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knew, the entries stopped. I looked through the first week of the month. The appointments were mostly as before . . . highlights and a blow-dry on the 3rd, then lunch with someone called Laura afterwards, plus cocktails on the evening of the 6th. How weird that Mom’s life was about to be turned upside down and she didn’t know it. The note on August 7th caught my eye.
    Another birth.
W to Hub
    August 7th was Nico’s birthday . . . He must be the ‘birth’ referred to.
    I turned the page to the next week.
    A meeting with her personal shopper . . . another lunch with Laura . . .
    W to Hub was written again on Monday and Thursday and Friday. And again on the Monday and Wednesday of the following week.
    That Wednesday afternoon was the day my dad had died.
    Patrice had said the Hub was the headquarters of his work for the Medusa Project – and that Dad had gone there to speak to the guy in charge, Geri’s boss, but that the man hadn’t believed my dad’s fears.
    If I could find out exactly what my dad had said, it would give me a genuine lead. I knew from our Medusa Project briefings that notes were always taken in meetings . . . often recordings, too.
    I just had to find out where the Hub archives were stored and access them.
    I could have asked Geri, of course, but Patrice had made it clear that Geri thought my dad was paranoid, too. She wasn’t going to tell me anything.
    Downstairs I heard the front door shut and an excited chatter fill the living room. Damn it, what was everyone doing back here so soon?
    My phone beeped at me. Absent-mindedly, I checked the text message.
    My blood froze.
    The text was short, but to the point.
    We know what ur doing, bitch. Stop looking or u die.

 
6: The break-in
    For a second I felt nothing, then fear swamped me like a tidal wave.
    My whole body shook and my breath just seemed to keep on going in and in. I stared at the text, the words burning themselves into my brain.
    Who had sent it?
    The message came up as blocked.
    I let my breath out in a long, shaky sigh as Ketty and Ed burst into the room. Ketty was laughing. I jumped up, my face flooding red. The laugh died in Ketty’s mouth.
    ‘What’s the matter?’ she said.
    ‘Nothing.’
    Ed stared at me. Was he trying to catch my eye and mind-read me?
    ‘Don’t even freakin’ think about it, Ed,’ I snapped.
    Ed raised his eyebrows. ‘What?’ he said innocently.
    ‘That freaky mental thing you do,’ I said.
    ‘Jesus, Dylan.’ Ketty glared at me. ‘What’s your problem?’
    I almost blurted it out. But I was still in too much shock from the text to be able to talk about it.
    ‘Nothing,’ I muttered. ‘What are you doing back here?’
    ‘Our parents wanted to see where we were staying,’ Ketty said.
    Ed glanced at Mom’s old Tiffany diary lying on the carpet at my feet. ‘Why are you looking at such an old diary?’
    I shook my head.
    ‘Oh, it’s your mum’s diary, isn’t it?’ Ketty clapped her hand over her mouth. ‘Oh, Dylan, I’m sorry.’
    I glanced at her stricken face. Jeez , she felt sorry for me because I didn’t have a mom and dad to take me out. The thought made me bristle.
    ‘Whatever,’ I said. ‘It’s no big deal.’
    As I spoke, I remembered my earlier idea.
    I took a deep breath. At least my body had stopped shaking.
    ‘I was just looking at some of my dad’s old stuff,’ I said. ‘You don’t happen to know where the Hub was?’
    ‘The what?’ Ketty wrinkled her nose.
    ‘It’s where the original Medusa Project was based,’ I said.
    ‘Central London somewhere,’ Ed said.
    We both stared at him.
    ‘Geri told us about it ages ago,’ Ed went on. ‘The Hub was set up by the government to look into all sorts of unexplained phenomena. There were three teams – Geri headed up the one looking into psychic activity. Remember? Her code name was Medusa, that’s why, when she found William Fox and backed his research, they called it the Medusa Project. The Hub was where all