Sharp Shot (8 page)

The control panel in the middle of the room was finished in brushed
aluminium, and covered with levers and dials and gauges. Jade pushed a
button and a light came on above one of the read-outs. LED numbers flashed
up a countdown.

“Sad,” she said, shaking her head.

The bed in the hotel room was also silver, with a headboard that
matched the control panel. The ceiling was studded with tiny lights meant
to look like stars, and the walls were midnight blue. There was a lava
lamp on a futuristic-looking desk at the side of the room. The
wall-mounted television was made to look like a scanner screen with
moulded plastic controls round it. She hadn't dared to look in the
bathroom.

When Jade opened the curtains, which were also silver, she found
herself looking out over the grey, cratered surface of the moon. “Do
me a favour,” she sighed.

She finally worked out how to raise the moonscape blind. But the view
of the
Boscombe Heights Adventure Park
hotel's car park
was hardly an improvement. Jade sighed and flopped down on the bed. She
was just deciding that things couldn't get much worse when the countdown
she'd started the control panel reached zero.

The room lights flashed on and off and a siren sounded, followed by
the whoosh of rocket engines. The bed started to shake, and Jade leaped to
her feet. The floor was absolutely still, but there was some mechanism
making the bed move.

“We have lift off!” announced a deep voice with an
obviously fake American accent. “Enjoy your trip…to the
stars!”

“I see you're settling in,” said a quieter voice.

McCain was standing in the connecting door. Jade could see his room
looked very much like her own, but with a double bed.

“Great, isn't it?” he said.

Jade's reply was heavy with sarcasm. “Oh, it's just
brilliant.”

“Won't be for long. I expect those goons will have gone by
tomorrow and we can move on. Best not try to call anyone, though.”
He nodded at a space-age telephone hanging by the bed. “They may
have tapped the phones.”

“Who may have?” demanded Jade. “Who are these
people? You said you owe them money or something, but they've got cars and
helicopters and guns, and now you think they're tapping the phones. What's
going on?”

“I'll tell you soon enough, I promise. Let's make sure we're
safe and in the clear, and then we can contact your father, all
right?”

“And what about Rich?”

“Let's hope he got away from them. He'll get in touch with your
dad too, won't he? Through Ardman, as soon as he can.”

“So why don't we call Ardman now?” said Jade. “If
anyone can sort this mess out, it's Ardman.”

“When we're safe,” repeated McCain. “You wait
here. Keep your head down. Get room service to send up a drink and
something to eat. You can watch TV.”

“TV?!”

“Might be a repeat of
Star Trek
.”

“Oh very funny. And what will you be doing?”

“Thought I'd have a quick look round. See if I can spot anyone
looking for us.”

“And what if they spot
you
?”

McCain smiled. “Trust me, they won't.”

It was the toilet paper that finally did it. There wasn't a roll fixed
to the bathroom wall, or even a dispenser with separate sheets. There was
a button. The toilet itself looked like a metal mushroom, and the bath was
circular with a shower shaped like a spaceship hanging over it and
curtains patterned with stars and planets.

And a button for the loo paper. When Jade pressed it there was a
sound like tickertape printing, and tissue paper juddered slowly out from
a narrow slot in the wall. The paper was printed with lines and nodes so
it looked like a circuit board. Jade was so astonished, she kept holding
the button and before long the paper was piling up on the floor.

“Gordon Bennett,” she said, and let go of the button.
“Right—that's it. That. Is. It.”

She was going to look for McCain, and she was
going to find Rich. If
she couldn't find them, she was calling Ardman. She'd been thinking about
what McCain had said, and the more she thought about it, the less sense it
made. They'd already spoken to Halford on the phone, so Ardman would know
by now that she and Rich were with McCain and in trouble. She had to tell
him where they were.

She had been thinking about the woman who'd chased her through the
haunted house too. Over and over again, she replayed in her mind the
moment when the woman found her in the graveyard. The way she'd reached
into her jacket for her gun. Except, she hadn't, had she? She'd taken out
something else. Not her gun, which Jade had seen clearly in a holster on
the other side, but a leather wallet. What was that all about?

“Believe me, you're in big trouble”—that was what the
woman had said. But the more Jade thought about it, the less it sounded
like a threat, and the more it sounded like a simple statement of fact…

Yet McCain said the woman was one of the bad guys, and Halford had
told them they could trust McCain…

One thing was for sure, Jade knew she wasn't going to work it out
sitting in her room with the scanner
television, rocket control panel,
lava lamp and tickertape loo paper. She needed some air and—like she'd
told the receptionist—some space. She thought about calling Ardman, but
decided against it. Not until she knew what was really going on. In any
case, McCain might have had the phone barred, and he'd know if she'd used
it if he checked their account on the scanner television. And maybe it
really was tapped…

So she let herself out of the room, slipped the plastic key card
(silver, of course) into her pocket, and headed down to the hotel
restaurant and bar. She was starving and she was thirsty, and if McCain
could wander around and—probably—get himself a drink, then so could
she.

The main hotel bar wasn't space-themed. It was a pirate ship. With
lunch being served, it was busy with families who'd just arrived and were
looking forward to spending the afternoon in the theme park, or with
parents who'd escaped from their older children and left them to enjoy the
park on their own.

The bar area was raised up on the deck of the enormous ship. The
waiters and waitresses wore striped
shirts and eye patches. The plates
were shaped like fish. Skull and crossbones flags hung everywhere.

Jade kept looking round as she wandered through the bar. She could
see an empty booth in a shadowy area at the edge of the room. She sat down
and examined the menu. The choice varied from
Pirates
Platter
and
Smugglers Surprise
to
Captain Flints Fish and Chips
. To Jade's disgust, none of
the dishes came with apostrophes.

“Get you anything, me hearty?” asked a broad,
West-Country voice, belonging to a tall, thin pirate who had a toy parrot
stuck to his shoulder.

“Orange juice,” said Jade. “And do you do
sandwiches?”

The pirate waiter leaned forward to turn over the menu. His parrot
flopped alarmingly. He pointed to a section titled
Buccaneers
Baps
.

“Close enough,” Jade decided. “I'll have tuna and
sweetcorn.”

“You want fries with that?”

Jade glared at him. “Did I ask for fries with that?”

“No,” the pirate decided, his accent abandoned for a
home counties drawl. “Good point. Just the tuna and sweetcorn bap
then and orange juice.” He scribbled a
note on his pirate pad with
a fake quill pen and departed.

While she waited for her lunch, Jade looked round at the other people
in the bar. She couldn't see the woman who'd chased her or anyone else who
looked suspicious. No men in suits and dark glasses. Wasn't that what the
Secret Service wore? She'd read somewhere—or Rich or her dad had told
her—that they wore dark glasses so people couldn't tell if an agent was
watching them.

An agent. Jade went cold at the thought. Her orange juice arrived
with another “me hearty!” but she barely noticed. The woman
in the graveyard had been warning her she was in trouble, and she had
tried to show Jade something, just before McCain decked her with the
shovel. A leather wallet. Like the FBI or CIA flipped open in the movies
to show their badges.

She was in trouble all right. She just didn't know what sort.

The waiter risked a grin as he delivered a large bap spilling tuna
mayonnaise and sweetcorn over a handful of crisps and a brave attempt at a
side salad.

“Thanks,” said Jade, “me hearty,” she
added. She
gave him her room number to charge the meal to, and
he jotted it down.

“Anything else?”

“Just some peace and quiet.”

The pirate laughed. “You'll be lucky. They'll be starting the
sea shanties in a minute.”

Jade hoped he was joking, but was afraid he wasn't. She could see a
pirate with an accordion limbering up at the bar together with a large
woman with dangly earrings and a striped shirt that didn't do her any
favours. Jade sighed, and was about to start her lunch when she saw a man
standing further along the bar. He was wearing a dark suit.

As she watched, he turned slightly, picking up a glass of Coke. He
had black hair slicked back from his forehead, and a pale brown face that
was lined like old stone. He looked familiar, but Jade didn't know if he
was one of the men who'd been following them in the cars or the
helicopter. The suit was the wrong style and shade.

Jade was still trying to work out where she'd seen him before, when
McCain walked into the bar. He looked round, obviously checking there was
no one there he wanted to avoid. Instinctively, Jade shrank
back into the
booth, hoping he hadn't seen her.

When she edged along and looked round the low wooden wall, she saw
that McCain was walking up the gangplank to the bar. Further along, the
man was sipping his Coke. He had turned, and she could see a pale scar
running from above his left eye down the length of his cheek. Seeing it
made Jade realise where she'd seen him before—at the farm. He'd been
looking for them—one of the first men to come after them, before the
helicopter.

Jade stood up. The man would see McCain any moment. She didn't have
time to get to him—should she shout a warning? Would the man with the
scar try anything in a crowded bar?

It was too late. The man with the scar had seen McCain. He set down
his drink on the bar and stood up. He walked slowly and deliberately
towards McCain, who had stopped dead in his tracks. The man with the scar
smiled and reached out, enfolding McCain in an affectionate bear hug.

Jade ducked back into the booth, startled and afraid. McCain and the
scarred man
knew
each other. She had the sudden, cold
feeling she'd been tricked all along. The woman with the official badge—
if that's
what it was—had tried to warn her. The man who'd been chasing
McCain and trying to kill him was actually his friend. It was all a trap
of some sort. A setup. And it looked like Jade and Rich had fallen
right into it.

The good news—maybe the only good news—was that McCain didn't
know Jade was on to him. She could slip away and find a phone. Or, she
thought, she could try to get close enough to hear what the two men were
saying. Maybe McCain had been telling the truth and was now trying to cut
a deal of some sort…But she didn't really believe that.

She would have to go past the bar to get out anyway. Jade made her
decision, and got slowly and carefully to her feet. She looked across to
the bar, and found the pirate waiter who had served her standing there
with another orange juice.

“Free refill,” he said. “It's Hearty Hour.”

“Thanks.” Jade took the orange juice and drank it
straight down. She didn't know when she'd next get a drink, and the
vitamin C would do her good. She gave the empty glass back to the waiter.

“Sorry,” he said quietly. Even his parrot looked sad as
he turned and walked away.

Jade watched him go, puzzled. But she had enough to worry about
already, so she made her way cautiously towards the bar. She found a spot
out of sight round the prow of the ‘boat'. It wasn't ideal, but she was
confident that neither of the men could see her, and she could hear odd
snatches of their conversation.

“Not yet,” McCain was saying. “But it won't be
long. He knows where it is. He put it there.”

The other man's voice was quieter and he was facing away. Jade could
hear almost nothing of what he said.

“Chance must return soon,” said McCain. Someone laughed
nearby, and Jade missed the rest of what he said. “…Didn't think
we could force him to tell us,” McCain was saying when the noise
died down again, “but now we have something I expect he wants very
badly. He'll tell us all right.”

It sounded like they were hoping to get something from her dad, Jade
thought. McCain had hoped to find him at the cottage. Hoped to ask her
father for something. Now he had a way to force Dad to tell him what he
wanted to know.

She was feeling suddenly light-headed and woozy. She felt even worse
as she realised that the ‘something' McCain thought he had to bargain with
was
her
. It was
definitely time to be going, but her legs
weren't working. In fact, she was having trouble getting up. She grabbed
the nearest thing to force herself off the bar stool. It was a sign
propped up against the bar:

‘Hearty Hour—Free Refills: 6:30-7:30 every nite'

She felt the last of her energy draining away. It wasn't Hearty Hour
at all. The orange juice refill wasn't free—someone had paid for it.
McCain must have seen her when he came in, and guessed she was on to him
when Jade tried to hide in the booth. The waiter had said he was sorry—
and he was sorry because he'd seen what McCain put in the drink. A pill, a
liquid…The waiter was in on it. Probably bribed.