Nightrise by Anthony Horowitz

can wait for me here in Los Angeles."
    Kyle Hovey slid gently to one side, then toppled to the floor.

    'You'd better get your friend cremated," she continued. "And send flowers if he has a family. As for me, I'll be heading out to Silent Creek. I can't wait to meet this boy, Scott Tyler. I think we need to begin his treatment straight away."
    SEVEN
    Jamie's Story
    They saw her come out of the office building, the woman dressed in black with the closely cut gray hair.
    There was a limousine waiting for her and they watched her as she was driven away, up West 4th Street toward the Harbor Freeway. But they didn't know who she was or where she was going. They would find that out later.
    Jamie and Alicia were sitting in a car in the business district of Los Angeles. It was the same car that Alicia had rented in Reno — the two of them had driven out the day before.
    Jamie had slept for much of the journey, although he had been awake at the start. An hour after they had left Reno, the highway had sloped upward and suddenly he had found himself passing through forests of fir trees that rose steeply on both sides. As he looked up to see the clumps of snow, still refusing to melt, he had realized that he was finally going over the mountains. Beyond the snow. He had once dreamed that he would make the crossing and that this was where he would find a new life. Now he wasn't so sure. All he knew was that his old life had been shattered and he was leaving the pieces far behind.
    Alicia would have preferred to take a plane. But Jamie had no picture ID. He couldn't fly. And with the police still actively searching for him, it wouldn't have been safe to go near an airport. And so she had driven, stopping overnight in another motel in Fresno before arriving in Los Angeles the following afternoon, grimy and bleary-eyed from so much driving.
    As they came down over the valley, Jamie had caught sight of the famous Hollywood sign, the white letters reflecting the last rays of the sun as it dipped behind the horizon. He'd seen it often enough on TV. This was the city of angels, the dream factory, home to the stars and the beautiful people. All sorts of clich tumbled through his mind. But he felt nothing. He had come here because he had to. Los Angeles meant nothing to him. And as for the sign — what was it? Just some big letters on a hillside.
    He was exhausted, hollowed out. Don and Marcie had been killed and the police thought he'd done it!
    The story had been reported all over America. After all, he was only fourteen. A juvenile, on the run, guilty of two homicides. The newspapers had lapped it up. But worse than all this, worse than anything he had ever experienced, was the knowledge that Scott had been taken. It had been more than seventy hours since the final performance at the Reno Playhouse. Jamie couldn't remember a time in their whole life when the two of them had been apart for so long. Driving into this new city, he once again reached out for Scott's thoughts, wondering if — against all odds — he might get some tiny sense of his brother's presence. But there was nothing. In fact, Scott felt farther away than ever.

    Jamie had wanted to stay in Reno but Alicia had persuaded him that it would be too dangerous. They had one clue: a name on a small white card. The Nightrise Corporation. Alicia had checked on the Internet. Nightrise was based in Hong Kong but had offices all over the world. Two addresses were listed in the U.S.A.: one in New York, one in Los Angeles. Driving all the way to the East Coast was out of the question. Coming here was their only option.
    And so here they were, parked opposite a skyscraper that was nothing more than a rectangular block, fifty stories high, its identically sized windows punched in with mathematical precision. The top six floors belonged to Nightrise, with banks, insurance companies, law firms, and dozens of other businesses below. Jamie and Alicia had been here for an hour, watching people