The Hummingbird Killer by Finn Longman

Author:Finn Longman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
Published: 2023-05-11T00:00:00+00:00

22 PLANI (TO PLAN)

It’s a relief to get home and find that Laura has already gone to work. Every time Isabel lies to her flatmate, it gets a little harder: her deceptions becoming more complicated by the day, and her guilt deepening.

She takes a long shower, like Kieran’s death was a job, and tries very hard not to think about any of it, but her thoughts rebel. No matter how many times she tells herself that there was no viable alternative to killing him, Leo’s disappointment comes back to her.

She goes to bed early, sleeps badly, and calls Abbie first thing the next morning to try to convince her to take Ant and Sam too. It’s a tough sell, but the smuggler agrees, on one condition: they need to be ready to leave the library tomorrow.

Isabel knows nobody at the library wants to see her again, but they don’t have an encrypted line, so she can’t pass on the details of the plan from a distance. She braces herself for confrontation and heads over there, timing her arrival for the mid-afternoon lull when there are unlikely to be many people around.

Beth’s on the front desk. Their stony expression tells Isabel they’ve been filled in on what they missed, but when she explains her errand, they silently escort her to the basement door and unlock it for her.

‘I’m sorry,’ Isabel tries, but they’re already returning to work.

In the basement, Ant’s trying to get the bloodstains out of the carpet, while Leo looks after a pile of bloodied books and Sam fiddles with the computer.

‘I spoke to Abbie Miner,’ says Isabel, as Ant opens his mouth to ask her why she’s there. ‘She’ll take all of you – tomorrow, at dawn. Their people will get you across the city, and once they have the signal, they can smuggle you out.’

The signal being the news of whether Isabel’s held up her end of the bargain.

I’m not ready, she thinks, for the hundredth time today, but she’s got no choice.

Sam says, ‘But I don’t want to leave.’ She doesn’t seem afraid, even after Isabel committed murder in her home. ‘I live here. I don’t want to go.’

‘You’ve got to,’ says Isabel. She doesn’t want to scare Sam, but the kid’s a fugitive already, and Isabel won’t patronise her, either. ‘When Comma realise what I’ve done, that I killed Kieran Atwood, they’ll interrogate me to find out why – and pretty soon everything I know about you guys, they’ll know too.’

‘But I don’t want to go.’ Sam sounds younger now than ever before, made childish by her reluctance. ‘I don’t know – I don’t know anything but this. I don’t know how to survive in another city.’

‘None of us does,’ says Leo, voice rough, because that’s what it means to come from Espera: to have your knowledge of the world stop at the city walls.

Isabel wants to tell them they’ll be fine, but she doesn’t think they’ll trust any reassurance that comes out of her mouth.

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