Anthony Horowitz - Nightrise

He saw the death of Kyle Hovey. Worse than that, it was his hands that were around the other man’s neck. He could feel the warm flesh and the pulsing vein under his own fingers as he squeezed. This had been the most recent killing and it was uppermost in Banes’s mind. He saw a woman watching him. She had very short grey hair, a long neck, glasses. Banes was afraid of her. Jamie felt the fear. He saw the cruelty in her eyes and for a moment she was looking straight at him, smiling while he committed murder.

But then the image folded away and he was inside a trailer. There was a young girl lying on a bed with a dazed expression on her face and long hair straggling over the pillows. She moved her arm and Jamie saw that the flesh was bruised and mauve and that there were puncture marks, some of them covered with scabs. There were clothes everywhere, crumpled beer cans and ashtrays spilling out their contents, a dirty calendar on the wall. Colton Banes at home. It was there and then it was gone. Jamie had seen it only for a second. But it felt like an hour or even a day.

And then he saw other murders; a gun fired endlessly in front of him, a whole line of people, young and old, being shot down as if in an obscene fairground gallery. Some had died quietly. Some had cried for mercy. Jamie heard them and watched them fall. Mainly men. A few women. The bullets spat out, one after another, and blood splattered a dozen different walls.

And then he came to Don White.

“Whose murder?”

“ You shouldn’t have asked.”

He heard the words and saw Don White jerk backwards as the bullet hit him. Then it was Marcie’s turn. She had been taken by surprise in the kitchen. She hadn’t even heard the door open. She had just turned round and that was it.

So many deaths. A chamber of horrors.

He saw himself, chased out of the theatre. The dog – Jagger – forced to the ground. And the man who was running for president, Charles Baker. That was crazy. What was he doing in Banes’s head? But it was definitely him, raising a hand and smiling, saying something to a journalist.

Another flicker, a hundred different places, flashing past like a falling deck of cards. He had arrived in a city, maybe somewhere in China. A strange boat with dark, wrinkled sails making its way across a stretch of water. Gone. Now he was back in Los Angeles, seeing himself as he entered the office. He felt the moment of recognition, his own name whispered in anger and surprise. Jamie fought against the torrent of words, images and emotions, searching for the one thing he needed.

“Where is Scott Tyler?”

Alicia had asked the question and the answer had to be there, ricocheting through Banes’s mind. Jamie wasn’t sure how much longer he could stay there. He was going to be sick. He felt as if he was drowning.

And then he saw him. His brother. Scott.

He was lying on his back in an enclosed room, stripped to the waist. He was ill. There was a tube running into his nose, the sort of thing you get in a hospital, and another in his wrist. Some sort of transparent liquid was dripping down. Scott was covered in sweat. His hair was soaked through. There was a trickle of dried blood at the corner of his mouth. His eyes were open and filled with pain. Jamie wanted to know what Scott was thinking but that was impossible. He was seeing him as Banes had seen him. When? Not yesterday. The day before, maybe. Recently…

“Where is Scott Tyler?”

Banes didn’t want anyone to know. He was fighting it. But still the images came, one after another. Jamie saw desert. A cactus shaped like the letter Y. He saw mountains with the moon suspended eerily between two peaks. There was a loud electronic buzz as a gate opened automatically, then an echoing crash as a second one closed. Faces. Other boys, some the same age as Scott, but all of them lifeless, vacant. A security camera swivelling round. Showers, the steam rolling out. More boys, their outlines just visible behind plastic curtains. Another gate smashed shut. And there it was at last, the sign that Banes didn’t want him to see.

Jamie saw it and began to back out from inside the man’s head. He couldn’t stay here any longer, surrounded by so much poison and pain. He felt himself pulling away, as if flying up through a great tunnel. More images swept past, but so fast that he couldn’t see them.

And then he was back where he had started, in the office, with Banes staring at him, open-mouthed, from behind the desk.

For a few moments, neither of them moved. Jamie couldn’t have if he’d wanted to. He was exhausted. He felt drained. Then Banes smiled. “Jamie,” he muttered.

Jamie could only watch as Banes reached into his desk and took out a gun. It was the dart gun that he had used on Scott. The man seemed to know that Jamie was helpless, that he had nowhere to go. His movements were careful and unhurried. He didn’t even stand up. He took careful aim.

And then the outer door crashed open and the security man blundered in.

“Excuse me, sir…” he said, and stopped dead in his tracks. He had come through the outer office only to find a Nightrise executive pointing a gun at a child.

Jamie saw the look on his face and realized that, although he might work here, the security man had no idea what went on behind the closed doors of the different suites. What would he do now? Jamie decided not to find out. He reached behind him and grabbed hold of the man, pulling him forward between Banes and himself. It was at that exact moment that Banes pulled the trigger. The dart flew its short distance and buried itself in the man’s arm. The security man shouted out in pain and alarm. Jamie let go of him and ran out. He heard a second dart slam into the door frame as he ran through. Then he was back out in the corridor, running as fast as he could.

He already knew that he couldn’t take the lifts. Even if one happened to be waiting for him with the doors open, they would deactivate it before it reached the ground floor. But he was heading in the opposite direction. The fire escape. Forty-nine storeys led to the street but he only had to get below the forty-fifth and he would be out of Nightrise: he would be safe.

One of the managers tried to stop him. Jamie saw a man in a suit standing in the corridor, his arms apart as if he wanted an embrace. Jamie lashed out, punching the man full in the stomach, then leapt past him as he crumpled, gasping, onto the floor. The fire exit was ahead. Suddenly there were people everywhere but none of them were moving, hoping someone else would take the responsibility. In the corridor behind him, he heard Banes shouting orders. Jamie hit the fire exit and plunged through.

And at exactly that moment, every alarm in the building went off. The air exploded in a chaos of howling sirens and bells. Jamie wondered if the door was wired up and he had triggered the alarm himself. But that wasn’t possible. He had already opened it once. It was Alicia. It had to be. She must have dialled 911 the moment after she made the call to Mr Banes.

Jamie hurtled down the emergency stairs. Below him, he heard doors bang open. Nightrise shared the building with at least a dozen other businesses and they were all being evacuated. The stairway ahead of him was already crowded. Jamie pushed and twisted his way through the crowds but, even so, it took an age to reach street level. As he broke into the sunlight, firefighters and police officers were making their way in, looking for any sign of smoke. There were two or three hundred people out on the pavement. Already, word was beginning to spread that the whole thing had been a hoax.

Jamie hurried across the road. Alicia was waiting for him in the car.

“Did you get it?” she asked.