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laptop.
    Normally I wouldn’t have dreamed of trying to contact Rachel from home. I was fully aware of how easy it is to trace computer use back to physical locations – and of how dangerous
Elijah and RAGE really were.
    But this was an emergency.
    First off, I went back to all the chat rooms. There was still no sign of Rachel.
    Okay, I was going to have to track her down some other way. I thought for a while, trying to remember everything Rachel had said about where she lived. We deliberately hadn’t revealed any
details online but I’d picked up enough bits of information to be pretty sure she was somewhere in Scotland, near the coast.
    She was always complaining about the rain too – not that that was going to help me narrow my search down much.
    I wasn’t sure what I hoped to find out, but I had to do something. I’d start with local newspapers, then move on to schools. Maybe something on a website somewhere would give me a
clue about what had happened to Rachel.
    It wasn’t a lot, but it was all I could think of.
     
    11
Rachel
    It felt like hours had passed, but when I switched on my phone and checked the time, it was only 7.30 p.m. and still very light.
    Milo and Paul had left the boat ages ago. I couldn’t tell where it was moored because I didn’t dare emerge from under the tarpaulin yet.
    Milo had said that though the docking area wasn’t visible from any of the buildings on the island, there was a security camera which did a regular sweep of the bay and that I should wait
till he gave me the signal to emerge – which wouldn’t be until after it was properly dark.
    I reckoned I had another two to three hours to wait until then.
    At least I’d been able to shift the boxes and barrels a little so I could stretch my legs out fully. I flexed my feet and pointed my frozen toes, trying to get some feeling back into them.
I tried to breathe steadily too, mindful of Lewis’s advice about keeping calm.
    I’d never wished he were with me more than I did now. I missed him almost as much as I missed Theo.
    I felt for the chain round my neck once more, feeling my way down to the tiny letter ‘t’ at the end and remembering the last time I’d seen them both – in that hotel in
Washington D.C. . . . Lewis, hugging me goodbye with tears in his eyes . . . and Theo holding me and kissing me . . .
    It was tough remembering being that close to Theo.
    The floor of the boat was hard and cold and, even though I’d pulled my hood up and covered myself with a bit of spare tarp that I found crushed up behind one of the boxes, I was freezing.
And hungry. I’d gone through the small bag I had with me and chewed my way through an entire pack of chewing gum.
    I couldn’t find my purse and school identity card, for some reason. I guessed I must have left them somewhere, probably the internet café. I knew I’d taken out my purse then,
because I used it to pay for my time on the terminal. Or maybe the purse and the card had fallen out of my bag when I got into the car.
    At least Paul didn’t seem to have found it. If he had he would surely be searching the boat. Wouldn’t he?
     
    12
Theo
    I searched online for hours, stopping only when Mum insisted I come into the kitchen to say goodbye to her boss and get some food. The guy tried to talk to me, asking me
questions about the exams I’d just taken, but I made my excuses – and a sandwich – and got away as fast as I could.
    Even though I’d been starving, the sandwich tasted like dust in my mouth. I was certain now that something terrible had happened to Rachel. Even if there’d been some kind of delay,
there was no way she wouldn’t have gone online as soon as she could and left some message for me. She would know, after everything we went through last year, that I would worry. Even if she
never wanted to speak to me again, I was absolutely certain she wouldn’t want to put me through that.
    But I could find nothing from her. By five p.m., I was ready to