The Hunted by Alex Shearer

Author:Alex Shearer [Shearer, Alex]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Macmillan Publishers UK
Published: 2010-11-30T07:00:00+00:00

Kinane woke in his room that morning to find himself lying on top of the covers, still dressed and in his boots. He rubbed a hand across the stubble on his chin but didn’t bother to shave it. Instead he went straight out and returned to where he had last seen the boy the previous night, carefully retracing his steps. He hung around the area for a while, and he explored the nearby streets. Quite what kind of clue he was looking for, he didn’t know, but he would recognize it when he found it.

The bar the boy had stopped to look into was closed and quiet. Inside a woman was going around vacuuming the floor and then polishing the tables. Kinane watched her through the window, until she noticed him staring and seemed to get nervous. So he left her to it and moved on.

After walking around a while, and on the point of giving up, he turned a corner and saw the frontage of the Rapid Link Motel. It was a motel chain he knew and, indeed, he had enjoyed its hospitality himself, on many occasions and in many different cities. It was cheap and clean and functional and nobody asked you any questions. Some of the motels were fully automated and you could check in using a credit card, be issued with a card key, be served (or rather serve yourself) with a pre-packed breakfast, and be gone the next day without seeing or talking to a soul.

But Kinane wanted a soul, an ordinary, simple, trusting soul. Somebody he could talk to.

He found him pushing a mop around the reception area, cleaning the grime off the tiles.

‘Hi there.’

‘Hi.’

‘Did you want to check in?’ the man with the mop asked.

‘No, I’m all right. Just looking for someone.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘I was told there was a kid to rent here.’

The janitor stopped mopping the floor, took a handkerchief from his pocket, and started mopping his forehead.

‘Kid to rent?’

It was only a guess. Kinane had no means of knowing. But he calculated that no proper parent would let a child out alone at that time of night – not with people like himself about. So maybe he was a loaner, and you didn’t loan your own kids out, so that made him belong to someone else, like someone making money out of it, which would mean always moving on, which would mean a motel, which would mean . . .

‘You want to rent one?’

‘My wife,’ Kinane said.

‘Oh?’

‘It’s our anniversary and we were never able to have any of our own . . .’

‘Who is able?’ the janitor said, putting the handkerchief away and leaning on the mop, glad of an excuse to stop and take a breather.

‘So I thought it would be a nice surprise.’

‘Well, there was a kid here earlier with a man – said he was his father – only they checked out.’

Damn it. For a moment Kinane felt anger and annoyance. He’d been wasting time looking in the wrong places.

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