Authors: Nic Bennett
Dead Cat Bounce
CAT
BOUNCE
DEAD
CAT
BOUNCE
NIC BENNETT
An Imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Dead Cat Bounce
RAZORBILL
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Young Readers Group
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Copyright © 2012 Nic Bennett
ISBN: 978-1-101-58891-8
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
Printed in the United States of America
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ALWAYS LEARNING
PEARSON
For Jo, Jake, Ty, and Izzy
Part Two: London Zurich New York Johannesburg
Part Three: London and Amsterdam
Prologue
AMSTERDAM
SEPTEMBER 20
The boy sat
in the hotel room weighing the gun in the palm of his right hand. He had never held a gun before, not till four minutes ago when his father had handed the nine-millimeter automatic pistol to him. “For your protection,” he’d said. Jonah curled his fingers around the matte black handle and ran the middle finger of his left hand along the barrel. His right forefinger slipped behind the trigger guard and gently touched the trigger. The gun was colder and heavier than he had expected. It provided no reassurance to him, only fear.
He glanced at the laptop on the desk next to him. One-third of the files were safely installed. Seven minutes of download time remained.
He looked at the gun again. His father had told him to aim for the chest, the biggest target. He had grabbed him by the shoulders, his face only inches away from his own, his fingers and thumbs inflicting pain where they dug into his flesh. “Head shots are only for
the movies. Take the target down first, and give yourself the chance of a second shot. Do you understand, Jonah? Do you understand? He will kill you if you don’t kill him.” His father had said this. His father who worked in a bank.
Jonah had nodded.
Five minutes of download time remained.
“And then you run. Bring the gun and the computer, even if it hasn’t completed the download. Get out while you can. Do you understand?” His father’s fingers had dug deeper, and Jonah had nodded again, more numbly this time.
“Now put on your coat. Hopefully it will be me coming through the door, not him. Just don’t shoot me if it is. Even if you want to.” This was not a joke, not an attempt at dark humor to lighten the situation. It was a statement of fact. “It will take eleven minutes to download the files and ten minutes to collect the car. I’ll be back.”
Then David Lightbody had departed, leaving his sixteen-year-old son alone in a dark hotel room in a foreign country, holding a gun.
Three minutes.
A floorboard creaked and Jonah’s breath caught in his throat. His entire body seemed to tremble. A shadow had appeared at the bottom of the hotel room door. Jonah stared at it, forcing the shaking to stop. He raised the gun, adrenaline pumping through his lean frame.
Crunch!
There was a splintering of wood as the door crashed open.
Jonah could make out a black leather coat, a mustache, and a gun. He saw the intruder’s familiar eyes lock on to him, the gun swinging his way.
He will kill you,
his father had said. Jonah squeezed his right forefinger on the trigger. For a short moment it
was as if the world had stopped. The room was filled with complete silence. And then a deafening roar erupted. The intruder’s head whipped back against the door frame. His body crumpled, his gun falling to the ground as his right leg twitched: once, twice, and then stillness.
Jonah’s ears were ringing from the sound of the explosion. His hands began to shudder, the gun loosening in his grip. He squeezed his hands tighter to avoid dropping his one means of protection, the muscles on his forearms standing out with the effort. Slowly he lowered his shaking hands, his eyes still fixed on the body, and put the gun carefully down on the desk. Then he vomited three times, the bile flowing through his fingers. Shock was taking over.
He had just killed a man.
Jonah wanted to close his eyes, to pretend that he was somewhere, anywhere else. He retched again, emptily this time.
No!
His brain was sending him a signal. He had been here before. He knew how to recover from this. Yes, he had finished a race. He was through the finish line, on his knees, shaking, vomiting. Someone would put a blanket around him, congratulate him on his victory, his record-breaking effort. He had pushed himself to his limit, and his body was now fighting back. The shaking would slow. The vomiting would end. He would feel the warmth of his achievement and hear the applause of his success. He would look up, and there would be his housemaster or coach. They would be looking concerned, only relaxing when he smiled at them.
Jonah brought his head up, but there was no noise, no warmth, no comfort. Only silence and the laptop, the bar of the download indicator nearly full.
Two minutes.
Jonah snapped upright, adrenaline again coursing through his body. There were still two minutes of download time left! He wouldn’t get another chance to access these files. “And then you run,” his father had told him. But Jonah wasn’t so sure. He might lose the information they needed if he shut the download down now. He had to wait.
He turned and reached for the damp towel on the bed. The smell of his vomit was strong. He wiped his hands and threw the towel back.
Ninety seconds.
He put the gun in his coat pocket and placed one hand on the cable at the rear of the laptop, his thumb on the release. He’d be ready to run as soon as the download completed.
Eighty seconds.
Clunk!
A mechanical noise invaded the silence in the room. Jonah recognized it as the sound of the elevator. It was them! The other men were coming. Jonah looked back at the download bar. Sixty seconds remained. How long until the men reached him? The elevator was old and slow. Jonah had timed it. Forty-eight seconds from the ground floor to the eighth floor. Next there were the double doors to open—first the automatic door, and then the manual one.
It would take Jonah ten seconds to reach the fire escape.
There was another clunk, and the whirring of the elevator machinery ceased. Jonah exhaled. His heart seemed to be trying to force its way out of his chest. They’d stopped on another floor. That gave him ten seconds extra … if he’d gotten the calculations right.
Clunk!
The elevator started again.
The computer was now counting down the download by the second. Fifteen, fourteen, thirteen. Jonah had to leave at two seconds. Eleven, ten, nine. He was about to press down on the release when he heard another noise: a human noise. Jonah’s hand jumped. It was the sound of a man groaning.
Jonah looked over at the body in the doorway. It was moving. The intruder wasn’t dead!
Eight, seven, six.
There was another heavy clunk as the elevator stopped on Jonah’s floor. Still he waited. He
had
to retrieve all the files. Five, four, three. The man groaned again.
Two seconds.
Jonah pulled the computer cable, his right hand closing the laptop, his left hand scooping it up under his arm. He looked at the now animated body, seeing that the man’s head was coming up, his eyes beginning to open. It was now or never.
Jonah ran straight to the door, jumping over the man as he blasted through the doorway. He could make out the sound of feet pounding behind him as he sprinted down the corridor, transferring the laptop under his right arm.
“Oi!” someone shouted, but Jonah resisted the urge to look behind him. It didn’t matter who was in pursuit. He’d been trained to focus on the finish line.
He reached the fire escape and slammed his right leg into the ground as a brake. He pivoted off the same leg, smashing his left shoulder into the fire escape door and dropping his left arm down so that it hit the bar and released the lock. It was a deft move, and by the time the heavy man behind him reached the door, Jonah was
already down the first two flights of stairs. He took small, fast steps, projecting off the handrail with his left hand at the end of each flight, gaining vital seconds at every turn. The weight and strength of the man chasing him was no match for his speed and agility.
But now he could hear a second set of running footsteps, this time coming up the stairs toward him. His father had told him that there were three men watching their hotel room. One was coming down the stairs above him. One was in the getaway car outside. It was the third man! He must have guessed the escape route. Jonah was trapped.
He looked downward to see if he was close enough to jump down the stairwell to the bottom. Straining to make out the number of flights below, he missed the last step and stumbled, falling to his knees. His right elbow hit the ground, sending pain through the whole of his arm. The computer jolted out of his grasp.
“Got you!” a voice from above shouted. This time Jonah looked behind him. He saw a heavyset man bounce off the wall on the landing above, a gun in his hand. Jonah looked downward again toward the oncoming attacker, wondering if perhaps he could make it past him after all, and caught a brief glimpse of a familiar orange watchstrap. A feeling of warmth rushed through him at last. It was his father coming up the stairs! He still had a chance!