Jon Evans - Dark Places

"Paul, get up, he's only fifteen minutes ahead of us, we can catch him," Steve urged.

"Not so fast," I said, forcing my voice to remain calm, dispassionate.

"What the fuck? " There was a dangerous note of hysteria in Hallam's voice.

"It's a trap," I said, thinking as I spoke. "Or a trick. One of the two."

"Paul, he has Nicole," Hallam said desperately, as if that justified walking into certain death. Of course for him it did. By taking Nicole, Morgan had effectively neutralized Hallam. Smart. Demonically smart.

"He's right," Lawrence said. "We have to think this through."

"We haven't got time," Steve said.

"It's a two-hour walk up the gorge," I said sharply. "Do you want to get there in two hours and be dead five minutes later, or do you want to get there in two hours five minutes ready for what's going to happen?"

"We can talk on the way," Hallam urged.

"If we go there," I said.

" If? "

"How do we know he's taken her there?"

"It's in the note!" Steve exclaimed, as if it were the Ten Commandments.

"Exactly," I said. "So all we know is that that's exactly what Morgan wants us to believe. Which is a long fucking way from making it the truth."

There was a pause as Steve and Hallam absorbed this.

"So where do you think she is?" Steve asked.

"I think there's three possibilities," I said. I'd thought this through now, to something that made a kind of sense. "One. He told the total truth and he's taking her there right now because he's setting some kind of trap there and he's sure he'll be able to deal with us all. Two. It's a total lie and he's taking her the other way, towards the village, and trying to send us on a wild-goose chase." I nearly continued so he has time to finish her off, but feared it might send Hallam over the edge of sanity. The thought shook me to the core — not Nicole, please, not her. "Three. He's being really fucking fancy and he hasn't taken her anywhere. She's right here in his room in one of the hotels and he's counting on us running around like headless chickens and going everywhere else."

"So which one? " Hallam asked.

That was the proverbial sixty-four-megabyte question, wasn't it? What would Morgan do? What was he after? We didn't know anything.

No; scratch that. We knew he was here, and that he'd followed us up the gorge today. (Unless one of us was in cahoots with him and had told him everything?… no.) We knew he had taken Nicole not more than half an hour ago, when she had gone to take a shower. Not an easy thing to do, even if he was twice her size; Nicole was stubborn as hell and wouldn't stop fighting unless there was no alternative.

And we knew who he was. Morgan Jackson. We knew him well.

"I think he told us the truth," I said. "I'm pretty sure. But I can't be totally sure. I think we should split up. One group goes down the trail. The other group stays here, checks the hotels and checks the road towards the village. But I don't think they'll find anything. I think I've got a pretty good idea what he's up to."

"What's that?" Lawrence asked.

"I think he's got a gun," I said. That explained a lot. It explained how he had spirited Nicole away without a scream or a loud battle. I couldn't see him ambushing her, clubbing her over the head, and carrying her away from the hotel — then he would have a hundred pounds of deadweight to carry, and if he doesn't judge the blow just right he only stuns her or he hits her too hard and she's got blood streaming from her head, and we are in a fairly populated tourist zone, it's just too risky for him. And I couldn't see Nicole meekly giving in to him if he only had a knife, she would have screamed or kneed him in the balls or run for it or something, she knew we were only steps away. But a gun, that was different, that was a trump card. No sense screaming and getting us all killed right then and there.

"And he's just planning to lure us up there and shoot us all," Lawrence said.

"The simplest plan is most likely to be correct," I said. "And it doesn't get any simpler than that. Which is another good reason to split up, so that he doesn't just off us all."

"So he has a gun," Steve said. He sat down. So did Lawrence, and then Hallam. Hallam looked a little better. I think now that we had defined the terms of the engagement, had reduced some of the uncertainty, it was easier for him. And if I was right, he still needed Nicole alive as bait, alive and ambulatory, and wouldn't have time to do anything awful to her. All good things.

"I think so," I said.

"And Nicole," Steve continued.

I nodded.

"And we don't."

I nodded again.

"Bit of a bloody problem, isn't it?" Steve said, and scratched his head.

"I don't think there was any struggle," Hallam said all of a sudden. "The note was in our room. I expect he got her coming in or out of the shower and took her back to our room to get dressed."

"So what do we do?" Lawrence asked me.

What am I, the Answer Man? I wanted to shoot back. I wanted to defer to Hallam. But he was too rattled to think clearly. And maybe I was the right man to ask. I felt that fury rising inside me again. Since we'd entered Morocco I'd thought of facing Morgan with trepidation, thought of it as some kind of unspeakably awful chore that had to be performed, best done and finished and never thought of again. But now that it was at hand I felt very differently. Now I welcomed it. Now I relished the chance.

"We have to decide who stays back here," I said. "And then, then I have got a plan. It's not a very good plan but it's all I've got. If anyone has a better idea, believe me, I would so much love to hear it right now."

"What's your plan?" Hallam asked.

I told them.

Everybody agreed it wasn't a good plan. But nobody had a better.

Lawrence and I left the hotel and began the long walk up Todra Gorge. To that boomerang-shaped bend in the trail between two sheer cliffs. To the kill site. That was what I had mentally christened it. Somebody was going to die there tonight. I could very easily become one of the night's victims, but that thought didn't trouble me unduly. It was the thought of Nicole and my friends being killed that frightened me. Killed because of me, because of what I had told them and where I had brought them.

We walked as fast as we dared. The moon was still hidden behind the towering walls of rock, and I illuminated our path with my Maglite flashlight. The same Maglite I had used to follow Morgan in Tetebatu, only two weeks ago in Indonesia. I was glad I had bought new batteries in London. They would last all the way to the kill site. Not all the way back, I didn't think, but if dead flashlights were our major problem at that stage I would be a happy man.

We had already done a good deal of hiking earlier that day, and adrenaline rushes don't last for two hours, but I didn't get tired. I could probably have trekked all the way to the youth hostel and back. The Annapurna Circuit had been ideal training for this; my feet were hard as stone, blisters long since replaced by callous, and my legs were machines made of iron. Lawrence didn't seem weary either. He was one of those thin wiry indestructible types who never slows down.

I entertained vague hopes of catching up with Morgan and Nicole before we got to the kill site, they probably only had a twenty-minute head start on us, but I didn't think it would really happen. He wasn't going to let her slow him down. Nicole was tough, and capable, and maybe she could get away from him in the dark. But I had my doubts. Morgan was bigger and stronger and faster, and if I was right, he had a gun. If it looked like she was going to get away he would shoot her without hesitation. And she knew that.

It was quiet, incredibly quiet, and incredibly dark. It's easy to forget, living in a First World city where there is a constant background glow of street lights and office towers even at midnight, just how dark the night can be. A thin ribbon of stars was visible high above, between the walls of the gorge, but otherwise we might as well have been a mile deep in a coal mine. There were no sounds save for the ones we made; no wind, no animals, no trickle of water, nothing but the noise of our rustling clothes and our boots scraping on rock. It was cold, amazingly cold so soon after the egg-frying heat of the day. The desert was blistering by day but bitter at night.