top of the drawer and took a picture. While the flash recharged, she set out the explosive ready to photograph.
The doorbell rang.
‘Dammit,’ Kerry gasped into the microphone. ‘Chloe, who is that?’
In the flat five doors along, Chloe sat at the laptop clicking through the different camera feeds until she came to the one positioned in the corridor outside.
‘It’s Bruce,’ Chloe said.
Kerry snapped the picture of the explosive and started putting it back into the bag in a state of panic.
‘What the hell is he playing at?’
‘I don’t know,’ Chloe said frantically. ‘He must have got out of detention and decided to come straight over there.’
‘Didn’t you ring him to say what was going on?’
‘Oh …’ Chloe said, sounding choked. ‘I should have, shouldn’t I?’
Kerry was annoyed, but she didn’t have time to let it fester. She quickly wound the plastic bag around the package, shoved it back under the socks and pushed the drawer shut.
‘Clyde and Rebecca are in the kitchen,’ Chloe said.
Kerry tried to think as she heard Rebecca answer the front door. The kitchen was less than two metres away; there was no way she could emerge from Clyde’s bedroom without being seen.
‘Hi, Becks,’ Bruce grinned, speaking in stilted Cantonese that had improved rapidly over the six weeks of the mission. ‘I thought you and Kerry would be doing homework. Is she here?’
Rebecca nodded. ‘How was detention?’
‘Oh, nothing major,’ Bruce shrugged. ‘Just wasted half an hour of my life staring at a clock with my arms folded.’
Clyde looked put out at having had to answer the door. ‘Might as well go for a pee now I’m up. I was kicking that guy’s butt ’til you got here.’
‘You can’t, Kerry’s in there,’ Rebecca said.
But by the time the words were out, Clyde had the bathroom door open.
‘Not unless she’s flushed herself down the toilet she isn’t.’
Rebecca looked mystified, as Bruce had the horrible realisation that he’d probably blundered in and disturbed Kerry when she was up to something.
‘Maybe she went home,’ Bruce said edgily.
Back in Clyde’s tiny bedroom, Kerry realised she needed to do something desperate as she ripped out the earpiece and tucked it back down her T-shirt.
Rebecca opened her bedroom door and leaned inside. ‘Kerry? – Well, she’s not in there.’
Kerry plunged her little finger deep into her nostril, then dug her nail into the soft tissue and ripped it out. The pain was horrendous, but she managed to snatch a wad of tissues from Clyde’s bedside table and bunch them against her face as he stepped into the room.
‘What the hell are you doing in here?’
As Kerry turned to face Clyde, she blew out the drips of blood that had collected at the base of her nostril. Clyde looked shocked as it dribbled over her lips and down her chin.
Rebecca stepped in behind her brother. ‘Oh my god, Kerry. What happened?’
Kerry didn’t need to fake anything; the injury she’d inflicted upon herself was bloody and extremely painful.
‘I get nosebleeds quite a bit. I was coming out of the toilet and it started up really bad. I ran in here to grab tissues.’
If Rebecca or Clyde had stopped to think in great depth, they might have wondered why Kerry didn’t go back into the bathroom and grab some toilet tissue, or grab a paper towel from the kitchen rather than enter a room she wasn’t familiar with. But neither of them could think beyond the bloody face and pained expression standing right in front of them.
‘What do you want us to do, Kerry?’ Clyde asked.
‘I think I’d better go home,’ Kerry said, close to sobbing. ‘My mum’s there. She knows how to stop the bleeding. She’s done it loads of times before.’
*
Bruce opened the door of the flat. Kyle and Chloe had watched Kerry’s escape plan unfold on the laptop screen, but they weren’t prepared for the torrent of blood pouring down her neck as she stumbled towards the table and slumped into a dining chair, glowering at Bruce.
‘Moron,’ Kerry screamed. ‘You nearly blew this whole
operation.’
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t think,’ Bruce said, wrapping his hands over his head, totally unable to look Kerry in the eye.
‘You never think.’
Chloe stepped in to calm them down. ‘Kerry, it was my fault. I should have phoned Bruce.’
‘It wasn’t you that got a detention,’ Kerry said.
She grabbed her camera out of her pocket and banged it on the table, as Kyle grabbed a first aid box from under the sink.
‘Bruce,’ Kyle said, trying to be diplomatic, ‘why don’t you go in