‘She’s seen him,’ said Ross in the conference room.

Monroe’s hand went to his mouth. She’d seen him. That was good, wasn’t it? Because if she’d seen him, then she surely would have recognised him.

Sure enough, they watched as Heidi ducked down, moving away so that she could not possibly be spotted, at the same time pulling her Sig from her boiler suit and dropping the bundle.

In the conference room they watched. ‘She’s there,’ said Ross, half-standing. ‘Trent, you idiot, she’s just there.’

‘He can’t hear you,’ snapped Clifford.

Ross bit back. ‘Oh, do shut up, Dad. What are you even doing here, anyway?’

‘I beg your pardon,’ roared Clifford, ‘I am still your father, you know.’

‘Shut up and sit down, both of you,’ roared Juliet, every inch the Norton matriarch, waving a hand at the screens where Heidi was continuing to creep up on an oblivious Trent. They watched as Trent, almost seeming to sense the presence of danger, brought his gun to shoulder level, his elbows crooked, rotating his upper half slowly as he shifted forward in degrees.

Up in his perch, Scolar kept Heidi in his crosshairs and then abruptly shifted his aim slightly to the right, finding Trent.

Careful now. Very careful. He shifted slightly. Just a tiny bit. Finding the correct spot.

And then fired.

‘What was that?’ asked Clifford Levine.

‘What you mean?’ demanded Ross.

‘Your man seemed to jump, like he was startled or something.’

Ross resisted the impulse to glance at Kennedy, both thinking the same thing: that Trent had jumped because Scolar had given him the prearranged signal. And now, suddenly, he was on full alert, crouching, his gun held, swinging slightly to the left and aiming through the structure.

‘Is there something going on?’ said Juliet to Jeffrey Coombs.

‘I have no idea, ma’am.’

She was watching Abbott, who also seemed to have reacted to something.

And indeed, Abbott had heard it. A ricochet, surely. A round coming off the metal of something very nearby. A shot, surely, and yet there was no corresponding report, which meant . . .

Sniper.

But a sniper doing what? Working on behalf of one of the players?

Warning them?

Which was exactly the conclusion that Heidi had reached. Except that she’d reached it more quickly than Abbott, having already spotted Trent. A third party in an elevated position was tipping him off.

She stopped in her tracks, twisting to level the Sig through the empty windows of the Acid Bath waiting area. Where was he? Where was he?

‘Psst.’

It came from behind her, and she wheeled to see Trent grinning in triumph, his finger on the trigger, and threw herself to the side.