The Shadow Project. Scott Mariani

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       Chapter Twelve

      It had been a gloriously sunny day in the Wicklow Hills, and Sabrina had spent most of it by the pool listening to music in her earphones and reading photography magazines. Every so often she’d slip into the water and swim a couple of lengths. All the while, she’d been trying hard to forget about her brother’s odd behaviour and the phone call from Rory.

      A practical joke? She knew Rory well, better than most aunts knew their nephews, probably even better than Adam knew his son. He was a serious kind of boy, maybe even a little too serious sometimes. A thoughtless prank like pretending to be kidnapped just seemed beneath him somehow.

      Then again, she’d thought, he was at the age where you could expect to start seeing behavioural and attitudinal changes. And maybe, in fact, as she’d turned it over in her mind, discovering the humorous side of his personality could be good for him. As for the tennis camp, it occurred to her that there might be more to that than met the eye. Maybe there was a girl involved, a teen romance going on there. Perhaps something that Adam didn’t even know about. It was possible. Kind of sweet, too.

      In any case, the alternative was unthinkable. Her nephew kidnapped, her brother acting cool about it? Completely absurd. Now she’d started to feel bad about the way she’d overreacted with Adam earlier. He was clearly under a lot of stress.

      By the time her thoughts had worked their way round that far, the sun had started to dip behind the clouds and it was getting too chilly to stay out in her swimsuit. She’d wrapped a towel round herself, taken her iPod and magazines inside, showered and dried her hair and pulled on jeans and a blouse.

      After a light dinner she’d settled in front of the TV and flipped through channels for a while, then got bored with the rubbish that was on and started combing idly through the ads in the back of one of the photography magazines. By chance, she came across a juicy special offer on a tele-photo lens, a top-notch piece of kit that she’d been toying with the idea of buying for a while. ‘For more information, view our website’ the ad proclaimed.

      It was an attractive enough prospect to make her start thinking about logging on to Adam’s computer and checking out the site. She got up from the sofa and padded upstairs in her bare feet.

      But his study door on the top floor was locked. Damned if she knew what the password was for that one.

      Then it occurred to her that she could use the PC across the hall in Rory’s room. He’d often allowed her to go on it, and she was sure it wouldn’t be intruding on his privacy if she used it in his absence. She gingerly tried the handle on his door and found it open.

      She went inside. The room hadn’t changed much since the last time she’d seen it. Going over to the desk, she was about to turn on his computer when she accidentally nudged the mouse with her hand and to her surprise the screen flashed awake. Why had he left it on standby if he wasn’t going to be around for two whole weeks?

      The screen had opened up in Rory’s Outlook Express email program. She was about to close that box and go to Internet Explorer when she saw that there was a new message incoming. When the mail appeared on the screen, she saw that it was from someone called Declan. It was just a one-liner in reply to an email Rory had sent.

      ‘Cool. Just watched it. Best one yet!’

      Sabrina’s eye flashed down the screen, and it was with a jolt that she saw the date on Rory’s original message.

      Yesterday.

      She frowned. And the time the message had been sent was only about two hours before she’d arrived at the house.

      But that was impossible. Adam had said he’d driven Rory to Donegal the day before.

      She read it again, and the shivers down her back got colder. Could Rory have sent the message from another source, maybe at the tennis camp? She was no expert, but she was pretty sure that if the reply had come here, Rory’s message must have come from here too.

      Calm down, Sabby. There had to be a logical explanation. Maybe there was a glitch with the PC. Unlikely. Or else Rory had somehow managed to sneak home and then away again without anybody noticing. Nuts. Or Adam had written the message to Declan himself, pretending to be Rory. Oh, come on.

      She turned away from the desk. Saw Rory’s mobile phone lying among the rumpled sheets on his bed. The phone he took everywhere with him. The one he’d supposedly spoken to Adam on from the tennis camp.

      ‘Oh my God,’ she said out loud. ‘What the hell’s going on here?’