Female Novel
Chapter 111: The Girl Who Was Hunted - Chapter Twenty-Seven
CHARLOTTE
Out on the street, amid the stream of traffic, again, still following my general trajectory, I take all the
most visible routes. I want to appear to be heading out to my university, but I choose routes that are
heavily watched and be-camera’d.
My phone rings, flashing up with my Master’s avatar. I don’t answer, letting it ring off, then when a few
seconds later there is the bing of a left message, I tap it onto speakerphone.
As I imagined, my Master is not happy with me. He is containing his temper, but I can hear the
suppressed fury in his voice. I smile to myself as he says that, if I am uncomfortable speaking with him,
I should phone Michael back.
Think I’ll pass on that… We can talk when this is over….
Guess I’ll not be sitting down for a while….
Outside the City, I join the main highway traffic, watching carefully in my mirrors for any sign of pursuit.
My phone rings again, and again. Repeated bleeps of messages arriving become irritating. I would turn
the phone off, but right now, it is fulfilling a valuable function: tracking me, reporting back as to where I
am.
I finger the locket I am wearing, another tracer now inserted inside. Perhaps it will be discovered,
perhaps not. I have others…
In the rear-view mirror, I see the anticipated ‘action’. A car is gaining on the queue of traffic behind me,
weaving between lanes as it draws closer. A series of cars are overtaking me on the outer lane, but two
flank me, slightly to the fore and aft, and then slow down, matching my speed, blocking my exit to that
lane.
On the inner lane, another car is hanging behind me, blocking the passage of any other vehicles that
try to ‘undertake’ me.
I swallow hard. I did this entirely of my own choosing, and now the reality is upon me.
Go for broke.
I must make this look realistic. Slamming my foot down on the gas, I pull away with all the accelerationnovelbin
my little car can muster. She’s sweet and small, and not intended for this treatment. Foot hard to the
floor, I swerve to the inside to undertake the car ahead of me, only to find myself blocked by another,
slower car, immediately before me. The blocker car behind me immediately pulls up close, tail-gating
me; another exit blocked.
Horns blare around me, as ‘normal’ traffic is bullied out of the way. Drivers speed up, pulling away from
this obvious trouble spot, doubtless happy to be on a journey elsewhere. In under a minute I am
blocked front, back and outside by vehicles. Another pulls up on my inside, blocking my possible exit as
we pass a junction.
As the next junction draws close, the inside vehicle withdraws, and I am herded onto the exit.
We’re on a wild route here. In all directions, the roads lead deep into the wilderness. Very few people
use this road.
Still being forced along at an uncomfortable speed, we are now some miles off the main highway. The
car ahead of me abruptly slows, forcing me to stop.
For reality’s sake, I flick on the central locking, knowing that it won’t last more than a few seconds.
Nonetheless, I start violently when a gunshot blows apart my driver’s side door lock. I don’t have to
fake the trembling as hands haul me roughly out of my seat, dragging me away from the car.
My keys are snatched away, along with the tracker they carry. One of my captors gets in and speeds
away, back the way we came.
“Get her bag. Dump it. And the phone.”
My mobile is turned off and dropped to the ground, stamped on, repeatedly, until it is trash. My bag is
flung far, dropping into the undergrowth.
I am hustled into one of the cars on the back seat. No-one speaks to me. Flanked to either side by men
who clearly do not mean me well, I can only hope that the plans I laid in preparation are working as
intended.
*****
MICHAEL
Richard’s phone rings. “Yes? Hello, Will. Yes?” His face falls. “Right, thanks for letting me know.” He
clicks off his phone.
“Will’s got a patrol car out at the spot where the stationary signal is. They’ve found her bag, simply
tossed into the scrub. It had one of the tracers in there, stitched into the lining. Her phone was on the
ground, smashed to pieces.”
“The car?”
“No sign of it. but he’s got patrol cars following the two sets of diverging trails. I think we can assume
one trail is the car, and the other is Charlotte herself.”
“Will those tracers work everywhere?” I ask.
James sucks in his cheeks. “GPS, in theory, should work everywhere there’s an open sky, but it can be
blocked. The question is, will it occur to them that she’s wearing tracers. If they get them off her, or
block the signal….”
“And what blocks the signal?”
“It doesn’t take much. RF interference sometimes from a computer. Tinfoil will do it, physically blocking
the signal. A metal-roofed garage… sometimes even a tinted windscreen; metal incorporated into the
glass…. At a push, wet leaves under tree cover can do it.”
We watch the dots crawling along the screens.
Richard’s phone rings again. “Hello? Ah, Will. Any more? Yes? Okay. I’ll pass it along.” He clicks his
phone off. “They’ve found the car. It was parked up in a scrap dealer’s lot, queued to go through the
crusher. One of the tracers was under a wheel rim. Another on the keyring. They’ve arrested the owner
on suspicion.”
We sit there, watching three dots crawl over screens when, suddenly, with no warning, they blink off,
the signal gone.
We have lost Charlotte.
*****
CHARLOTTE
Sitting quietly, I look carefully around me, trying not to be conspicuous about it. I am inside, in effect, a
tin box.
Will the tracer signal get through this?
Almost certainly, no….
We have changed cars twice, and now I am locked in the back of a truck. I still have three tracers with
me, all different, but the odds are that, just now, no-one can pick up the signal from any of them.
Master, Michael, where are you? Are you looking for me?
At some point, presumably, I will be taken from the truck to.... who-knows-where? Perhaps the signal
will be detectable then, at least while I am outdoors.
But it may be brief. Will someone be watching the monitor then?
And, when all is said and done, despite my anxiety, I need my captors to take me…. wherever they are
taking me….
Don’t give them trouble. Don’t make them tie you up. Keep your hands free….
I am being guarded. A man with a gun and an unfriendly expression sits by the tailgate, blocking my
exit. However, since the entire point of the exercise is that I be taken to Beth, I have no interest in
escaping just now.
Sit quietly. Get them off their guard.
So, I remain, trying to behave like a model, terrified, prisoner; doing exactly as I am told and hoping
that…. well…. hoping….
Fight the panic. It doesn’t help.
Fear pooling in my stomach at what I have done, and the consequences, if my plans do not work as I
intended, my tearful face is not entirely an act.
Have my Master and Michael received my messages? Detected the tracker signals? I have set a
sequence of events in motion, and I can only hope that they play out in the way I planned…
*****
MICHAEL
Charlotte’s signal vanishing from the screens, for a moment we all, James, myself and Richard, sit
frozen, staring, trying to will the signal back to life.
Oh, God Charlotte. Where are you?
“Time to go.” says James, swinging away from his computer. “We’ve done as much as we can from
here.”
“Yes. Which car?”
“Yours. It’s more rugged than mine. We may need to go cross-country, or on poor trails.”
“Okay. I’ll drive. You handle the computers and concentrate on finding the signal again. You’re better at
the tech stuff than me.”
“Fair enough…. Francis…” he yells out of the office, calling in Haswell’s P.A.
All but immediately, she appears around the door. “Yes, James?”
“We need connectivity while we’re on the move…. we could end up god-knows-where. I want you to
get dongles for the laptops….” He starts jotting. “Here’s the spec. I want you to get all different types
and networks. If one network doesn’t work in a given area, another might.”
“Does GPS need an internet connection?” I ask.
“No, but the mapping programs it works with, do. There’s no point having the signal, without the data to
map it to.”
“I’m coming too,” says Richard. “Francis, send out Ross and whoever else is to hand, to get whatever
James needs. Tell them I want them back here, with the equipment, within twenty minutes.”
He pauses, obviously thinking. “Do you think we want the police in on this?”