Anthony Horowitz - Nightrise

Alicia made a decision. It was probably the wrong one but she couldn’t think of anything else to do. She slammed the car into reverse, spun the wheel and sped off.

“What are you doing?” Daniel demanded.

“We can’t get past them. The road to the airport’s closed. The only thing to do is to get back to Reno. We can hide out at the trailer park. Nobody knows we’re there. The senator will help us. Maybe that’s what we should have done from the start.”

The two police officers had seen them leave. Without a moment’s hesitation, they ran back to their car and set off in pursuit. One of them was already on the radio calling for assistance from every town in the area. Four suspects heading east towards Carson City. A blue Mercedes, registration number NATHAL3. There were few roads in this part of the country and the distances were huge. There was no chance they were going to get away.

The Mercedes was doing almost a hundred miles an hour. Alicia was gripping the wheel, her eyes fixed on the road. She already knew that she had made a mistake, trying to break away. She had turned herself into a target. Any minute now she expected to see more cars blocking the road. Maybe a helicopter would come swooping out of the sky. She had lost sight of the police car but she could hear it. The officers had turned on their siren. It was less than a mile behind.

They flashed through a commercial centre with supermarkets and shops selling boat equipment and ski gear. That was the thing about Lake Tahoe. Skiing in the winter, boating in the summer, beautiful all the year round. Now they caught occasional glimpses of the lake on their left, the icy, deep blue water shimmering on the other side of the pine trees that covered the banks. They were still speeding, putting more space between themselves and the pursuing police car, which seemed to have dropped back a bit in the distance. Certainly its siren seemed fainter. Alicia wondered if she should come off the road – but there was no turning, nowhere to hide. On one side there was the lake. On the other, the ground rose up steeply with a rough sandy rock face and above it more trees that seemed to continue all the way to the sky.

They were trapped on the road and Jamie had come to the same conclusion as Alicia. They weren’t going to get away. What would happen if they were arrested by the police? John Trelawny would help them – but would he be able to reach them in time? It only took one policeman, paid the right amount of money, to make sure that none of them were ever seen again.

They shot through a tunnel that had been bored through a huge mass of rock. Ahead of them the road twisted to the right.

And then Jamie heard it. A whisper in his head.

Stop the car…

Three words. But he hadn’t heard them. Nor had he imagined them. With a thrill of excitement, he realized what had happened. Scott had sent them. He had finally made contact.

“Stop!” he shouted.

Alicia carried on driving.

“Alicia! Stop the car! Now!”

The urgency in his voice made itself felt. Daniel was already twisting round, looking at him as if he was mad, but Alicia slammed her foot on the brake and the car sliced across the road and skidded to a halt in a lay-by. The engine stalled. Somewhere behind them, the scream of the siren filled the air.

“Jamie…” Alicia began.

She was on the edge of tears, blaming herself for what had happened. But looking around him, Jamie realized something.

He knew where he was. He had been here before.

Five or six years ago. Before Don and Marcie. Even before Ed and Leanne. Derry, their social worker, had brought them to this exact spot because she had wanted to show them where they had been found. It was this lay-by, right here. This was where the two babies had been abandoned in a box intended for garden seeds.

And she had told them something about the area. According to Derry, the Washoe Indian tribe had been living here as long ago as ten thousand years. It was the main reason she had assumed that Scott and Jamie were Washoe themselves. Lake Tahoe was the very centre of their universe and somewhere below them there was a cave that was so sacred that tourists weren’t allowed anywhere near it. Even the shamans wouldn’t go there.

The Washoe called this place de’ek wadapush. In English, that translated as Cave Rock.

“We’re getting out,” Jamie said.

“Jamie…” Alicia knew from his voice that there was no point arguing. They had only seconds left. The police car was still out of sight but it would be thundering towards them.

“I think this is goodbye, Alicia.” Jamie didn’t know how he knew. He just did. “Thank you for helping me. Thank you for everything.”

“You did it all, Jamie. Not me…”

“Goodbye, Danny.” Jamie reached forward and shook hands with Alicia’s son, then opened the door. He slid out, then waited for Scott to follow. Alicia had also got out. They had no time. She seized hold of Jamie and kissed him briefly on the cheek, then pressed something into his hand. The scream of the police siren had disappeared. For a brief instant she thought it might have gone a different way or even broken down – but her hopes were dashed almost at once. The car had simply entered the tunnel and the bulk of the mountains was blocking any sound. As she looked up the road, it burst out. Worse still, a second police car had joined it. Both cars were racing towards them.

A sandy track ran through the fir trees and past a series of boulders. Jamie and Scott had broken into a run, heading away from the road and down towards the lake. The ground tumbled unevenly all the way to the water’s edge. A wooden platform had been built for tourists and the view was certainly awesome, with the lake a dazzling blue in the afternoon sun and a range of mountains, some of them snow-peaked even now, spread out on the other side. There was nobody else around. Jamie leapt over a fence and breathed a sigh of relief as his brother did the same.

Scott – are you with me? He sent the thought without opening his mouth.

I’m with you. The words were indistinct, as if transmitted by a faulty radio. But Jamie heard them and felt a surge of hope that carried him on. He had no real idea why he was doing this. He wasn’t even sure what he was doing. The very fact that they were here at all was surely some sort of crazy coincidence. But at the same time he knew that it was meant. They were doing the right thing.

“This is the police! Stay where you are! If you don’t stop, we’ll open fire!”

The words rang out, amplified through a bullhorn. Jamie almost laughed. They weren’t going to stop now. Did the police think that having come so far they would turn round and give themselves up? But the smile was wiped off his face a second later. There was a gunshot and a bullet ricocheted off one of the boulders just a few yards away. A warning shot? Or were the police really prepared to shoot them in the back?

He didn’t intend to find out. They were climbing down. The ground had fallen away so steeply that they had to use their hands and feet to guide them. The road was high up above them and unless the police followed them over the fence, they would be out of sight. With Jamie leading the way, they scrambled down the last few yards, using the lower branches of the fir trees to stop themselves falling. At last their feet hit shingle. They had reached the edge of the lake. The water spread out in front of them, millions and millions of gallons. And despite everything that had happened and the exertion of the descent, Jamie felt strangely at peace. It was as if he had come home. He still didn’t know for certain that he would find what he expected to find, but he was glad he was here.

He turned round – and there it was, just as Derry had said. A path of pure, white sand led to an opening in the rock. The cave was very dark and twisted back underneath the road. There was a design scratched into the surface, just above the entrance, so faint that he might not have noticed it unless he had been looking for it. A five-pointed star. Anyone else might think it had been carved recently but Jamie knew differently. It had been put there a long, long time ago.