Safe House Read Free Page A

started to tremble. Should he run upstairs and wake Jack Cassidy?
    No, he decided. Instead he rose from the couch, painfully aware of his sore foot and his aching ribs, and moved as quietly as he could to the hallway where he found a pair of trainers with the laces tied. They belonged to Rory. A boy knows his best friend’s shoes as well as he knows his own. He slipped them on, his injured foot more tender with the shoes. But he was ready to run if need be. He returned to the couch and sat on the edge, alert, listening and watching, trying to control the trembling of his shoulders.
    It was too quiet. He held his breath, listening. The wind moaned in the eaves of the house. He rose and tiptoed to the kitchen and looked out the window. Because the house was small and narrow, the light from the streetlamp shone through the curtains at the front of the house and reflected off the upper part of the kitchen window at the back, preventing him from seeing out. He ducked his head and peered through the lower part of the window where it was dark. It was this sudden move that saved his life. The kitchen window shattered as the bullet meant for his head missed by the width of a hair, drilled through the wall behind him, sped through the living room, shattered the glass in the front window, ricocheted off a lamppost and flew impotently into the street.
    Crackling with adrenaline, he turned and made a mad dash for the front door, fumbled the bolt open and sprinted out the door and down the street, away from the Cassidy house as fast as his grief-destroyed heart, lungs and legs would let him.
    That had been close. He could now be lying dead on the kitchen floor, killed in an instant. You don’t see it coming. It’s sudden. Without warning. You’re alive—then you’re dead. The end.
    Like his mum and his da.
    The Mole for sure.
    He hadn’t even felt the pain in his foot when he was running, but now it was like he was being stabbed with a knife.
    The rain had eased off. The glistening street was all puddles and gurgling drains.
    He heard the roar of a motorcycle starting up and glanced over his shoulder. The Mole on a motorcycle not far behind. He couldn’t see the man’s face, but there was no doubt in his mind that it was the Mole. Slipping and sliding in the puddles, he dodged into an alley, away from the streetlights, and kept going, sucking air. He ran out of the alley and into the next street over, heading toward Milltown Cemetery. He didn’t need to look behind; the motorcycle was still roaringly there, dangerously close. He kept going, chest hammering. He turned into the next dark alley and stopped, pressing himself into invisibility in the nearest backyard doorway. He sucked air into his aching lungs and then tried to be quiet. Bike and rider approached his hiding place slowly and puttered past. He couldn’t see the rider’s face, but it had to be the Mole. Who else would be chasing him? Who else would be trying to kill him?
    He counted to ten, took a deep breath, and ran back the way he had come, out onto the street again. Think! Think! Use your brains! Fool the killer somehow. But how? He crossed the Falls Road, plunged into another alley, and changed direction so that he was heading once again toward the cemetery. He had an idea! If he could get to the cemetery, he could hide in the Ludlow tomb, a sepulcher really, because there was no underground part. The gate on the front of the sepulcher was rusted and the padlock was broken. Inside the burying place rested several generations of the once wealthy Ludlow family who had made a fortune with their linen factory. But the sepulcher had been neglected for many years. Liam and Rory Cassidy and another boy, Sean Farrell, from St. Anthony’s, had discovered last year that there was room enough inside—it was like a tiny stone house—for them to sit and smoke. If they were careful to close the gate and hang the broken padlock on