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with me?’
    ‘I already told you,’ said Jefferson, ‘I need your help.’
    As he closed the door Cal thought he heard the sound again; a faint whispering, coming from the end of the corridor.
    ‘Is there someone else here?’ he asked.
    Jefferson shook his head and pushed Cal out into the sunshine.
    ‘It’s just the wind in the trees,’ he said, turning the key in the lock.
    But the air was still; there wasn’t even a breeze.
    Cal sat at the table in the middle of the clearing and saw that the sun was lower in the sky now, just above the trees.
    ‘You must be thirsty,’ said Jefferson. ‘You want something to drink?’
    Cal nodded.
    ‘Not lemonade,’ he said.
    He watched Jefferson walk back inside and wondered what he thought he was doing, bringing them out here like this. Did he really have some weird plan? Or was he just a lunatic, playing games until he grew tired of them?
    And then what?
    Cal didn’t like to think about it. If he made a break for it now, at least he’d have a chance of escape. He tried to tell himself he hadn’t known Eden that long, that it was her idea to find the dog, that it was better if at least one of them got away.
    But no matter how he looked at it, he knew he couldn’t leave her. He would just have to try to figure out a way of getting them both back to civilisation in one piece.
    And if it meant playing along with Jefferson and whatever crazy schemes he had, then that was exactly what he would have to do.

Thirteen
    ‘Here,’ said Jefferson, sitting opposite him at the table. ‘Two glasses of iced water.’
    ‘Thank you,’ said Cal.
    Jefferson chuckled.
    ‘What’s so funny?’ asked Cal.
    ‘You English – you’re so polite.’
    Cal wasn’t feeling very polite. He leaned over and took the glass that Jefferson had placed nearest himself.
    ‘Don’t trust me, huh?’ said Jefferson, still grinning. ‘Well, I can’t say I blame you.’
    Cal tipped his head back and drank deeply. He stared at the blue sky and wondered if he would ever see Sarah and Michael again.
    ‘I used to be a research fellow at Harvard University,’ said Jefferson. ‘My subject was physics.’
    He took some papers from a brown leather satchel and pushed a black and white photograph across the table. It showed a much younger man standing on a lawn in front of a very grand looking building. He wore a suit and tie and a shirt with a button-down collar. He was fresh-faced and smiling, like a man who knew he had his whole life in front of him.
    ‘I was twenty-three,’ he said. ‘Twenty-three years old and I thought nothing could touch me.’
    ‘So what happened?’ asked Cal, partly because he was interested but mainly because he wanted to keep Jefferson talking while he decided what to do.
    ‘I was working on a new theory, working sixteen, seventeen hours a day, but I didn’t care because I felt I was on the edge of something, ready to make a breakthrough. But then, two days after that photo was taken, there was a fire at my apartment. I got off the bus that night, saw the flames above my block and knew I’d lost her.’
    ‘Lost who?’
    ‘Tansy. My dog.’
    Jefferson passed another photograph across the table.
    ‘That’s her, right there. Beautiful, isn’t she?’
    Cal looked at the picture of an Alsatian, sitting by a flowerbed in the middle of summer. Then he looked at Jefferson and was surprised to see that there were tears in his eyes.
    ‘Best dog that ever lived, was Tansy. That’s why I need your help, Cal. I want you to help me bring her back.’ He put the photograph in his shirt pocket, next to his heart.
    And at that moment, although he knew that Jefferson had done a terrible thing in bringing them here, Cal began to feel sorry for him. He knew what it was like to want something you could never have.
    Still, the man was obviously deluded. If she had been in that fire, his dog was long gone. Cal decided it was safer to play along for the time being.
    ‘But we looked for