Read an Excerpt

1
Emergency Exit

Caleb Quinn had never expected to use the emergency exit plan. He went to his bedroom door, listening hard. The voices coming from downstairs belonged to his mum and a woman he did not recognize with a faintly Eastern European accent. He couldn’t make out exactly what they were saying, but it was sounding less and less friendly. Something strange was happening.
   He had just gotten back from school in the center of London, cycling along the Thameside path to his house in Nine Elms. It was the first week of the autumn term. After calling hello to his mum, who was working on her laptop in the kitchen, he’d run upstairs to dump his bag and grab a couple of things. His idea for the evening had been simple: have some dinner, then head outside to his high-tech computer lab, which was on a barge moored nearby at Nine Elms Pier. There he could spend a few hours working on a big content update for Terrorform, the sci-fi action-adventure video game that he had programmed himself.
   The voices rose. Caleb decided to find out what was going on. He took out the Flex, a superpowerful computer handset that he had designed and built over the past few months; he’d been putting together devices like this since before he could talk. To a casual observer, the Flex looked like a pretty standard smartphone. But it was much more than that. Caleb had made it from an ultra-tough, flexible material that could be bent or folded into any shape. It had an operating system that was far more advanced than anything you could buy, with a unique range of special applications and functions. These were activated by coded, single-word commands. He murmured one of them now.
   “Phantom. Mum’s laptop.”
   The Phantom app sent the Flex’s eyes and ears elsewhere. A view of the kitchen appeared instantly on its screen, ripped from the camera on his mum’s open computer. He backed away from his door and sat down on his bed to take a look.
   Harper Quinn was leaning against a counter. She was a senior CIA agent, originally from California, stationed at the American embassy just down the road from where they lived. She was dressed in a pale gray business suit, cut to conceal her sidearm, with a dark blue shirt beneath. Her red-brown hair was pulled back into a ponytail and her arms were crossed. She was wearing the no-nonsense expression that—Caleb had noticed—she used on colleagues even more often than she used on him.
   Across the room from Harper was a very tall woman—at least six foot two, Caleb guessed. Her hair was an angular orange wedge, shaved at the sides, that blazed brightly in the kitchen’s lights. She was dressed like a biker in a black leather jacket, jeans, and heavy boots. A silver ring glinted in her eyebrow.
   Two men were also visible. One, a huge, bull-like figure, was in the passageway that led to the front door, blocking it off completely. His back was turned, his shaved head almost brushing against the ceiling. The other one, small and skinny by comparison, was standing just behind the orange-haired woman. He had a short lime-green Mohawk and squinty, weasel eyes that flicked this way and that as if seeking some sly advantage. Both were dressed in a similar style to the woman, who was clearly their boss.
   Caleb studied these visitors closely. It wasn’t that unusual for his mum to have evening meetings with colleagues and others whom she described as “contacts.” But the intelligence people who came to the house were usually more . . . well, more intelligent-looking. He eased up the volume.
   “So,” Harper was saying skeptically, “have I got this right? You’re telling me that you have important information . . . but I have to come with you to get it?”
   The orange-haired woman gave her a humorless smile. “That is correct,” she replied. “We have the information you requested, Agent Quinn. But more than this. Something you should see for yourself. Please, come.”
   Harper was shaking her head. “Our contact is based on strict secrecy, Ms. Szabo. You were instructed to use the designated drop in Brussels. You shouldn’t be in London at all. You certainly shouldn’t be at this house. I have no idea how—”
   “My information concerns Xavier Torrent. And yes, you have to see for yourself.”
   Caleb shifted, leaning a little nearer to the Flex’s screen.
   Xavier Torrent. He knew that name, he was sure of it—although he couldn’t say exactly where he had heard it before.
   Clearly, his mother knew it too. She was impressed, excited even, but he could tell that she was trying hard not to show it. “All right,” she said. “Sure. We can work something out. Meet me at exit four of Vauxhall Tube Station in thirty minutes. Then we can—”
   “No.” The orange-haired woman—Szabo—put a hand on her hip. “No, you must come with us now. We have an opportunity. Also—it is for your own safety.” She paused. “And you must bring your son. Xavier Torrent will know that we have made contact. We act now or we lose the chance. It would be safer—for you and your son—if we all go together.”
   There was a long moment of silence. The weaselly man stuck a finger in his ear and started wiggling it about, as though there was something stuck inside. Caleb stared at the image of his mum. She didn’t move or speak.
   “You’re wasting time, Agent Quinn.” Szabo took a step forward, her leather jacket falling open to reveal a gun of her own, tucked away in a shoulder holster. “Go and get the boy. Then we can all leave.”
   “He’s away tonight,” Harper replied, speaking very clearly. Caleb could have sworn that she glanced over toward the laptop, as if she knew that he was listening in. “He’s staying at his friend’s house. Brian Beasley.”
   Caleb caught his breath. Brian Beasley . . . did not exist.
   Whoa. He passed his hand through his hair. Brian Beasley was a code word—a secret instruction from his mum, a name that they had come up with together. “If you ever hear me say ‘Brian Beasley,’” she had told him, her face suddenly serious, “then you get the hell away. Don’t worry about me, I’m trained for this stuff. But you get away. Go back to school. Wait for me to call.”
   Caleb had promised that he would. Ever since his dad had died a couple of years earlier, he’d grown more and more used to his mum’s secretive espionage activities. One time, not long after Christmas, the two of them had gone away to Edinburgh for a weekend. On the first evening, Harper had gotten a priority call from the agency; Caleb had to leave her at their hotel and travel alone across the unfamiliar city to the US Consulate General. But they’d never had to use this particular code word before. There had never been any trouble actually in their house. His earlier hunch was right: this was an emergency.
   Szabo was sharper than she seemed. She had realized what had happened. In one movement, she crossed the kitchen and took Harper’s gun from inside her jacket. There could no longer be any doubt—this was an abduction.
   “He’s here,” she snapped. “Pyke, go upstairs. Get him.”
   Reluctantly, the Mohawked man took the finger from his ear. “But she just said—”
   “Idiot! That was code! Go and get the boy!”
   Caleb was already out of his chair, pulling on a black hoodie. He folded the Flex into his back pocket and grabbed a crumpled ten-pound note from the desk—all the money he had in the world. Then he crept out through his bedroom door.
   The emergency exit plan involved him leaving the house via the bathroom window. The bathroom was on the other side of the wide landing, however, and he could already hear
   Pyke tramping up the stairs. Damn. There was no way he’d be able to get over there in time. Making a split-second decision, he swerved into his mum’s bedroom and rolled down under her bed.
   But Pyke, of course, had no idea where he should be looking. To Caleb’s horror, the weaselly, Mohawked man passed straight by his room and barged into his mum’s, banging the door back as he did so.
   Caleb bit the inside of his cheek and tried not to breathe. The slightest sound and he would be caught. The smell of stale cigarettes and beer wafted through the room. He watched a pair of battered motorcycle boots walk slowly around the bed, treading dirt into his mother’s pale blue carpet.
   Pyke was clearly in the habit of talking to himself. “The kid ain’t gonna be in ’ere, is he? This is the mother’s room. Or else my eyes deceive me—which never happens, Pykey, my friend. Oh, ’allo—what’s this, then? Very nice picture . . .”
   The thug had stopped by the side of the bed. Caleb could have reached out and undone his frayed laces. He turned his face away and tried to edge backward.
   “This must be the lad we’re after.” Pyke snorted. “Looks like a right cheeky little scumbag. Nothing a few days with the boss wouldn’t put right, eh?”
   Caleb could hear his mother at the foot of the stairs. “I’ve told you, Szabo,” she was saying firmly, “he’s not here. You can search all you like.”
   Szabo was ignoring her, though. “Krall,” she said to the huge man, “go and see what that moron is up to.”