Mr Hook's Big Black Box

Dwayne Carlisle: Exit Strategy

I didn't know if the guys we were dealing with there anything to do with Spenser and the fake CIA or not. There was some process at the back of my mind trying to work out if they were the same enemies or a different group, and which might be worse. But right now all I could think about was making a plan to get out out of here.

It wasn't the most elegant plan I've made. It relied a hell of a lot on luck, but sometimes I think that all the best plans do. We were huddled up there in the dark, me and Monty, trying to work out every possible thing that could happen after we left the safe. How loud was the door from outside? Would they recognise it, and run down to investigate? We had no idea. For all we knew, they might not even notice us trying to make an exit, but there was no way we could know until we tried it.

I suggested using thermite to open the Box. I had all the ingredients I needed right here, from stuff lying around the Darwin house. But Monty said no, it was too dangerous. I jumped when Hope piped up in agreement; I was still getting used to conversations including a girl I couldn't actually see.

She wasn't a member of LUSARS, she wasn't one of my friends. But I felt like I needed to protect her. Every time we spoke, I knew that it was my responsibility to protect this girl, both because she seemed too young to be dragged into a dangerous situation, and because she had a connection to the problems even more tenuous than a cute jock's year-old sex tape. I didn't stop to wonder if her presence cast doubt on the time capsule story; my mind was conjuring up images of a little girl pushed into the Box by these guys, and that could work just as well regardless of what else was packed in there around her. I didn't know who she was either – all of her conversations hadn't managed to draw out any thoughts on that topic – but that didn't seem to matter to my unexpected protective instincts.

What I knew for sure was that this Box was something special, that somebody cared enough about the treasure in there to kill for it. And that the day before we were supposed to start safeguarding it, someone had opened the Box and pushed a girl in there too. It was barbaric. I never even considered that the girl could be the treasure; that the whole purpose of the Box could be to keep Hope locked inside. We asked her about her family, but everything she said was too vague to tell us who she was, or where she had come from. She didn't even know her age for sure; she said seven, but then she couldn't tell us anything about her family, and she didn't know her own address or last name, which to me implied a child a lot younger than seven.

"I'll be okay here," Hope assured us, "I'm a bit thirsty, but I'll be okay awhile."

"We can call the police as soon as we're out of the house," Monty seemed uncertain, but she was trying to think objectively. She was doing a better job of it than I was, at any rate. "I don't like leaving her alone, but she's been okay for a couple of days already."

"But leaving a kid in here, with those guys outside..."

"She's in a Box, in the safe. Twice as protected as us. And if we stay here or not, she'll still be stuck in the Box. At least if we get the police round here and go find Kris, we can get back sooner with with key."

"I'll wait for you to get back," Hope tried to sound confident, but I could hear her voice shaking with fear, "I'm safe in here, the Box can't hurt me. Promise you'll come back with the key?"

"We promise," Monty said it first, and then I repeated her words. Just like that, we had decided we were leaving. I felt bad about leaving Hope here on her own, with whoever these intruders were, but like they'd said it was the only logical choice.

We watched the cameras with our phones, using the simple hacks I'd been able to implement. Monty had a pretty high-end smartphone, it turned out, because her parents liked to make sure she had all kinds of fashionable or expensive gadgets whether she had a use for them or not. With two screens, we could watch the internal intercom cameras from both the front and back doors, seeing when there was someone in the basement or in the hallway. As far as we could tell they were making a thorough sweep of the house, though somewhat less than methodical. It was about ten minutes until the guys exploring the garage went up the stairs. I looked over Monty's shoulder at her screen, until we saw them both come out in the hallway above and close the door at the top of the stairs. Nobody else looked to be heading this way, so it was the closest we were going to get to a clear shot at the exit.