Anthony Horowitz - Nightrise

“Let’s go…” Jamie was breathless. His heart was pounding. And he felt dirty, with Banes’s memories still clinging to him. He wanted to get them out of his system. He needed to go far away.

They drove off, looping round the block and then heading back towards West Hollywood and the house. Alicia looked briefly at Jamie but said nothing. Perhaps she understood that he needed to be left alone.

Then her cell phone rang.

She looked at it for a moment. Nobody knew that she was in Los Angeles apart from her sister – and she was probably somewhere in the air. So who…? A number showed in the screen and, with a sense of dread, she recognized it. She had no choice. She answered the phone.

“You called me a few minutes ago,” Colton Banes said. “I believe I am speaking to Mrs Alicia McGuire.”

Alicia pulled over and stopped.

His own telephone system would have stored her number, of course. How had he got her name? It wouldn’t have been difficult. The Nightrise Corporation was a huge business. It would have its own resources.

“What do you want?” Alicia demanded.

Next to her, Jamie heard the voice and knew at once who she was speaking to. But he couldn’t make out the words.

“You have a son,” Banes replied.

Alicia stiffened. Pain flared in her eyes.

“We want Jamie Tyler. He’s nothing to you. You know that. If you ever want to see your son again, give him to us. It’s a very simple proposition, Mrs McGuire. You give us this boy, we’ll give you yours. But this is a once-only offer. If you refuse me, you’ll never see Daniel again.”

Alicia wasn’t breathing. Jamie knew that something terrible had happened. She was holding her phone as if she were trying to crush it. About ten seconds went past. At last she spoke.

“You go to hell, you bastard,” she whispered.

She ended the call. Then she turned off the phone. Finally, she threw it onto the back seat as if it had bitten her.

“What did he want?” Jamie asked.

“He offered to swap Danny for you,” Alicia said.

Jamie didn’t know what to say. He knew what she must be thinking. He didn’t have any need to read her mind.

But when she turned to him again, she was smiling even though her eyes were bleak. “He’s told me what I wanted to know,” she said. “Nightrise have got Danny. Before it was a suspicion. Now it’s a fact. And that means I know what to do.”

She slammed the car into gear and once again they drove off. Jamie looked back. The sun was still shining. The office of the Nightrise Corporation looked no different from any of the others that surrounded it as they joined the freeway, leaving it far behind.

Anthony Horowitz

Nightrise

The police had thrown a tight security ring all around the Carlton Hotel in Wilshire Boulevard, just south of Beverly Hills. It seemed to Jamie that Los Angeles had no real centre. It sprawled carelessly from district to district… but if the city had a wallet it would surely keep it here. Jamie had never seen so many expensive shops and boutiques standing shoulder to shoulder, the windows dripping with watches and jewellery and five-thousand-dollar suits.

The Carlton was an old-fashioned building, fifteen storeys high and stretching an entire block. As Alicia and Jamie drove into the front courtyard, a dozen valets in matching grey waistcoats hurried forward to help them out of the car and then to park it below. But even the valets were outnumbered by the secret service personnel, who had their own uniform: black suits, white shirts, sunglasses and earpieces. To Jamie they looked almost ridiculous, like something out of a cartoon. But perhaps that was the idea. They were advertising the fact that the hotel was protected.

Senator John Trelawny was staying here for twenty-four hours before he gave his speech at the LA Convention Center and he had taken over the entire twelfth floor for the night. There were less than five months until the general election and his campaign team numbered almost a hundred people, including media advisors, political consultants, speech writers, pollsters, personal aides and more security men. All of them had rooms, and for one night all the lifts to the twelfth floor had been blocked. To visit the senator, guests would need to show ID and then receive a pass key – provided by the secret service. Callers were accompanied all the way. If they didn’t have an invitation, they didn’t get in.

“Will he see us?” Jamie asked as he and Alicia followed a winding corridor into the hotel.

Alicia nodded. “I just have to let him know we’re here…”

They entered a cavernous lobby with a huge chandelier hanging over a round, polished table. Jamie found himself staring open-mouthed at the wealth on display. There was too much of everything. Too many electric candlelights, too many vases of flowers – at least ten of them – on the table, too many antique clocks and mirrors and display cases packed with handbags, scarves and shoes. And too many people. There was a concierge desk and a reception desk and porters and guests everywhere. Rush hour for the rich, Jamie thought. He had never been anywhere like this.

Alicia stopped and looked around, searching for someone she knew. A few moments later, she found him. “There!” she exclaimed, and moved forward.

A man was standing next to a table close to the lifts. He was dressed in the same dark suit and white shirt as the other security men, but he had a brightly coloured tie as if to announce that he wasn’t actually one of them. Even so, there was a telltale wire curling behind his ear and he was obviously doing the same job: scanning the lobby with suspicious eyes. He was at least six and a half feet tall with blond, close-cropped hair, blue eyes that were constantly on the move and the body of a weightlifter. His shoulders were huge. Either he was ex-army or a retired basketball player… or both.

The man saw Alicia and recognized her before she was nearer than ten paces.

“Alicia!” He greeted her by name but he seemed more surprised than pleased to see her.

“How are you, Warren?”

“I’m good.” He drawled the words. “I didn’t know you were in LA.”

“I didn’t know I was coming until a couple of days ago.”

Warren had noticed Jamie, who was standing a few steps behind her, trying to keep out of the way. The man frowned briefly, and Jamie was suddenly nervous that he might have been recognized.

“This is a friend of mine,” Alicia said. “His name is David.” There was a showcase against the wall, advertising Davidoff cigars. Jamie knew that she had plucked the false name from there and hoped that the security man hadn’t noticed it too. She turned to him. “David, this is Warren Cornfield.”

Warren nodded slowly at Jamie, then turned back to Alicia. “What can I do for you?” he asked.

“I want to see the senator.”

“You want to see the senator?” A slow smile spread across Cornfield’s lips. But he wasn’t amused. “You know that’s not possible, Alicia. Tomorrow he’s talking to ten thousand people. Somehow, I don’t think he’s got time to see you right now.”

But Alicia stood her ground. “When I left, he said his door would always be open to me.”

“That’s not what he told me.”

“Why don’t you ask him?”

“I’m not his assistant, Alicia. You know that. I think maybe you should ring back another time and get an appointment.”

Jamie could see that Alicia was struggling to keep her temper. “I’m here right now, asking for an appointment, Warren,” she growled. “And you’re right. You’re not his assistant. So why don’t you call up to Elizabeth, who is – and she can ask John if he’ll see me.”