Anthony Horowitz - Nightrise

Don White smiled. “I used one of them against the other. I told Scott that if he didn’t do what I asked, I’d beat Jamie till he bled. I told him I’d do worse than that. And so he agreed – to protect his brother. And Jamie did it because Scott told him to. That was the end of it. Now we get along just fine. I’m their Uncle Don. They do the shows and I look after them.”

“What about school?”

“They went to school in Carson City when they were with Ed, but it didn’t work out. So now they’re home-schooled. The state’s happy enough about that. They even pay us money to look after them. Marcie’s smart. She teaches them all they need to know.” There was about a centimetre of the cigar left. Don took one last puff, then ground it out on the plate which had held his hamburger. “Maybe you’re right,” he admitted. “Maybe I should have put them on TV. I’m fed up with the theatre. Nobody’s interested. Nobody comes. Look at this place! We get more cockroaches than we get paying customers. I want out.

“So I was in a bar and I heard somebody talking about this corporation that was prepared to pay good money for information about ‘special’ kids. I went over to them and they gave me a name. I made a call and now… here you are. You’ve seen Scott and Jamie. You know they’re on the level. So what do you say?”

The man called Kyle Hovey glanced at his partner, who had been watching Don with empty eyes. Colton Banes nodded. “We want to take them,” Banes said.

“Take them? Just like that?”

“Children disappear all the time, Mr White. As you yourself have just told us, these children have no family and no friends. The state of Nevada has lost interest in them. We will look after them from now on and no one will be any the wiser.”

“What about the money?”

“We’ll pay you seventy-five thousand dollars.”

Don White licked his lips. That was more money than he had ever expected. But it still wasn’t enough. “Seventy-five thousand dollars… each?” he asked.

Colton Banes paused for a moment. But he had already decided. “Of course. One hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the two boys. But there is one thing you must understand. This figure is final. You will make no further enquiries about them, or about us. If you inform anyone about this transaction, you and your wife will also disappear. There is a great deal of sand in the desert, Mr White. You would not wish to find yourself underneath it.”

“When will you take them?”

“Tonight. Mr Hovey and myself will be inside the theatre. We will have two more colleagues outside. It would help us if you would ask the boys to remain behind when the show has finished, until the other performers have left. We will then remove them and pay you the money in cash. Is that acceptable?”

“Yeah. Sure it’s acceptable.” Don’s mouth was dry. But there were still some questions he had to ask. “Who exactly are you? I mean, I know who you work for. But what are you going to do with them? What do you want them for?”

“I don’t think you heard what I said,” Banes replied. “We are nobody. You’ve never met us. The boys no longer exist.”

“Sure. Fine. Whatever you say…”

From outside the office came the sound of pop music, blaring from the speakers inside the theatre. A single bell rang once, warning the performers.

The second show of the evening was about to begin.

“For as long as I can remember, we’ve known what’s been going on inside each other’s heads. That doesn’t make it easy when one of us is trying to pick up girls…”

How many times had he spoken those same lines? As Jamie began his second performance of the evening, he was suddenly overwhelmed with tiredness. He hated Reno. It was his prison. It was the island where he had been shipwrecked. But it would never be his home.

It felt empty. The streets were somehow too wide for the number of vehicles that went up and down them, stretching in a straight line for as far as the eye could see. The shops and offices were too far apart, separated by blank spaces that could have been building sites except that no building ever seemed to be going on. And there was never anyone around. They came every Friday – the tourists and the stag parties – but they were sucked into the casinos the moment they stepped out of their cars or planes only to emerge, bleary-eyed and broke, on Sunday night.

There was nothing else to do in Reno. Even the Truckee River, which cut through the centre, was as grey and uninteresting as it was possible for a river to be: trapped between two cement walls, the water flowing rapidly as if it were trying to get out of the city as quickly as it could.

Often Jamie would look at the mountain ranges on the far horizon, thirty or forty miles away. Even when the summer sun was burning, they were still tipped with snow. Sometimes he imagined that they were whispering promises of some other life to come. If he could just get across the mountains, over to the other side… But he knew it would never happen. He was stuck here. Drive ten minutes in any direction and you came to desert, scrubland and sand-covered hills. Scott had got it exactly right, just a few days after they had come here.

“We’re in the middle of nowhere, Jamie. And that’s exactly where we’re going.”

There were fewer people at the Reno Playhouse than there had been at the earlier performance that night – no more than forty. So far it hadn’t been a good show. Bobby Bruce had forgotten his lines. Zorro had got stuck in a pair of handcuffs. Even Jagger had been late appearing in the cage. Jamie could feel the bad temper of the crowd. They hadn’t even smiled at his opening joke.

He continued on autopilot, allowing the spotlights to dazzle him, not even looking at the audience. This time, the volunteer picked the Houston Chronicle out of the newspaper pile and the word that got ringed was “and”. That was always a bad sign. Small, ordinary words always made the trick seem less impressive. As Jamie returned to the stage, he remembered the word “funeral” that had come up earlier in the evening. It might not have been the most pleasant of words but at least it had had an effect on the audience.

Briefly, he swept his eyes round, looking for someone to come up and help him blindfold his brother for the next part of the act. And that was when he saw them. The bald man who had lent him his business card was sitting five rows back from the stage. The dark-haired man was next to him. Jamie had been talking but now he shuddered in mid-sentence and came to a halt. He felt Scott stop and look at him. Jamie knew what his brother was doing, even without turning round. Why had the two men come back? Sometimes people did return for a second performance. More often than not they were magicians themselves: mentalists and mind-readers who were trying to work out how the two brothers’ tricks were done. But these men in their identical, dark brown suits clearly weren’t entertainers. Nor had they come here to be entertained. The way they were watching him… they could have been two scientists in front of a specimen tray. Jamie remembered his unease the first time he’d seen them. He felt it again, only doubly so, now that they were here again.

“I… um… need someone to help me on the stage.” The words were forcing themselves from his lips almost despite himself. “Will you help me, please, sir?” Jamie had stopped in front of a man in his twenties. He was sitting with his arm around a girl. He had an Elvis Presley haircut.

“Forget it!” The man shook his head and sneered. He didn’t want to leave his seat.

That happened often enough. There were plenty of people who preferred not to volunteer – because they were embarrassed or because the whole thing was beneath them. Normally, Jamie would handle the situation easily and move on. But tonight he didn’t feel in control. He was afraid that one of the two men – the men in brown suits – was going to volunteer, and whatever happened he didn’t want them to come close. What now? He struggled to find the right words.