Kate scanned the room for clues, and found literally nothing. If someone were to try designing a room to look as dull and boring as possible, they could not have done better than the sight in front of her.

‘How do you—’

‘Guys,’ Mark said into his radio, ‘there’s at least one more of them. Be careful.’

He looked into Kate’s eyes, the fear in his face clear and obvious.

‘We need to get back to the office. Before someone else finds the computer still on.’

There was a noise. Kate turned round just in time to see a uniformed figure run past the staff room, straight towards Paul’s office.

Mark opened fire, and missed.

Chapter 7

When Kate fired her own bullet, it struck the man in his lower leg. It didn’t appear to slow him down; he stumbled and shrieked, but hopped around the corner of the corridor as fast as he would have done anyway, perhaps carried by his own momentum.

‘Get him!’ Mark yelled, the expected ferocity in his voice replaced with worry. Kate did not need telling twice, and charged with all her energy towards the corner. She knew the risk of the man lying in wait behind the wall with a pistol pointed in her direction, but she ran anyway. Something told her the man would be more interested in reaching Paul’s office than winning a gunfight.

When she and Mark turned the corner, she was proven correct. They were just in time to see the door to the office slam shut, and heard the locking mechanism as they approached. The door was sturdy – thick and secure enough to keep any staff member safe from a violent student or an ambitious burglar. This would not be easy.

There was an electric scream of ‘Pete!!’ from behind the door. The man in the chair with the carved throat now had a name: one that would stick in Kate’s memory until the day she died.

Mark got to the door first, and smashed the little square window with the butt of his rifle. He was answered by a short burst of pistol fire, and jerked his head away from the spray of wooden splinters that spat from the empty window frame. Kate reached the door and poked her rifle through the window just in time to see the man grab the laptop in both hands and haul it to the floor, before her own bullets shredded the surface of the desk where the laptop had been.

Crap, he only needs to push one button .

But I can’t hear a shield going up outside. Or even anything being pressed in here . W hy hasn’t he just done it?