in the corridor outside. The big red blur looked like Abby, but whoever it was, they weren’t interested in Lauren, just in getting away.
‘Girls coming out of the bar now,’ John shouted. ‘Cops are on their way in.’
‘You’d better get some ambulances,’ Lauren said. ‘I knocked one guy cold and stabbed another; he might even be dead.’
As Lauren said this, she heard the pounding music stop in the bar downstairs. The replacement noises were screams and the sound of boots racing up the metal stairs.
‘Put the gun down,’ a woman shouted.
Lauren rested the gun on the desk and the smeary black figure unbuckled her riot helmet as she stepped towards her. Lauren’s eyes still stung like hell, but her vision was improving.
‘There are more girls down there through the white door,’ Lauren said. ‘I think the staff all ran off.’
‘You heard her,’ the cop shouted, as she waved half a dozen colleagues by.
Lauren realised that she still had John on the phone. ‘Where are you?’ she shouted.
‘With you in a flash,’ John replied, before hanging up.
Half a dozen sirens were now squealing in the streets around the warehouse and Lauren heard a huge bang as the cops battered down the white door leading into the brothel.
‘You OK?’ John asked, as he stepped by the cop.
‘Can’t see much.’
John had grabbed a bottle of mineral water and some paper towels from the bar on the way up. ‘There’s blobs of pepper spray stuck to your top,’ he said, as he pulled a flick knife out of his pocket. ‘It might get in your eyes if we pull it off, so I’ll cut it; then we can start flushing out the pepper spray.’
John sliced a V in the neck hole of Lauren’s sweatshirt, before grabbing the two sides and tearing it down. Lauren was relieved to be safe and couldn’t resist making a joke.
‘You ought to be careful,’ she grinned. ‘You should see the state of the last bloke who tried ripping my clothes off.’
31. CAUGHT
James heaved with relief as a chunky female figure came through the door, holding a Hoover and a can of furniture polish.
‘Dana, thank god it’s you.’
Dana was a fifteen-year-old cherub who’d been born in Australia. She’d trained with James loads of times and had accompanied him on a mission earlier that year.
‘Are you on crack?’ Dana gasped, when she saw James rifling through Ewart’s papers. ‘If one of the mission controllers catches you in here, they’ll boot your arse out so fast your feet won’t touch the ground.’
‘Desperate measures,’ James explained. ‘What are you doing here anyway?’
‘What does it look like, brains?’ Dana said, as she put the Hoover down and jiggled her can of polish. ‘This little knob-end cut the queue in the dining-room. We got in a row and I ended up whacking him over the head with my tray. Trouble is, two teachers walked in as I was doing it and I copped a month’s cleaning duty.’
‘Injustice,’ James tutted bitterly. ‘Campus is crawling with it.’
‘I heard you went off on some special birthday weekend.’
James nodded. ‘Yeah, the girls did it to cheer me up. It was cool.’
Dana raised an eyebrow. ‘Thanks for the invite, mate.’
‘Oh, well … Umm … It was a surprise. Kerry and Lauren set it up and – no offence – but I never thought it was your cup of tea. You’re more of a lone wolf.’
‘Sitting alone in my room, reading Lord Of The Rings for the seven hundredth time while I boil frogs in my cauldron.’
‘Something like that,’ James said. He felt uneasy because Dana was holding all the cards.
‘I heard you got suspended after that Aero City thing,’ Dana said, as she looked at the three-year-old photo of James amidst the papers scattered over the floor. ‘Is this Ewart’s investigation?’
James nodded. ‘I’m here because I’ve got a nasty feeling that he’s trying to stitch me up.’
‘Why would he do that?’
‘I reckon the answer’s amongst this lot somewhere,’ James said, as he dug out the report on the video surveillance and waggled it in the air. ‘There’s evidence here that puts me totally in the clear. Ewart has had it for more than a week, but when I asked two days ago, he told me that he was still trying to get it from the CIA and that there was a realistic chance I could be forced to leave CHERUB.’
‘He could have just got it before he went off.’
‘It’s dated last week, Dana. And what do you mean, went off