The Shadow Cabinet Read Online Free PDF Page A

why.
    â€œI don’t know,” I said.
    I could feel frustration coming off him like a smell, and I saw Boo slump in the back and put her hands over her eyes.
    â€œI have to phone Callum,” she said. “I’ll get him to come back. I can look again.”
    Thorpe turned on the engine.
    â€œWe’re leaving?” she asked.
    â€œRory’s been missing for over twenty-four hours,” he said, craning his head to back the car up. He did this with surprising speed, hooking the tail of the car around like a whip. “Combined with the fact that Charlotte also went missing, and the fact that you are both known Ripper victims—this is already getting attention.”
    â€œIf you send me to my parents,” I said, “we will be on a plane to Louisiana in an hour, and I will never get back here again. Stephen is here
now.
Charlotte is missing
now,
and I’m the only person who really knows anything about the people who took her. I need to be here. I’m not
just some runaway.
”
    â€œShe’s right,” Boo said, leaning between the two front seats.
    â€œI’m aware of this,” he said. “Now, get down in the seat where you can’t be seen. We’re going to my flat.”

2
    T HERE ARE SOME P E O P L E Y O U M E E T W H O M YOU CAN ’ T picture having a normal life. In your mind, they don’t have a house or a bed or eat food. They don’t watch television or use a pen to get a weird itch in the middle of their back. They seem to exist in some permanent state of other. Thorpe was one of these people.
    I mean, first of all, he was called Thorpe. That was his last name. I didn’t know his first name. He worked for some secret service, probably MI5. He was young but had white hair. If he did shower or sleep, I could only assume he did so in a suit. So the fact that I was going to where Thorpe lived was strange enough. But then I turned to see that his eyes were red.
    Thorpe had
feelings.
Feelings about Stephen. I think this alone was enough to keep me in my suspended state of nonreality. Stephen couldn’t be dead, because Thorpe didn’t cry and he didn’t live anywhere. Wrong again.
    Thorpe lived in some very modern apartment building on the Thames, as it happened, in the City of London area—not all that far from Wexford, and very close to Tower Bridge. The building seemed to be all windows and glass balconies, endless glass through which to see the gray sky and the river. He told me to scootch down in the seat as we pulled into the underground parking lot and to keep my face tipped down as we entered the lobby and rode up on the elevator.
    I opened my mouth to speak, but Thorpe cut me off.
    â€œWe talk inside the flat,” he said.
    I watched the red LED lights flick along until they hit twelve and we were ushered out by a creepily smooth automated female voice that said this was the top floor. The halls of this place had a sterile feel and smelled strongly of new carpeting. There was black-and-white framed photography on the walls, and you could tell it was the expensive kind, and not the kind they sold in places like Which Craft? where all of Bénouville bought its scrapbooking supplies and requisite framed pictures of kittens and watermelons and flowers.
    Thorpe’s inner sanctum was chilly and perfectly neat. He was the first person I’d ever met who really seemed to live in one of those rooms you see in fancy furniture catalogs. Everything was leather or stainless steel or emotionless but dignified gray. The living room and kitchen were all one big space, separated by a kitchen bar. He motioned me to sit there, on a high chair.
    â€œWhen was the last time you ate?” he asked.
    â€œI don’t know . . . yesterday? I’m not hungry.”
    He opened the refrigerator and produced a prepackaged sandwich and a bottle of water, which he set in front of me.
    â€œIt doesn’t matter if