watching the house?” Jason asked. It was a bit odd for a high-level detective to be on guard duty.
Amy nudged him in the side. “We did ask for backup.”
Jason was grateful that the massive amount of tranquillisers in her system had passed their peak and seemed to be keeping her unconcerned rather than Looney Tunes. He didn’t know if he’d be able to handle a free-range Amy Lane bouncing off the local sheep.
Sebastian winked. “Bryn called, said you were on to something here that might interest me. If I was willing to overlook working with an escaped felon.”
Jason bristled. “I never—”
“I know, boy. Sooner we get this done, sooner we get home to where we belong. Now, what’s the situation?”
“Online drug dealers are using this farm as their base of operations. We tracked some of them here after they broke into our house.”
Amy was shivering, Jason noticed, even beneath her hoodie in the warm May evening. She was used to a locked-tight house with the heating on in all seasons.
Sebastian sucked air through his teeth in that awful annoying whistle. “This is the gang I’ve been tracking for months. Had no idea they’d moved online. What’s your source?”
“Tracked the web domain back to Damage Jones. He was their hacker.”
“Poor kid. In way over his head.” Sebastian leaned closer to them. “How did that lead you here?”
“I followed—”
“This is where I was attacked,” Jason interrupted. “It just made sense that it was connected.”
Amy looked at him curiously, but Sebastian was nodding along. “It does, it does. I can’t believe you worked it out all by yourselves like that.”
“It was easy,” Amy said, tugging up her hood against the increasing rain. “I can hack NASA—this was child’s play.”
Sebastian looked impressed and Jason was proud of his boss. He was pleased when other people recognised the genius trapped in her frail, jittery body.
“Listen—I’m short a partner until they get this Jenkins mess sorted.” Sebastian turned to Jason. “Would you watch my back while we suss this place out? Want to make sure of something definite before calling it in.”
That warm feeling of pride shifted towards himself. Jason had never felt more flattered. “Uh...sure. Yeah.” Articulate, Carr.
“Bryn’s already called it in,” Amy said. “He said he was calling for backup.”
“I know Bryn,” Sebastian said. “He’d keep something like this on the down-low—only those people he trusts.”
Relieved they wouldn’t be up to their necks in coppers just yet, Jason turned to Amy and pressed his hands into her shoulders. “You need to go back to the car. Don’t let anybody in.”
Amy screwed up her face. “But, Jason—”
“Miss Lane must come with us,” Sebastian said firmly. “She’s our best chance of sending a message back to HQ—the phone signal out here is useless.”
Amy smiled smugly at Jason and started off along the hedgerow, making a point of being the person with the map, even though Jason was certain she had never been a Girl Guide and wouldn’t be caught dead orienteering.
“So, man to man...” Sebastian put his hand around Jason’s shoulder. “How did you slip the net?”
“Dumb luck,” Jason said honestly. “They came pretty close to nabbing me.”
“You just made a beeline straight back to your girl, didn’t you?” Sebastian said knowingly. “Don’t confirm or deny it, I don’t really want to know. But if I had a girl like that to come home to, I’d run for her too.”
Jason looked at Amy, lit up by the glow of the tablet screen, with her messy hair and old faded hoodie and jeans. “She’s not my girl.”
“She’s certainly something,” Sebastian said, misinterpreting him completely. “Her mind is astounding.”
That was something they could agree on. Jason was constantly marvelling at Amy’s intellect, the way she could bend technology to her will and gain fascinating insight into the nooks and crannies of people’s lives.
Amy stopped at the edge of the field. Jason jogged to catch up with her and looked in the direction she was facing. About two hundred yards away, a barn was lit up like a Christmas tree and surrounded with farm machinery in various states of disrepair, a farm fallen on hard times. From the other side of the field a gravel track led from the
road to the barn, with a familiar white van parked in the middle of it. Four figures were hanging about by the van, the faint glow of their cigarettes visible against the drizzle.
Amy took another step forward, towards the stile in the next field.
Jason caught her arm. “That’s close enough.”
“Bollocks it is,” Sebastian said impatiently. “We haven’t seen nothing yet.”
Sebastian stepped forward and held out a hand to Amy. She took it daintily and stepped over the stile. Jason noticed she’d lost her slippers and was walking around in mud-caked socks. Maybe she was more baked than mellow.
Jason followed them, the evening air starting to get to his lungs. He desperately wanted to cough, but as they skirted behind the big barn, edging closer and closer, he forced the impulse down. His lungs felt like they were in spasm and he tried to clear his throat quietly, stifle the feeling, but then his rib pain added to his chorus of complaints. He was a walking scarecrow, patched together with bandages and determination.
When they were about fifty feet from the barn, Jason spotted the silhouette of a ladder reaching up the heights of the hayloft hatch. Sebastian allowed him to catch up before gesturing to the ladder.
“I’m going to go up there and have a look around. You two stay down here and keep watch.”
“You want to keep Amy out here?” Jason whispered furiously. “She’s way too exposed—and there’s no way she can hold her own in a fight.”
“I’m quite handy with a sword,” Amy interjected.
Sebastian, thankfully, ignored her. “We don’t know what I’m walking into up there.”
“We don’t know what could turn up down here either.”
“I can get better signal for the satellite modem up there,” Amy added.
Sebastian looked reluctant but eventually conceded. “Okay, but stay behind me.”
Slowly, he started climbing up the ladder. Amy looked down at the things in her hands. “How do I hold them and climb?”
Jason slipped off his belt and looped it round her skinny waist. The very last hole was still too big for her, but he sandwiched in the iPad and modem together, snugly tucked against her concave stomach.
“Genius, Carr,” Amy said warmly. “Knew there was a reason I hired you.”
Code Runner (Amy Lane Mysteries Book 2) Page 26
