Thirteen Hours Read Free

here for security,'
and he indicated the high wall and locked gates. 'I think they have an office
down in Long Street.'
    'Could be.' Long Street was the hub of backpacker tourism in
the Cape - young people, students from Europe, Australia and America looking
for cheap lodgings and adventure.
    Griessel squatted down beside the body again, but this time
so that her face was turned away from him. He did not want to look at the
dreadful wound, or her delicate features.
    Please, don't let her be a foreign kid, he thought.
    Things would really get out of hand then.

Chapter 2
     
    She ran over Kloofnek Road and stopped for a second,
indecisive. She wanted to rest, she wanted to catch her breath and try to
control her terror. She had to decide: right, away from the city, where the
road sign said 'Camps Bay' and whatever lay that side of the mountain, or left,
more or less back the way she had come. Her instinct was to go right, away,
further from her pursuers, from the terrible events of the night.
    But that was what they would expect, and it would take her
deeper into the unknown, further away from Erin. She turned left without
further thought, her running shoes loud on the tarred downhill gradient. She
kept to the left of the double lane road for 400 metres and then swung right,
scrambled down a stony slope, over a bit of veld to the normality of Higgo
Road, a residential area high against the mountain, with large, expensive homes
in dense gardens behind high walls. Hope flared that here she would find
someone to help her, someone to offer shelter and protection.
    All the gates were locked. Every house was a fort, the
streets deserted this early in the morning. The road wound steeply up the
mountain and her legs just wouldn't, couldn't work any more. She saw the open
gate of the house to her right and her whole being ached for rest. She glanced
over her shoulder and saw nobody. She ducked through the gateway. There was a
short steep driveway, a garage and car port. To the right there were dense
shrubs against the high wall, to the left was the house behind high metal
railings and a locked gate. She crept deep into the shrubbery, right up to the
plastered wall, to where she couldn't be seen from the street.
    She dropped to her knees, the backpack against the wall. Her
head drooped in utter weariness, her eyes closed. Then she slid down further
until she was seated flat on the ground. She knew the damp in the bricks and
the decaying leaf mould would stain her blue denim shorts, but she didn't care.
She just wanted to rest.
    The scene imprinted on her brain more than six hours ago
suddenly played unbidden through her mind. Her body trembled with shock and her
eyes flew open. She dared not think of that now. It was too ... just too much.
Through the curtain of dark green foliage and big bright red flowers she could
see a car in the car port. She focused on that. It had an unusual shape, sleek
and elegant and not new. What make was it? She tried to distract herself from
the terror in her head with this thought. Her breathing calmed, but not her
heart. Exhaustion was a great weight pressing on her, but she resisted; it was
a luxury she could not afford.
    At 06:27 she heard running steps in the street: more than one
person, from the same direction she had come, and her heart raced again.
    She heard them calling to each other in the street, in a
language she did not understand. The footsteps slowed, went quiet. She shifted
slightly forward, looking for a gap in the foliage, and stared at the open
gate. One of them was standing there, barely visible, the pieces of the mosaic
showing he was black.
    She kept dead still.
    The mosaic moved. He walked in through the gate, silent on
his rubber soles. She knew he would look for hiding places, the house, the car
in the car port.
    The vague shape halved. Was he bending down? To look under
the car?
    The pieces of him doubled, the outline enlarged. He was
approaching. Could he see her, right at the