Page 53 of Zero Days

“Jack!” It was a woman’s voice. “Jack, it’s DS Malik. We know you’re out there, you’ve got nowhere to run. You need to turn yourself in.”

I shut my eyes for a second. How. How the fuck had they found me? Had they tracked Cole’s car?

I ripped the last coil off my shoe and began to run again, my feet silent in the damp sand but my heart and breath sounding painfully loud in the predawn hush. Even the waves seemed to have quietened.

“Turn yourself in, Jack!” Malik called. Was it my imagination, or was her voice closer? “You’re innocent, we know that—this is all a big misunderstanding. We’ve spoken to your sister and she explained everything. We just want you to come home and clear it all up, clear your name and help us catch Gabe’s killer.”

A sob rose in my throat. I wanted—God, I wanted more than anything—to believe that was true, to believe that they really did think I was innocent. But you didn’t send two squad cars after an innocent person in the middle of the night.

“You can’t keep running, Jack,” Malik’s voice came again, and now I could see torch beams in the darkness, slicing through the mist like white light sabers. “We’re tracking your phone. We know your location. I’m giving you the chance here to turn yourself in. Things are going to look much worse for you if you keep running!”

I thought I was innocent?

I almost wanted to shout it back to her, the bait-and-switch was so laughably transparent. But I didn’t—I wasn’t that stupid, and I couldn’t spare the breath for shouting anyway—I needed every scrap of oxygen in my lungs to force myself forward through the dunes.

I ran on. And on. It felt like miles, though in reality it was probably not even one. But running in the dark through soft, shifting sand is no joke, particularly when you can’t see the rise and fall of the ground and every step is jarringly unexpected.

After another few hundred meters the muscles in my legs were beginning to ache, the initial bolt of adrenaline wearing off, and the pain in my side was rising with every step. But I had to keep running—I had no other choice. You can do this, I thought. Speed, stamina, strength; this is what you train for. Except there were half a dozen of them, combing through the mist, and one of me—and my stamina was running out. I would have to stop running at some point. The only question was whether they caught me first.

And then I saw it, looming out of the darkness—a low concrete shack with a metal serving hatch at the front. In the summer it probably sold ice creams and slushies, but right now it looked like a World War II bunker. I glanced back over my shoulder and saw the beam of a torch slicing through the mist, not as far away as I would have liked. For a second I wavered. Keep running—or hide?

My breath was shuddering through my nose, and for an instant I put my hand up, feeling reflexively for the rubber earpiece, to ask Gabe for his advice—but I knew the truth before my hand even touched my bare cheek. I was alone. There was no Gabe here to tell me what to do.

The shutter covering the serving hatch at the front was padlocked from the inside and looked secure. I might have been able to pry it open with a crowbar; I had a small, slim jimmy in my rucksack which would probably have done the job, but it would be hard to force the shutter without making a noise, and impossible to do so without leaving a visible sign of what I’d done—a sign that would lead any pursuer straight to me. Picking the lock of the staff entrance at the back was a better bet, if I could do it fast enough. The torch beam was getting worryingly close—and now I could see another coming from the other direction, high up in the dunes ahead of me. They were closing in. Hiding had suddenly become not just the better option but the only option.

But when I rounded the corner of the shack, I saw that there was a door—but no keyhole, just an ancient numerical keypad made of painted metal, and beside it a rusting steel knob. A mechanical combination lock. Fuck. It made sense. The place was probably staffed by a multitude of casual workers, so giving all of them a key would be a headache. It also meant that if the code had four digits, there were exactly ten thousand possible combinations.

“Jack!” I heard from behind me, as if in answer to my misgivings, and my stomach lurched. Whatever I did, I had to do it fast. Doing anything was better than doing nothing. Quickly, I tapped in 1234, just as I had at Arden Alliance, and twisted the metal knob. It had been worth a try then, and it was worth a try now, but just like at Arden Alliance, nothing happened.

Unlike at Arden Alliance, though, the attempt wasn’t entirely pointless. Touching the keys had shown me something—two of them felt different from the others. Smoother. Colder. The chipped paint had worn away, exposing the metal beneath. I longed to get out my torch, but I couldn’t risk it, so instead I ran my fingers over the whole keypad, closing my eyes to better feel the change in texture. There were five that were perceptibly more worn than the others: 1, 4, 5, 9, and the * sign.

I let out a shaky breath. Four numbers, and an asterisk to finish the combination. That still left twenty-four possible combinations—perfectly doable, given mechanical locks rarely had a cutoff for failed attempts, but still more than I could manage with Malik and her guys combing the darkness behind me—even supposing I could keep track of the combinations in my head.

But I had broken enough combination codes to know two things. First, if asked to set a four-digit combination, a sizable chunk of people chose years. And second, because most people picked dates that were personal to them, that likelihood was doubled when the digits included 1 and 9. The chances were very high that the combination began with 19—which meant that it would be either 1945 or 1954. I had no idea which one was more likely, but it didn’t matter. Without pausing to think, I typed in 1954* and twisted the knob so hard the metal gave a quiet shriek. This time, it turned.

The door swung open and I slipped inside, closed it silently, and sank down with my back to the cold metal, my heart thumping hard enough to make me feel sick.

Inside the shack was very quiet, the sound of the sea and the wind muffled by the thick concrete. It smelled of ice cream cones and sour dairy, overlaid with the slight fustiness of defrosted freezers. I was straining my ears for the sound of voices, but it was hard to make out anything above the rushing of my own blood in my ears and the pounding of my pulse.

And then I heard it. Closer than it had ever been before. Very, very close.

“Jack!” It was Malik. She sounded angry now, more than angry, furious. “Jacintha Cross, this is a police order. We have dogs on the way, and believe me, you do not want to be hunted down by the dogs.”

I pressed my face into the pack. There was sand in the stitches where I had dropped it in the dunes. I fought the urge to cough.

And then I heard another voice, a male one. Not Miles but someone else, someone who made my pulse speed up to a sickening pace.

“She outfoxed you?”

It was Jeff.

“That little fucking bitch.” It was a low growl of frustration from Malik. “I saw her, I’m telling you.”

“If you say so.” Jeff sounded more amused than annoyed. Then Malik’s voice came again, sharper.

“Hang on a sec, what’s this place?” There was the scrunch of boots on gravel as they came closer to the shack and stepped onto the concrete apron in front of the counter. I squeezed my eyes shut, as though that could make me somehow less visible. I wished, wished, wished more than anything that I had Gabe’s voice in my ear, telling me I could do this. Because right now, I felt like I was about to lose it.

“Reckon she could be in here?”

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