"It's locked," she said. I held my hands out and she handed it over. Mark chose that moment to appear, a mug of coffee in each hand.
"I made one for you, but not for Bex," he told me, proffering a steaming mug. "She doesn't like too much coffee, says it keeps her awake. She really likes to sleep."
"Tell me about it. She slept the whole way back from Aberdeenshire."
"So can you open the box?" Rebecca asked, pointedly ignoring our teasing.
"Sure, but not in a way that would leave it intact afterwards. We should take it to a locksmith in the morning."
"You can. I have to go to school," Mark said glumly. "Mum made me promise, and I wouldn't put it past her to phone them and check."
"I should probably go too. It's Wednesday tomorrow, isn't it? That means I've already missed two days this week. More than I've missed in years. I'm feeling the guilt."
"You're missing Shanice, Bex?"
"God, no. But I'm so close to finishing, it would be a waste to drop out now."
"You could do some sort of distance education thingy if you wanted to," Mark suggested vaguely.
"True. I'll think about that. In the meantime, I'll go to school with you tomorrow."
I listened to their discussion with half an ear. It would always be Rebecca's choice whether or not she went to school, but I remembered the aftermath of her altercation with Shanice, and I felt slightly uneasy. Chances were, though, that she would be safe there with Mark. I decided to drop them both off and fetch them in the afternoon.
The discussion eventually turned to sleeping arrangements. I hadn't been able to arrange a spare bed yet, but Mark suggested bringing his bed across from the Harding's place, and setting it up in the spare room in the mean time. As soon as that had been accomplished, Mark started yawning in earnest, so I sent them both up to bed. I knew Rebecca would be sleeping in my room, between my sheets, and I tried not to imagine what it would feel like to lie next to her, because I knew I wouldn't be sleeping much if I ever did.
I decided to start searching for areas where Jack might have set up his base. I had a fair idea of the parameters involved, but it was still going to take a while, and there was no guarantee that I would find anything. It was worth a try though, and I had nothing better to do that night.
Rebecca
It was even weirder being back at school the next day. The last time I had been away and returned, everyone had known that I had been abducted. This time they knew no such thing. But they probably assumed that I'd had some kind of nervous breakdown or something, because the glances directed at me this time were brimming with sympathy, and a kind of morbid curiosity. Even Shanice seemed less menacing, but that may have had something to do with the fact that I'd broken her nose a couple of weeks ago. It seemed to be healing well, though. The swelling had gone down and it wasn't really skew or anything. So I didn't feel too bad.