Free The Thirteen Hallows by Michael Scott, Colette Freedman

although the trip there was vague and confused in her memory. She thought she might be able to find it again…but she was not entirely sure. She could always contact Walker’s publisher, but they wouldn’t be likely to give out her address, nor would the library, where she had done her research the previous day. However, the library would have a copy of the register of electors, a database containing electors’ names and addresses, and Judith had said she’d lived in the same house for most of her life. Sarah decided she’d pop into the library during her lunch. The phone interrupted her train of thought.
    “Hello?”
    “I would like to speak with Sarah Miller, please.”
    Sarah immediately recognized the same cultured male voice from earlier. “Look, I don’t know what kind of joke you’re playing, but I have an extremely busy day and I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t keep bothering me.”
    “Oh, Ms. Miller, I assure you I am not playing a joke. And I’m extremely disappointed that you’re still at work. As I said earlier, my representatives will be calling on your home at noon. I believe, if you leave your office immediately, you’ll still be able to catch them.”
    “Who are you? What do you want?” Sarah felt the first flickers of panic and found herself agitated by the creepy tone of enjoyment that had entered the man’s voice.
    “I want what Judith Walker gave you.”
    “I told you, she didn’t give me—”
    “Please don’t disappoint me, sweetheart.” The threat was implicit in the eerie baritone voice.

12
     
    Sarah Miller was sweating heavily as she bolted down the street in her sneakers, relieved that she had left her heels at the office. Squinting against the unforgiving noonday sun, she flagged down a taxi that quickly became enveloped in the standstill city traffic. After she’d sat in the cab on Oxford Street for ten interminable minutes, her frustration overwhelmed her and she abruptly paid the surprised driver, then leapt out of the cab and darted down the street into the Tottenham Court tube.
    The endless journey on the tube was insufferable. The train was hot, airless, and stinking with food, stale perfume, and unwashed bodies. Although she was usually timid, she found herself glaring at a Rastafarian musician begging for a few quid and being positively rude to a Korean tourist in an ugly red vest who was trying to ask for directions in broken English. She changed trains at Victoria station and was forced to stand until the train had left the city behind and started out into the suburbs. When she finally got a seat, she pressed her pounding head against the cool glass and watched the countryside slip past. In the back of her mind, she had convinced herself that this was no more than a badly timed practical joke, perhaps even a perverse scheme dreamed up by her boss just to get her fired. And when Hinkle discovered that she’d walked out of the office without telling anyone, she’d certainly get the sack. Yet the voice on the phone had been so calm, so insistent, and so chilling that deep in her heart, Sarah knew this was no joke.
    By the time the train pulled into Crawley station, she was in a breathless panic. Hurrying from the station, she was running as soon as she reached the road she’d grown up on. She slowed then, breath coming in great heaving gasps, a wickedly painful stitch in her side, before finally stopping in the shadow of the neighbor’s neatly trimmed hedges. She looked at her mother’s house. Everything seemed to be in order. All the windows were closed, the gate was locked, and Freddie’s bright blue racer was abandoned on the uncut and sunburned lawn.
    Sarah glanced up and down the street, but there was nothing out of the ordinary. No strange cars, no strangers loitering. She glanced at her watch; the caller had said that his representatives would arrive within the hour, yet that had been nearly forty-five minutes ago. What sort of representatives? Had