Black Spiral by Eileen Merriman

Author:Eileen Merriman [Merriman, Eileen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780143775393
Publisher: Penguin Random House New Zealand
Published: 2013-04-08T00:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-EIGHT:

JOHNNO

The hours before the driver arrives to transfer us to the next Apollo safe house are excruciating. It’s twelve hours since Rawiri received notification that Purple Albatross aka Violet had completed his game; twelve hours since I realised that I’ve just wasted the last three weeks doing nothing.

‘Nothing,’ I stress to Rawiri, peering out of the window facing Lucy’s driveway. ‘If Apollo were serious about wanting to bring down the Foundation, then what have they been doing all this time?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe they were waiting for Alice to do something,’ Rawiri mutters, his head still buried in his goddamn computer. I feel like wrestling it off him and chucking it through the window. I probably would, if I weren’t hoping that Violet might send us a message. Part of me doesn’t get why she hasn’t done that already if she’s got access to the internet, but I don’t want to think about all the reasons why that might be.

‘We’ve waited long enough,’ I say.

‘Yeah, you’ve made your point.’ Rawiri squints at the window. ‘Hey, there it is.’

I blink into the headlights beaming through the glass. ‘Great.’ I pick up my bag, which contains very few items, most of which weren’t originally mine — a couple of items of borrowed clothing, the toothbrush Jerry gave me when we first arrived, and my slingshot.

‘Take care,’ Lucy says behind me.

I turn and give her a fierce hug. ‘Thanks for letting us stay,’ I say, wanting to tell her I wasn’t meaning to sound ungrateful, but unable to get the words out.

‘Go well,’ Lucy says, her tone gruff. ‘You too, Rawiri. And be nice to Isobel, will you? We all make mistakes.’

Rawiri slides his laptop into his bag. ‘Mistakes, yeah.’ He gives Lucy a hug too, and we go out to meet the driver.

The following morning, I wake with a brief feeling of disorientation before remembering that I’m in a new bed, new house, new city.

‘Welcome to the big smoke,’ the driver had said, and left us on the doorstep of a non-descript old-style bungalow somewhere in the North Shore. The person who had greeted us, a heavy-set guy around my age with spiky black hair, had introduced himself as Tim and led us to a room at the rear of the house.

‘I’ll leave you guys to sort out which bed you want,’ he’d said. ‘Catch you in the morning.’

‘Later this morning, more like,’ Rawiri had said, stripping to his underwear and t-shirt and diving beneath the covers of the single bed on the left. Within minutes, he was snoring. No surprise, considering it was one am already.

If only I could have done the same. I have no idea what time it is now, but I could swear I’ve only had about three hours sleep. Rawiri’s bed is empty, the covers in a crumpled heap at the base of the mattress. I sit up and peer through the gap in the curtain. All I can see is a fence and the mould-speckled side of the apartment block next door.

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