Without speaking, I peeled back the collar of my shirt and showed it to them. A pale and ragged five-inch line around the base of my throat. If my neck had been a clock face, it would have run roughly from six until nine.
“How d’ya get it?” Scott said. He swallowed. “I mean, was it, like, saving someone’s life?”
I had a brief mental snapshot of the moment the knife had gone in and the sheer hate on the face of the man who’d been wielding it. I’d believed completely that I was on borrowed time from then on. That nothing I did after that point mattered any more because I was already dead. I wondered if it had coloured all my actions since.
“Yes,” I said.
“Wow, that is intense,” Scott said, shaking his head. “So you have a gun, right?”
“Yes,” I said again. I wasn’t trying to unnerve him by the monosyllabic answers, there just didn’t seem to be any more to say.
“That’s cool,” Scott said. “My dad has a coupla hunting rifles but he won’t let me touch them. When he and Mom went on this trip he locked them away and, like, took the key with him so—”
The shrill buzz of a mobile phone cut through the tail end of his sentence. He instinctively started looking round for his phone but to my utter amazement it was Trey who reached calmly into a pocket and pulled out a mobile.
“‘S’up?” he said into it, then handed it over to Scott. “It’s Xander for you, man.”
“No shit? Why didn’t he call me on my own cellphone.”
“Because you left it in the truck, stupid,” Trey said. “What d’you think he’s using to call me on?”
Scott grabbed the phone. “Hey, Xander, get off my cellphone, asshole!” he said, laughing. “‘S’up dude?”
As he went over by the window to have his conversation I grabbed Trey’s arm and steered him to one side, out of Scott’s immediate earshot. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me you had your own mobile?” I demanded.
He shrugged out of my grip. “You never asked,” he said, both truculent and shifty.
I rolled my eyes. “For fuck’s sake, Trey,” I ground out, “I lost mine in the car. There are people I could call in the UK who might be able to help us get out of this mess and I haven’t been able to do it. And all this time you’ve had a damned mobile phone and not thought to tell me?”
“I thought you knew,” he said, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes. “You were the one who told me to call the guys last night. Why do that if you didn’t know I had a cellular?”
“I thought you used the payphone outside the motel,” I said. Why hadn’t he really told me about his mobile? What was he trying to hide?
“Anyways,” Trey said, sulky now, “I can’t use my phone to call long-distance. My dad had like, a block put on it.”
I sighed. “Trey, if I’m going to protect you in all of this you’re really going to have to start communicating with me.”
“Protect me?” he said, his voice low but scornful. “How? First you send Mr Whitmarsh into the wrong room at the motel so they, like, kill those people who didn’t have nothing to do with this. Then you crash our getaway car. You’ve never even done this before.”
“Hang on a minute!” I stared at him in surprise. “You’re the one who’s been making me out to be some kind of Wonder Woman in front of your mates.”
“Yeah,” he said, churlish. “What did you expect me to tell them – that you’re just, like, the nanny who’s in way over her head? No way!”
Scott ended his call and ambled back across the lounge to hand the mobile back to Trey. “What’s up?”
“I really need to call someone in the UK,” I said. “Can I use the phone here?”
He looked sheepish. For a moment my temper sparked. He was prepared to help us outrun the police, but the prospect of a transatlantic phone call was too much to ask.
“I’m quite happy to pay for the call,” I said through gritted teeth.
“It’s not that,” Scott said quickly. “It’s just that, well, when my folks were up in New England skiing last winter I kinda used the phone a lot when they were away. I mean a lot.” He glanced from one of us to the other, clearly not keen to reveal his misdemeanours in front of his friend. “Dad went ape when he got back and found out. He, like, totally lost it. So now, when they go away, they have the phone company put a block on the line. All I can do is make local phone calls ‘cos, like, they’re free, y’know?”
“Another one,” I muttered, turning away in frustration. “That’s just great.”
Scott stuck his hands in his back pockets, making his shoulders round. “These guys you need to get in touch with,” he said, diffident. “Can’t you just e-mail them?”
I turned back, slowly. I’d been a latecomer to the information superhighway. I still didn’t own a computer and I’d only occasionally used the ones at Sean’s office to surf the Internet.
Then, I regret to say, it was usually looking for cheaper quotes for motorbike insurance, rather than sending e-mail. It just hadn’t occurred to me that it was the perfect way to get in touch with Madeleine, regardless of the time difference.
“Scott,” I said, smiling at him, “you’re a genius.”
He grinned back at me.
Trey didn’t like that much, either.
***
The message I sent to Madeleine was short and to the point, more like a telegram than an e-mail. “Job blown up. Locals hostile. KP disappeared. TP with me. SM missing. Instructions?”
I put Scott’s phone number on there as well and sent it with a certain feeling of relief, like I’d got an SOS out from a sinking ship. I hoped the whole thing wasn’t too cryptic, but I was reluctant to say much more without knowing who might be monitoring e-mail traffic.
All I could do now was wait for a reply.
Then I checked my watch and realised with a sense of dejection that it was 12.37pm, Eastern Standard Time. Add five onto that and it was just outside office hours in the UK. And on a Friday afternoon, as well. There was always a chance that Madeleine wouldn’t even pick up my cry for help for another two days.
By that time, we could both be dead.
Downstairs, a door slammed and we heard chattering voices. Scott leaned over the rail and called for Xander and Aimee to come up. Trey was still hunched over the computer keyboard, logging on to his own e-mail account.
It was at that point I discovered Aimee had bought a packet of pink hair dye that she was fully expecting to use on me.
“It’s not, like, permanent,” she pointed out, pouting. “It’ll wash out in about a month.”
I thought about the picture on the news report.
“OK,” I said, resigned. “Let’s get this over with.”
***
I had to wash my hair first anyway, so they let me shower in peace in one of the guest bathrooms. I stood under a shower head the size of a dinner plate and let the hot water pummel my face and body for a long time. After twenty-four hours on the run, it felt indescribably wonderful to be clean again. I could have stayed in there for days.
Eventually, I reluctantly shut off the water and stepped out. I towelled myself roughly dry and opened one of the brown paper bags that Aimee had handed over. Inside was one of the smallest bikinis I’ve ever seen and a pair of flip-flops with plastic flowers on the straps – also in pink.
I glanced at the limp pile of clothes I’d discarded on the bathroom floor, but I couldn’t face the prospect of putting them back on again. I wrapped myself firmly in a bath towel, draped another round my neck, then grabbed the bag and ventured back out into the lounge.
The kids were all clustered in the kitchen. Someone had switched channels so MTV was playing loudly enough in the background for you to have to raise your voice to talk over it.