‘You hear me?’ The cop was standing at the perimeter of the lot, maybe twenty metres away. He looked young and jumpy, and his gun was trained on Tom’s chest. ‘I said freeze!’

‘I am frozen,’ Tom muttered.

‘Now get your hands up.’ The cop gestured with his gun, and started to advance closer.

It’s over, thought Tom. It ends here.

He just couldn’t accept that.

Before he even realised what he was doing, Tom was running again.

‘Hold it!’ roared the cop.

But his gun roared louder.

Tom’s shoulder burned white hot. For a moment he was flying through the stinging rain. Then he was tumbling over and over on the hard wet concrete and hurting so bad he couldn’t even scream. He heard a screech of brakes and came up fast against something that stopped him dead, flat on his melting back, staring up at the distant stars, till the rainwater filled his eyes and he couldn’t see a thing anymore.

Chapter Thirteen

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CHAPTER THIRTEEN

No one was home at Woollard’s place. Kate stood by as Stacy rapped repeatedly on the front door, but no welcoming light appeared at any window, no sound of movement came from inside.

‘So now what do we do?’ Kate asked dismally, as the rain drummed down around them. She wondered helplessly where Tom was now. She should’ve gone after Jasmine, got in the wagon and refused to get out. If anyone were to reach Tom and rescue him it should be her, not that girl – and especially not in the state of mind Jasmine must be in now. And whose fault was that, Kate reflected guiltily.

‘Gee, this sure is a run-down neighbourhood,’ Stacy observed. The tenement overlooked a vacant lot on one side and some boarded-up slums on the other. ‘I bet there’s a lot of crime.’ She walked up to a cracked front window and put her elbow through it. The glass broke noisily.

‘Are you crazy?’ Kate hissed in disbelief.

‘I prefer to think of myself as determined.’ Stacy reached carefully through the jagged hole she’d made and unlatched the low window. Then she climbed inside, her lithe figure soon lost to the darkness beyond.

Kate swiftly followed. It was a relief to be out of the rain, though Woollard’s apartment wasn’t a good deal warmer than the November night, and it reeked of whisky and garlic.

Stacy flicked on a lamp on the desk, and leafed through a whole stack of papers perched precariously on a chair.

Kate closed Woollard’s dusty curtains. Spindly stems bearing withered white flowers had been pinned around the edges. Garlic flowers? ‘This is too weird,’ she muttered. ‘What are you looking for, Stacy?’

‘Research notes, papers, tests …’ Not finding what she wanted, Stacy impatiently swept the whole pile of papers off the chair. ‘OK, then, let’s think what the most likely hiding place would be.’