The Set Up Read Online Free PDF

shoulder, a slightly aggressive expression on his square-jawed face. I caught his eye for a second and smiled.
    Diamond earrings, my arse. I was going to buy Ketty something she really wanted.
    It was a good evening after that. I mean, I had to endure the sight of Ketty and Billy with their arms round each other. But Ketty talked to me and her girlfriends just as much as she talked to him. I had no idea how to ask her how much she liked him, but I was confident it was less than he liked her.
    The next morning I told Tom I had another date with my mystery London girl and asked him to cover for me again. He agreed, but only after teasing me about her.
    ‘What does she look like, then?’ he said.
    I described Dylan, telling Tom quite truthfully that she was one of the fittest girls I’d ever met. I didn’t add that I hadn’t really fancied her. In fact, I exaggerated what we’d done quite a bit – just to wind him up. Tom swallowed the whole thing and made me promise to text him a picture of her. I forgot about it as soon as I reached the tube station where we were meeting, of course.
    Ten minutes passed, and I was just starting to wonder if Jack had forgotten our arrangement, when a screech of brakes at the corner made me look up. My mouth fell open. Jack was pulling up, in just about the coolest car I’d ever seen – a sleek, black Aston Martin DB9.
    ‘Nice wheels,’ I said, trying to sound as if I rode in cars like this most weekends.
    Jack grinned. ‘Hop in. We’ve got a football match to get to.’
    Football? To be honest I wouldn’t have expected Jack to be a big fan of the game. He hardly looked like your average supporter. Today, as before, he was wearing a stylish suit with an open-neck shirt and designer sunglasses.
    The Aston Martin zoomed away.
    ‘Who’s playing?’ I asked. ‘And, er . . . I thought . . . I mean, how is this going to make us any money?’
    ‘You’ll see.’ Jack shot me a mysterious smile. I shrugged and sat back as he asked about my week and how I liked boarding at Fox Academy. I gave him a swift outline of how boring life at school was. Then I plucked up the courage to ask a question that had been on my mind since last weekend.
    ‘Why are you doing all this?’ I said. ‘Helping me, I mean?’
    ‘Several reasons.’ Jack glanced sideways at me. ‘I was part of the original project so I feel involved. But it’s mostly because I want you to have a chance to fulfil your potential – and I know Fergus won’t let that happen.’
    ‘Why does Fergus hate what I can do so much? I mean, he actually called my abilities “evil” . . . said my mum would have hated them. He even tried to make me promise that I wouldn’t use them any more.’
    Jack was silent for a few moments, then he pulled the car over and parked. ‘There’s something I didn’t tell you last weekend,’ he said, his blue eyes bright and intense. ‘Something that explains Fergus’s reaction. But it’s not going to be easy for you to hear.’
    ‘What?’ I said, feeling nervous.
    ‘There was a problem with the Medusa gene. That is . . . d’you remember I told you it was embedded in a virus before it was injected into your umbilical cord?’
    I nodded. ‘You said that was normal in gene therapy.’
    ‘It is, and William did all the necessary tests on the viruses he used, too – but the procedure is always risky.’ Jack hesitated. ‘Sometimes when you inject a gene code into what appears to be a harmless virus, the presence of the gene code makes the virus mutate . . .’
    ‘Mutate into something harmful?’ I frowned. ‘But I’m fine.’
    ‘I know.’ Jack sighed. ‘You were immune, but the viral DNA also seeped into the bloodstream of the carrier.’
    ‘The carrier?’ I stared at him, blankly.
    ‘The person carrying the baby injected with the gene synthesis.’ Jack shook his head. ‘In other words, your mother.’
    A cold wave washed over me. ‘But . . . but my mum died of cancer,’ I