Sister, Missing (21 page)

Shocked, I sank to my knees. ‘Shelby?’ I stared at the chain. I couldn’t make sense of it. She’d been on the phone to us just minutes ago. How had she ended up here, in
this storage room where – I looked quickly round – there were no phones?

Jam gave up on the door and strode over. His mouth fell open as he took in Shelby’s chain.

‘Did Cooper Trent do that?’ he asked.

Shelby nodded. Her lower lip trembled. ‘He made me call out to you downstairs, then he brought me up here and tied me up.’

I stared at her in horror. ‘You mean he’s
trapped
us here?’ I said.

Shelby nodded.

Jam raced to the dormer window. He pushed at the glass, but it would only open a fraction.

‘Hey!’ he shouted through the crack. ‘Help!’

I turned to Shelby. ‘But . . . but you said Cooper Trent was going to the holiday house,’ I said. ‘And he
did
. I saw the police officers he knocked out.’

‘Cooper went there earlier,’ Shelby explained shakily. ‘He brought me here, went to deal with the police officers outside the holiday house, then came back and made me ring
you. He jammed the call too, so you couldn’t use the phone again. It all happened real fast.’

‘Help!’ Jam shouted through the dormer window again. He turned to me. ‘I can’t hear anyone outside.’

‘But Annie’s there.’ I jumped up. ‘What’s Cooper done with her?’ I said to Shelby. ‘What about Madison?’

‘I don’t know.’ Shelby’s mouth trembled.

I sank back down to the ground beside her. There was a short, tense silence.

‘I don’t get any of this, Shelby,’ Jam said gently. ‘Go back to the beginning. Why didn’t Cooper dump you in the bay like the rest of us?’

Shelby fought back her tears. ‘He still thought he could get a ransom from that man . . . my . . . Duchovny.’ Shelby sniffed. ‘But before Cooper could approach him again,
Duchovny turned up . . . he must have followed Cooper home.’ She looked up at me. ‘Duchovny came for one thing,’ she said. ‘To get that painting back that you
stole.’

I met Shelby’s gaze. The thought that she was only half expressing rang as clearly in my head as if she’d said it out loud.

He came for the painting, not to rescue me.

A confusion of emotions welled up inside me. I couldn’t look at her. I gave the chain tied to her wrist a tug. It was firmly fastened to the back of the filing cabinet. Unbreakable without
proper tools.

‘I thought the painting wasn’t worth that much,’ Jam said, looking confused.

‘Apparently it was worth millions,’ Shelby said. ‘Anyway, they . . . there was a fight.’

‘What happened?’ I asked.

Shelby leaned against the filing cabinet. She closed her eyes and sighed. ‘Duchovny was hurt, but he got away with the painting. Cooper brought me and the money here.’

‘So you didn’t escape from him?’ Jam said.

Shelby shook her head.

I frowned. ‘I don’t understand. Why did he bring you here?’

‘So that I’d be away from his house when the police track him down and . . .’ Shelby’s face pinked, ‘and so that I could make sure you two came here.’

‘Us?’ Jam said.

Shelby nodded. ‘Cooper found out you were still alive. He knew you’d be able to identify him and he knows that if the police get him they’ll need our testimony to convict
him,’ she explained. ‘Once he knew you’d escaped from the bay, he came up with this plan to trap you here. I was just the bait.’

I sat back on my heels. It was an ingenious plan. And, so far, I had to admit that it had worked. But why? I looked round at the empty storage room. What possible reason could Cooper have for
locking us into this office building?

‘What’s he going to do with us?’ Jam said, echoing my thoughts.

‘And what about Annie and Madison?’ I said, thinking again about how I hadn’t been able to see Annie outside.

‘I don’t know,’ Shelby said.

I stood up, my heart beating fast. ‘We have to get out of here . . . make sure the others are OK.’

I crossed the room and tried the door again. It was still locked fast. The only other way out was through the tiny dormer window that Jam had managed to open a few centimetres. I went over and
pushed at it myself. It didn’t open any further, but the night air rushed through – cool and damp on my face and carrying the faint tang of salt from the sea.

‘We won’t get through here,’ I said.

Shelby held up her chained arm. ‘Well, I certainly won’t.’ She attempted a grin. ‘Or are you saying I’m fat?’

It took me a second to realise she was joking. Black humour was the last thing I’d expected.

‘Yeah, Shelbs.’ I forced a smile back. ‘You’re a hog.’

She smiled ruefully at me and it occurred to me how bizarre it was that these terrifying circumstances marked the first time, ever, that Shelby had made any attempt to be friendly with me.

Jam cleared his throat. ‘Er . . . Lauren? Shelby?’ He was standing beside the door that led out to the tiny second-floor hallway. ‘Look.’ He pointed to the base of the
door.

I frowned, trying to work out what on earth he was staring at.

And then I saw it.

Smoke. Grey-white and wisp-faint, it curled under the door. Jam bent down and sniffed at the gap between the door and the floor.

‘What’s that?’ Shelby’s voice quavered.

Jam looked up at me and the terrified look in his eyes told me the truth before my brain had even processed what the smoke meant.

‘Cooper’s set the building on fire,’ I said.

In Chains

Shelby gasped. ‘Fire?’ she said.

Jam nodded. ‘That’s why he lured us here . . . so he could kill us and make it look like an accident.’

‘No-one’s going to believe this was an accident,’ I insisted, rushing over to the door as another wisp of smoke blew underneath it and into the room. ‘I mean surely this
smoke should be setting off an alarm . . . which means Cooper must have disabled the system.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Jam said. ‘Even if Cooper set the fire and stopped the alarms from going off there won’t be any proof it was
him
who did it.’

‘Just as without our evidence against him, there won’t be any proof that he stole the two million or kidnapped us to try and get more money out of Duchovny,’ Shelby said.

‘We
have
to break this door down,’ I said, squaring up to it.

Jam looked doubtful, but he stood beside me. Across the room, Shelby struggled to her feet. The chain that bound her to the filing cabinet was only a metre or so long – there was no way
she could make it to the door.

‘Don’t worry, Shelby, Annie’s outside. She’ll call the fire brigade,’ Jam said.

He met my eyes. I could see he knew as well as I did that it was highly likely Cooper had already got to Annie . . . that there was no-one else who knew we were here . . . no-one to save us . .
.

My guts twisted into a knot.

‘Plus, there must be a phone in the next room,’ Jam went on, reassuringly.

‘Yes,’ I added. ‘If we can get out of here we can call the fire brigade ourselves.’

I half expected Shelby to freak out about being chained up . . . to start shrieking that she was scared . . . but she said nothing, just offered me a curt nod then looked at the door.

‘Go on,’ she said. ‘Try and break it down.’

On a count of three, Jam and I hurled ourselves at the door. The lock held.

‘Again,’ I said.

The door shook, but it still didn’t open.

‘Let’s ram something heavy against it,’ Jam suggested.

I looked round for something that was heavy enough to break down the door, but that we could manage to lift.

‘Here,’ Jam called from across the room. ‘Help me with this, Lauren.’

He was lifting one side of a small filing cabinet. I rushed over and took hold of the other side. It was heavy. My arms strained with the effort of raising it.

Grey smoke was curling under the door. As we positioned ourselves, ready to ram the lock, Jam coughed.

‘We need something over our mouths,’ I said.

‘In a minute.’ Jam steeled himself. ‘Ready?’

I nodded.

‘Go!’

We charged at the door, forcing the bulky cabinet against the wood. A huge dent appeared beside the lock.

‘Again!’ Jam ordered.

Again we rammed the cabinet against the door. Another dent. We were both coughing now. Smoke was still seeping into the room – grey and acrid.

‘Again!’

This time the wood around the lock splintered. We set down the cabinet and Jam shouldered the door.

It flew open. Smoke billowed into the room. I turned away, choking, my eyes watering. I ripped off my jumper and held it over my mouth, but the smoke seemed to fill my lungs like acid vapour,
stripping away at my throat. I was bent double, coughing like my insides were going to come right out of my mouth. At last I managed to stop. I looked up. Shelby was hunched against the wall,
coughing into her cardigan which was stuffed over her mouth. She stared at me over the top of the material, her eyes wide and terrified.

Jam was nowhere to be seen.

I darted out onto the landing and nearly collided with him.

‘No phones up here,’ he panted. ‘I’m gonna go back to that one downstairs.’

I watched him race down the steps. The smoke here was steady, but not dense. I couldn’t see any flames or feel any heat, though the smell of burning plastic filled the air. It didn’t
matter. I knew that the smoke was every bit as dangerous as the fire. More, perhaps. If we breathed in too many noxious fumes we would collapse long before the flames themselves reached us.

I took a step after Jam. I wanted to follow him . . . to run down the stairs and out of the building. But what about Shelby? She was stuck here. I glanced over my shoulder. She was still hunched
in the corner, coughing into her cardigan.

I took another step away, then stopped again.

The argument raged in my head. Shelby didn’t care about me. I needed to get out of here for the sake of the people who did . . . Jam and Madison and Mum and Dad and Rory . . . even
Annie.

As I hesitated, a cloud of thick smoke rolled up the stairs towards me. Choking, I staggered backwards, my sore eyes squeezed tight shut against the sting of the fumes. The landing suddenly
filled with heat. I forced my eyes open. From being relatively clear a few seconds ago, the staircase below me was now engulfed in flames. Panic seized me.

‘Jam!’ I yelled. ‘JAM!’

‘I’m here.’ Jam’s voice rose up towards me through the fire.

He had made it down to the first floor. I caught a glimpse of his profile through the smoke which whirled, dirty and thick, all around him. The fire hissed and crackled up the stairs.

‘Can you get to the ground floor?’ I shouted.

‘Yes.’ Jam hesitated. He turned and looked up at me. ‘But what about you and Shelby?’

I gazed down at him, my eyes watering from the smoke that whirled around me.

The staircase between the second and first floors was now impassable.

There was no way down for me and Shelby. I could see in Jam’s face that he knew this – but he didn’t want to leave me.

‘Go on,’ I insisted. ‘We’ll be fine. We’ll find another way.’

Without waiting for his reply, I turned away and darted across the landing. In addition to the storage room, where we’d left Shelby, there were three other rooms. I opened each door in
turn. One, the nearest to the stairs, was empty save for a stack of chairs and some ancient-looking computers piled in one corner. It contained no windows and was already filled with smoke. I left
it and moved to the next room.

A bathroom. Tiny, also with no window. There was less smoke in here, for some reason.

I ran the water in the sink, holding my jumper under the tap until it was damp. As I put it up to my face, water ran down my neck, but it was definitely easier to breathe.

Clutching the sodden top over my mouth I opened the door to the fourth and final room, praying that I would find a proper window inside.

There was hardly any smoke here yet. I shut the door behind me and looked round. I was in another storage room complete with more filing cabinets, and piles of paper. A single dormer window was
set into the sloping roof. Unfortunately it was, if anything, smaller than the one in the other room. I rushed over and pushed it open. A rush of cold night air – and the smell of burning
– filled my nostrils.

At least it opened more than a few centimetres. I dragged a chair beneath the window and shoved my head through. The roof below slid away at a dizzying angle. There was no way I could stand on
this roof, but the opening did offer some relief from the smoke. My heart leaped. If I stayed here I would be able to breathe clean air until the fire fighters arrived.

And then I remembered Shelby.

I hesitated for a second, then turned and went back onto the landing. The fire was at the top of the stairs, flames starting to lick across the carpet. I raced through the smoke and into the
room where Shelby lay. She was still coughing badly, her cardigan covering her face.

I ran over and grabbed her shoulder. She looked up at me, her red-rimmed eyes registering shock.

‘Lauren, I thought you’d gone,’ she said.

I took the jumper away from my mouth.

‘There’s no way downstairs,’ I said. Acrid smoke burned the back of my throat and I coughed. ‘But there’s another room where there’s less smoke.’

Shelby held up her wrist, still attached by the chain to the filing cabinet. ‘I can’t move.’ Her voice was strangely flat and calm.

‘We’ll sort that.’ I brought the jumper back up to my mouth and took in a shallow breath. I was starting to feel light-headed. How long did we have before we passed out from
the toxic fumes?

Trying not to think about it, I examined the chain round Shelby’s wrist. It was securely and tightly fastened. The skin below it was red raw where she had obviously tried to slide it over
her hand. Clearly there was no point trying to do that again. I felt along the chain to the point where it was fastened to the filing cabinet. It was threaded through a loop of metal at the cabinet
base, then disappeared between the cabinet and the wall.