The Assassin Game Read online

  “OK,” Ms. Lasillo says. “Maybe you’re right. Daniel was posting as Skulk. But it doesn’t mean that’s him posting now. This could still all be stuff that Vaughan has preprogrammed.”

  I rub my hands over my head and smooth down my hair. “All right. Let’s try it, then.”

  “Huh?” Ms. Lasillo says.

  “Let’s talk to the ghost in the machine,” I say. I look at the clock. “In a short while, I’m supposed to be meeting Vaughan at the caves. So let’s send him a message about that. See what he says back.”

  Mr. Flynn nods. “OK. But, Cate, after that, I’m driving you back to the sick bay and we’re letting the police know you’re safe. We can’t put it off forever.”

  “Fine.” I move in front of Ms. Lasillo’s laptop, and my fingers dangle over the keyboard. “Here goes.” I type.

  Clouseau

  Vaughan, are you OK?

  Come on, Vaughan. Come through. Show them you’re real, not some computer program.

  We wait. I refresh the screen after a minute to keep us logged in. And again, after another minute.

  “Try something else,” Mr. Flynn urges. I type again.

  Clouseau

  Vaughan, what happened with Skulk, at the studios?

  We all sit there, watching. I refresh the page a few times, but nothing happens. I glance outside at the darkening skies, then look at the time in the corner of the screen.

  Clouseau

  Vee, I’m not going to make it to the cave by 6:00 p.m. And the police are looking for me. What shall I do?

  I hold my breath.

  And then, suddenly, a little red skull pops up on the map above the caves.

  “There!” Ms. Lasillo cries, tapping on the screen lightly. I hardly dare move. Then it comes: the ping.

  DeadMcTavish

  Meet me at the causeway. Come now.

  “You see?” I whisper, triumphant, turning to both of them. “It is him!”

  Mr. Flynn shakes his head. “Not necessarily, Cate.”

  “It’s vague. It’s the program,” Ms. Lasillo says.

  I type some more.

  Clouseau

  They don’t believe that you’re alive, Vaughan. They think that you’re a machine, that you’ve programmed Crypt to reply to me! How can I convince them?

  We all wait. And then the ping comes.

  DeadMcTavish

  Come now.

  My heart sinks. Ms. Lasillo holds her hands open as if to say, I told you so. Mr. Flynn puts his hand on my arm.

  “Sorry, Cate,” he says.

  Ping.

  DeadMcTavish

  Get Flynny to drive you in the car. And tell Ms. Lasillo that if she gets her sticky fingers out of my code, when I’ve got a second, I’ll show her the back door in her intranet. Chop, chop! Xxx

  I laugh out loud. Long and hard. It’s difficult to stop.

  Mr. Flynn says, “Car’s in the garage. I’ll get the keys.”

  “We need to hurry!” I can’t stop smiling.

  Pacing up and down in the living room, I call to them again. Flynn is fetching his coat. Ms. Lasillo is upstairs getting dressed. Finally. Thank God. Don’t want to think too much about that, because, you know, gross. But maybe she’ll be a bit nicer to me now.

  “The causeway.” Mr. Flynn reappears and grabs a couple flashlights from a shelf. “Why on earth does he want to meet us there, do you know?” He opens a drawer and starts to rifle through things. “Tide timetable. Where is it?”

  “On the intranet.” I bring up the page on the Umfraville site. “Oh.” I read down the list of times for early October. “Interesting. Tide comes in soon.” I check the time. “Like, very soon.”

  “Of course it does,” Mr. Flynn says. “Sophia, let’s go!” He goes to the hall and shouts up the stairs, before turning to me again. “We’ll get in the car. Come on.” He leads the way out of the front door and around the cottage to the little alley that runs between the house and the garage. We enter the cramped garage by a side door. He opens the car and flings the flashlights into the backseat. “Get that, will you?” He gestures to the garage door, one of those big up-and-over types. I nod and move around the car as he starts the engine. I turn the handle on the middle of the garage door and try to lift it up. It won’t budge.

  “Stuck?” Mr. Flynn opens the car window and shouts over the engine noise.

  I try it again, not wanting to seem completely hopeless, but it’s like something is caught in the mechanism up on the roof.

  Mr. Flynn swears. “It does this sometimes. Hang on.” He cranks the window closed, gets out, the car still running, and starts to search around on the wall for something. “I keep a screwdriver handy to give the pulley a poke—can you see it anywhere?”

  I shake my head, point to a crowbar. “This do it?”

  “No, needs to be smaller. OK”—he smacks his forehead—“screwdriver’s in the kitchen. Get in the car. I’ll grab it and be right back.”

  I do as he asks, and he leaves the garage, shutting the side door behind him. The car’s engine is running, keys in the ignition, and as I sit in the passenger seat, I toy with the idea of sliding over to the driver’s side, flooring the pedal, breaking the door down, and driving to the causeway myself. But then I can wave bye-bye to any kind of support from Mr. Flynn. I look at my watch. How long since Vaughan messaged us? Ten minutes? Fifteen? That would be just enough time for him to get there if he ran all the way from the caves. I glance toward the side door leading to the house; Mr. Flynn and Ms. Lasillo are taking their time. I feel a surge of impatience. Come on! Time is a-wasting.

  I check my tablet. No skulls, no messages. Another couple minutes go by. Right, I’m going to give them a shout.

  When I open the car door, the fumes from the exhaust burn my throat on the first breath. Yuk. I skip quickly to the side door to the alleyway and turn the handle. It doesn’t move. I give it a shove; did Mr. Flynn lock it for some reason? He doesn’t want me skipping out on them? I feel a rush of panic, as the fumes from the car make me start to cough. Bloody stupid of him to leave the engine running. I pull my parka over my nose, give up on the door, and go back to the car, but to the driver’s door this time. I’ll just turn off the engine and hope this stuff dissipates quickly.

  The driver’s door is locked. I try it again, looking at it as if I’m doing something wrong. I cough, moving around to the passenger side, and then the two back doors, but the car will not let me back in. I feel the vomit begin to move in my stomach, sweep my arm across my face, trying somehow to shield the air that goes into my lungs. I stagger across to the garage door again, thump it, but it’s not moving. I look around wildly—the crowbar! It feels heavy and unfamiliar in my hands, but I thrust it into the bottom of the garage door and lean on one side. A gap to the outside appears, big enough to get an arm through, big enough to put my face down there and gulp clean, cold air, but not big enough to squeeze through.

  “Mr. Flynn!” I scream through the gap. “Help me!”

  But he doesn’t come. Why not? As I lie there trying to pry the gap open farther, a crazy thought pops into my head.

  Maybe Mr. Flynn doesn’t want me to make it out of here alive.

  Could he be involved in all of this, somehow? Mr. Flynn, hanging around the cliffs at the dead of night during Vaughan’s initiation. Mr. Flynn, first to the stage when Emily collapsed, right there on hand when Rick was poisoned. I don’t want to believe it, but maybe he despises us, the privileged superkids, when he was denied his own chance to make his mark on the world?

  Wooziness moves over me like a large hand clamped over my face. I suck in some more air, fighting it. Could it be Ms. Lasillo’s the one? She’s jealous of me, the attention I get from Flynny. She’s clever; she could have easily made that robot. She was with us when Rick ate the cupcake. She could have pois
oned it, intending it for me. She’s as uptight and annoying as hell, but is she really a killer?

  Maybe the two of them are in it together?

  I breathe deep, trying to chase the fumes from my head. Whatever. It’s up to me to help myself. I lie there, head wedging the garage door open, gulping air. This is not a sustainable situation. It’s not an attractive prospect, to give up my fresh air and go back in, but it’s the only way I’m going to free myself. I take, one, two, three gulps more, then wiggle back and let the door seal me in again. Grabbing the crowbar, I head for Mr. Flynn’s car. He’s not going to be very pleased. Funnily enough, I couldn’t give a monkey’s about that right now. Wielding the crowbar like a battering ram, I get angry and take it out on the driver’s side window, hammering the sharp end of the crowbar into the glass. The first time I swing, the glass just frosts over into a thousand little sugary pieces, but the pane stays intact. I pull the crowbar back again and yell as I smash it again. This time the glass shatters and falls out of the window. My hand moves in to release the door lock, and I feel a swoon of fumes start to overtake my body again. It will not be enough to simply turn off the engine; I have to get out of here.

  I launch myself into the driver’s seat and grab the gear stick. I’ve never driven in my life, and unless I can figure this out now, I never will. I crank the stick to the number one, and there’s a grinding sound—oh crap, clutch. My feet stomp around, first finding the accelerator, making the engine roar. I find the clutch and try the gear change again, and the car bunny-hops forward.

  “Hand brake,” I mutter, yanking the thing. It releases with a shudder. I press both pedals and the car makes an unholy screaming sound; this is a hell of a time to try and find the biting point. Oh holy greased lightning, please let me figure this out. I rev the engine again, easing off slowly, slowly, slowly…the wheels spin and the car leaps forward. I’m quick with stepping on the gas. No guts, no glory. Too late, I remember my seat belt. The front of the car smacks into the garage door and I jerk forward, my mouth smashing against the steering wheel. Despite the exploding pain and the taste of blood, I keep my foot down, and the car pushes the door, pushes, pushes…and stops.

  But it’s enough. Daylight—or what’s left of it—is visible through the side of the door, enough for me to escape. On foot, but hey, I was never going to be able to drive this thing to the causeway. One hand carrying a flashlight and the other across my bloody mouth, I slide out of the car and stagger into the delicious cold air, my head spinning with carbon monoxide and the agony of smashed teeth. Once across the garden, I glance up at the cottage. What’s going on in there? I’m not going to wait to find out. I don’t know how that door got locked, but more fool me if it was Flynn or Lasillo who locked it.

  As I set off across the field in the direction of the causeway, there’s a high whine. Ducking behind a hedgerow, I see it: a police car, lights flashing, coming down the road. I haven’t got much time. I run, keeping low and out of sight, and then I hit the woods, straighten up, and make a dash for it, leaping over undergrowth, swallowing blood and snot and tears and probably teeth too, but I don’t care. I just have to get there. The woods give way to playing fields, and once I’m beyond the pavilion, there’s nothing between me and the causeway except undulating dunes. Sometimes Mr. Churley makes us run up them, and it’s ridiculously hard work, even on the days I’m not beaten-up and half-poisoned.

  Reaching Vaughan is the strongest motivator. I can’t see him yet, because the causeway is hidden by the rise of the dunes, but even if I had a clear view of the road, it’s getting very dark, very quickly. This time the dark may be my friend; I cut across the dunes and risk the road.

  Salt breezes blow my hair across my face. As my feet hit tarmac, I can hear the sea, somewhere out there in the darkness, and as my beam flashes into the gloom, it catches a large, yellow sign:

  DANGER

  DO NOT PROCEED WHEN WATER REACHES THE CAUSEWAY

  I run up to the sign and lean on it, panting. Where is he?

  There is a line of poles, maybe four, five yards high, on either side of the road, which itself is slightly raised out of the sand. When the tide is in, those poles disappear. The road across the seabed is a little over three miles long, and it dips in the middle because, you know, it’s the seabed. There’s a refuge—a tiny little shack on high stilts—about a third of the way across, for those crazy enough to attempt to cross when the waves are lapping at the roadside.

  Which is what they are doing now.

  “Oh, bloody hell, Vaughan!” I sigh, looking around at the dunes, and a small rocky outcrop along the waterline. There is nothing here, nowhere to hide, nowhere to skulk. “Where are you?”

  It hurts to speak. I gingerly feel my broken lip and my front teeth for the first time. One is extremely wobbly, and I have a beard of crusty blood. I glance back up the road. I don’t have much time before the police get here. I walk out onto the road. The tarmac is littered with sand and shingle deposited by the last tide. I can see a little way off along the causeway, and there is certainly no obvious place on the road that Vaughan could be hiding.

  “Vaughan!” I risk the shout out across the causeway. I flash my light around—could he be in a boat?

  Nothing. I click my flashlight off.

  I’ve missed him. Or he was never here. He never made it down from the caves. Maybe the police caught him. Oh, no. I hunker down into a crouch. I’m so stupid. Mr. Flynn left me in the garage because he wanted to call the police, tell them Vaughan was online at the caves and would be making his way to the causeway. They’ve caught him, and they’ll be coming after me next.

  Or Skulk has him.

  I have to go and look. Get to the caves. I straighten up, click my flashlight on again.

  And then I see it. A flash out on the causeway. And another. And another. Someone is signaling with a flashlight, far out on the road, so far that the beam is just a little pinprick of light, dancing, feebly.

  The light disappears.

  I fumble my flashlight, suddenly heavy with importance in my hand. I wave it, then flick it on and off, on and off.

  A pause. And then the dancing light flashes again, seemingly this time with more excitement, more urgency.

  “Vaughan!” I shout, but it’s way too far away for him to hear me and for him to answer me. Instead I flash my light back, and it takes me a moment to realize what I’m doing, but I’m running down the slippery causeway, away from the safety of dry land and out into the unknown. The light is still dancing ahead, pulling me to it. Myths of wreckers, evil souls luring boats to certain death on the rocks, jump into my head. Only this light is pulling me out to sea. The water is not over the road yet, but the farther I go, the more I risk being cut off. The tide turns suddenly here, and even in a car you can get stuck.

  And it might not be him. Between the devil and the deep blue sea…

  But still I keep running. Because otherwise, I’ll never know.

  I run and I run. The light is maybe a mile away, or at least it feels that way. I run on and on and it never gets closer. My face throbs with each thud of my feet on the road. The light disappears suddenly. I flash my light again as I run, shout some more, but there’s nothing but the dull road ahead, the black sea on either side, threatening to spill over and consume me. Did I imagine the light? Did I imagine Vaughan? I stop suddenly, skidding to a halt, and look back the way I’ve come. Will I be stranded out here? I turn out to the causeway once more. My head spins, pain and light-headedness threatening to overtake me. Maybe I died back there in Mr. Flynn’s garage, and all of this is my journey to the afterlife. Follow the light, follow the light…

  It flashes again, and I cry out in relief, both at its reappearance and the fact that I’m almost there. I’m not sodding dead. I’m too achy and cold and miserable for that. I push myself on, running again, and as I get closer, I see exactly where the light is comin
g from. The refuge—the small hut, perched precariously high up on stilts. I can make out the shape of it now, painted white against the dark gray of the sky. The light is flicking on and off at the bottom of the stilts; that must be where he is. And as I run, I think I can see him, a shadow sheltered against the ladder that leads up to the hut. It makes me run faster, forgetting the flashlight, just pelting down that road as fast as I can, the cold salt air blurring my eyes with tears.

  “Vaughan!”

  Splash, splash, splash. There’s suddenly water underfoot. The sea has started to swallow up the causeway. I don’t care—he’s there, he’s sitting, the mop of curly hair shaking as he waves the flashlight. And he’s shouting.

  “…turn back!”

  My lungs are burning, but I’m there. His face is crumpled, frightened—but his eyes shine and I fling myself at him, down there where he sits, throwing my arms around his neck and toppling over onto him.

  “Oh God, Vaughan, they told me you were dead, you idiot!” I cry into his neck, hugging him, my hands moving over his back, his long, black wool coat, wet with salt water. “Are you OK? What are you doing here? Why are you sitting on the ground? Aren’t you soaked?” I realize his arms are not reciprocating and back off. He holds his hands up in front of him; they’re tied. I glance down and see his ankles are tied too.

  “Did Skulk do this to you?” I crouch down, pulling at the plastic ties, but they are too tight and strong to undo. “Vaughan, it’s Daniel isn’t it?” I stand up. “I’m so sorry. I should have worked it out days ago. Did he hurt you? Where is he?”

  Vaughan shakes his head. “What happened to you, Cate?”

  “What?” I bend down and try to pull him to his feet. “Oh, the face? Little car accident, but no sweat, Dad can pay the dentist bills.” I heave at him. “Can you get up?”

  “Broken my ankle,” he mutters. “So pathetic. Tried to climb the ladder, trussed up like this. Fell off.”