Free Shadow Creatures by Andrew Lane Page B

same reasons, but they had gone in different directions. Rhino had ended up in hostage rescue and bodyguard work
– things that made him feel as if he was doing some good in the world. Roxton had become a mercenary, hiring himself out to anyone who could pay, and willing to do anything they wanted. And
the last employer that Rhino had heard about, the last set of people whose money Roxton had been taking, was Nemor Incorporated.
    Nemor Incorporated – the secretive, mysterious company that had tried to use Tara to spy on Calum, and then had kidnapped Natalie and threatened to torture her. Not a nice bunch of people,
which meant, as far as Rhino was concerned, that they and Craig Roxton deserved one another.
    If it had just been Roxton there by himself, sipping a cappuccino, or if Roxton had been sitting with a total stranger, then Rhino would have slipped back into the crowd and gone on his way. He
had no desire ever to encounter Roxton again. The problem was that he was sitting at a table with someone Rhino knew.
    It was Professor Gillian Livingstone – Natalie’s mother.
    Rhino moved into the shadow of a row of ticket machines. He let his body and head point across the concourse, towards the main exit, but allowed his gaze to drift sideways so that he could see
the two of them without them being aware that he was looking in their direction. The fragmentary hope he’d nurtured that the two of them had accidentally ended up on the same table –
two travellers heading in different directions whose lives had momentarily crossed – was dashed when he saw Gillian pass Roxton a sheet of paper. He picked it up and read through it, then
nodded and said something to her. She shook her head.
    This, Rhino decided, was bad. The possibility that there was a link between Gillian Livingstone and Nemor Incorporated meant that Calum’s team potentially had a spy in its midst. Rhino
didn’t believe that Natalie was involved as well – he had seen how terrified she had been when she had escaped from Roxton’s clutches – but her mother was privy to all
Calum’s secrets.
    The question was, what was he going to tell Calum?
    And what was he going to tell Natalie?
    ‘Comfortable?’ Tara asked Calum as they set off in the car towards Farnborough.
    ‘Not so’s you would notice,’ he said. He and Tara were sitting in the back of the limousine and Tara could see that Calum’s knuckles were white as they clutched at his
knees. ‘Cars make me nervous, for obvious reasons.’
    ‘I understand.’
    The limousine joined one of the main arterial roads that linked the beating heart of London to the rest of the country.
    ‘Can I put some music on for you, sir?’ Mr Macfarlane’s gruff voice asked from the front.
    ‘What are you listening to at the moment?’ Calum asked.
    ‘Dubstep,’ the voice came back straight away.
    ‘Definitely not!’ Calum and Tara chorused together.
    Calum glanced at Tara and raised an eyebrow. ‘I’d go for post-rock,’ he said, ‘and I think Tara here would go for emo. What have you got that’s in the
middle?’
    ‘Dark Wave, I fink,’ Macfarlane said judiciously. ‘Perhaps some Dead Can Dance?’
    Tara nodded. ‘I’m willing to give it a go,’ she said.
    Within a few moments the car was filled with a throbbing soundscape that had elements of African rhythms, Celtic pipes and Eastern European plucked strings. Tara hadn’t heard anything
quite like it before, but she approved immediately.
    ‘Good choice,’ Calum said.
    ‘Thank you, sir.’
    The car drove on and Calum seemed wrapped up in his own thoughts, his forehead lowered broodingly as he stared at something that only he could see, and so Tara busied herself on her tablet
computer. She checked her emails, and immediately saw one from the
lostworlds.co.uk
fan who had emailed her before – Tom Karavla.
    Hi Tara,
    You asked how I got interested in cryptids. I guess I’ve always been interested, ever since I was a kid. It