Only a Monster(Monsters #1)(86)

The tips of their long shadows reached Joan’s feet. Tom touched Joan’s hand to get her attention. Ready? he mouthed to her. Joan was almost too tense to nod. Tom gave her a slight smile, trying to be reassuring. Me first, he mouthed.

The shadows stayed motionless. The moment seemed to stretch and stretch. If not for Tom’s chest rising and falling beside her, Joan would have thought that time itself had frozen again. She began to shake from unused adrenaline. Beside her, Tom’s muscles were smooth and ready as though he could have waited all day in that tensed posture.

A sudden loud noise made Joan jump. It sounded like the squeaky music from an old-fashioned video game.

The woman groaned. ‘Just because we’re in the nineties doesn’t mean you need a stupid ringtone,’ she complained.

‘There was a sighting near Rotherhithe Station.’ It was the second man—the one who hadn’t spoken yet.

And now, finally, sounds of movement. The shadows began to retreat.

‘Were they caught on camera?’ the first man said.

‘If they’d been caught on any camera, we’d have them already,’ the woman said. She sounded impatient.

‘Get in,’ the taciturn man said. ‘Conrad wants—’ Then the car door slammed shut, and his voice cut off.

Joan waited while the car drove away, the rumbling of it quieting until the alley was silent. Beside her, Tom relaxed, slowly, his body loosening. He’d saved them, Joan thought. He’d protected them from the guards.

Joan couldn’t make sense of it. He’d pretended to help them to get into the archive. Then he’d seemed about to betray them. And now he’d saved them instead. He could have turned Joan in—there was even a reward—but he hadn’t. Why?

As she turned, she found herself caught in Aaron’s direct line of sight. He was still in the doorway, and he was looking at her in the same intense way he had at the watermen’s stairs.

Before Joan could say anything to him, Aaron abruptly pushed away from the door. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘The safe house is this way.’





TWENTY




The safe house was unexpectedly homey. There were family photos on the hallway walls, the kind only interesting to someone’s mum: a little girl dressed as a pirate, her dad kneeling to tie the eye patch; the same girl older and asleep next to a napping cat. A whole-family shot: Mum, Dad, girl, and a new baby.

Joan stopped abruptly in the hallway. Had they broken into someone’s actual home? Aaron hadn’t had a key. Ruth had had to pick the lock.

Aaron stumbled into her back, and Joan turned just enough to put a finger in front of his lips, not quite touching him. He gave her an incredulous look. Behind him, Tom lifted his head—alert.

They listened. Nothing. No creaking floorboards, no whispered phone conversations with the police. No water running, no fridge buzzing.

A minute passed. Two minutes. Aaron’s expression shifted from incredulous to irritated.

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ he said finally, in his normal, superior voice. ‘There’s no one here. It’s as I told you. A safe house.’

‘Sorry if I didn’t want to just blunder in,’ Joan said, but her heart wasn’t in it. No one was home. The house was too cold, the air too stale. If the family in the photographs had ever lived in this house, they weren’t here now.

‘How did you know about this place exactly?’ Ruth asked Aaron.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Aaron said. That was even less information than he’d given at the watermen’s stairs. Again there was a flatness in his tone that brooked no questions.

They trooped in, shoes loud against the floorboards. The hallway opened into a cosy sitting room. Aaron collapsed onto a fat little sofa piled with cushions. Frankie huffed and flopped onto the floor next to him. She seemed as tired as the rest of them. Ruth stopped at a bedroom door, looking longingly at the bed.

‘Lie down,’ Joan told her. ‘I’ll check the place out.’

The house was simple enough: sitting room, one bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, separate toilet. Joan opened every cupboard big enough to hold a person—flinging them open at first, SWAT-style, and then opening them with more and more sheepishness. So, no one was hiding in the airing cupboard, then.

In the kitchen, animal magnets and postcards covered the fridge—Spain, Cornwall, Wales. Joan plucked off a postcard from Dover. Wish you were here floated above the cliffs. She flipped it over. The writing side was blank, the fifty-pence price tag still stuck to the corner. She opened the fridge. Empty and dark.

A little wooden table was nestled into the corner of the room. At first glance, it had seemed battered—as all kitchen tables were. But Joan could see now that the top was unmarked and dusty. Had anyone ever eaten at it? She replaced the postcard and folded her arms around herself. The whole house seemed creepy suddenly. An empty movie set. A furniture display room.

‘Hey,’ someone said behind her.

Joan jumped and spun around. Tom gave her an apologetic look from the open pantry. ‘Tea?’ He held up a packet of Tetley’s, the box almost comically small in his huge hand. He was the picture of harmlessness.

Joan stared at him warily. She still wasn’t even sure why she’d let him in here—after what had happened at the watermen’s stairs. He’d shown that he was dangerous, and yet . . . She remembered again his intensity of feeling when he’d asked her for the message. But he hadn’t hurt her when he could have taken it by force. And then he’d saved them from the guards. And, more than any of that, she kept thinking about the way he’d said those words. The message was meant for me. . . .