Charlie was trembling and on the edge of tears, holding Patrick tight as she marched barefoot through a strip of restaurants. Most of UrbanScape’s eateries had never opened and the big photo of Harry’s aunt and hoardings for Kirsten Channing at UrbanScape coming soon! pushed Charlie into open sobs.

Patrick patted her arm, while the superhero dug her in the back.

‘Quit your snivelling and move, or I’ll give you something worth crying about.’

They reached a grand elevator lobby, unlit, its huge curved-glass aquarium filled with a couple of inches of dark green sludge. All but one elevator had a not-in-service sign and Man Bun made an elaborate sweep with his arm.

‘Ladies first,’ he crooned.

Charlie had never felt such pure hatred for anyone as the marbled elevator accelerated towards the fiftieth floor. Her shoulder hurt where she’d been yanked out of the Jeep and Patrick whined as she put him down.

‘You got cow shit on them big boots?’ Man Bun asked, eying the superhero filling half the elevator. ‘You’d better not trail that on Fawn Janssen’s carpet …’

Charlie shuddered. She knew Man Bun worked for the Janssens and that Fawn was now the boss. But, somehow, her brain hadn’t processed this truth until she heard her sister’s name.

The superhero stayed behind, unlacing her size-fourteen boots, and Man Bun led Charlie, Patrick and Ed down a brightly lit hallway, with carpet so thick it almost gobbled their feet. Two guards with slate-grey suits and Tec-9 compact machine guns stood either side of triple-height black doors.

Man Bun got told to wait outside as one suit opened the door and let Charlie, Ed and Patrick in.

Ed gawped when he entered a lair worthy of a James Bond villain.

The office was on UrbanScape’s top floor, with glass curving around three sides and a view along the switched-off signs and unwashed windows of The Strip’s shuttered mega-resorts. Inside were several black leather sofas, a large art-deco-style bar and ten feet of mahogany desk. The only items on the desk were a telephone, one of JJ’s football helmets and a large model of the Janssen corporate jet.

‘The boys must sit on the sofa,’ a short but well-muscled butler told the suited guard. ‘The girl is to kneel in front of the desk facing forwards with her hands on her head. If she makes the slightest movement, give her a zap with your tasers. Miss Janssen is eating breakfast in her suite and will be here shortly.’

• • •

Fawn made them wait an hour.

‘Long time no see,’ Charlie’s big sister said as she strode into the office, wearing yoga pants and Nikes, twirling a three-foot cattle prod like a cheerleader’s baton.

Fawn was tall and dark, while Charlie was average height and blonde. But there were striking similarities in the sisters’ large blue eyes and broad shoulders.