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There was no sign of him when I got downstairs. Just Mum sitting on the couch, laminating pictures from
Where is the Green Sheep?
, looking like she'd hardly slept.

‘Morning,' I said. ‘Where's Dad?'

Mum shook her head. ‘Still at work. I got an email from him this morning, saying his meeting turned into an all-nighter and he won't be home until this afternoon.'

‘Is everything okay?' I asked, trying to block the nerves out of my voice. ‘I mean, did he say why it was taking so long?'

‘He told me not to worry,' said Mum, in a voice that told me she was blatantly ignoring this advice. She switched the laminator off and picked her stuff up from the coffee table. ‘It's just this project they've got him working on. They're really pushing to have it off the ground in the next week.'

‘But he'll be home this arvo?' I said, crossing to the kitchen to grab some breakfast.

‘That's the plan,' said Mum wearily. ‘At least, it was at two o'clock this morning when he sent that email. Honestly, I know he enjoys the work, but these long hours aren't good for him. He's so tired, he can hardly walk straight.'

‘Yeah,' I said, wishing tiredness was the reason for it. ‘Listen, can you email me at school if you hear anything else from him?'

‘Sure,' she said. But now she was looking concerned. ‘He hasn't said anything to you about all this, has he?'

‘Nope. Hardly seen him this week.'

Mum got up from the couch and came over to give me a hug. ‘You okay, Pete? You seem a bit distracted lately.'

‘I'm
always
distracted,' I said, twisting free.

‘All right,' Mum sighed. ‘Well, when you
do
feel like talking about it, let me know.'

‘Nothing to talk about,' I said, hating Shackleton all over again for what he was doing to my family. ‘See you tonight, okay?'

I stuck a muesli bar in my mouth and headed into town.

‘Do we have a plan here,' I asked as we walked our bikes past the mall that afternoon, ‘or are we just going to wander up and down the street until we find him?'

‘Since when have we had a plan for
any
of this?' said Luke.

I hadn't heard anything more about Dad all day, which I was
hoping
meant that he really would be home this afternoon. But in the meantime, we'd decided to go looking for Officer Reeve and see if we could get anything out of him about the metal doors.

I looked back towards school, double-checking that Pryor was nowhere around. In theory we were meant to be working on her second assignment right now. Some stupid mapping thing. We had to stand out the front of the school every afternoon and measure traffic congestion.

Thankfully, I'd managed to convince Jordan and Luke to just leave it to me and let me fake the results this time. They were both too busy scheming about security doors to put up much of an argument.

For some reason, Jordan had it in her head that figuring out those doors would help us get a message to the outside world. And she'd come into school this morning
convinced
that talking to Reeve was the way we were going to get that information. Said she had a feeling, and Luke backed her up.

‘We should go to Flameburger,' said Jordan.

‘Why? Did you see him?' I asked.

‘No,' said Jordan, ‘but we'll be able to see the whole street from there. Besides, I'm hungry.'

I could think of at least five other places that would've given us a heaps better view of the street. But if Jordan was choosing here, then here was fine by me.

‘Okay, good idea,' I said. ‘What do you want? I'm buying.'

I grinned at Luke. He gave me a pitying look, and we went to lock up our bikes.

Flameburger is what you get instead of McDonald's when your town is plotting the apocalypse. The burgers are bigger, but the end of the world is kind of a high price to pay for extra cheese.

I went inside to order while Jordan and Luke picked out a table on the street.

Mike's mum was waiting in the next line over, still wearing her medical centre uniform. I went to say hi and she suddenly became very interested in a menu on the opposite wall.

Weird. What did I ever do to her?

A few minutes later, I was back with the food.

‘Wouldn't it be easier to just go find Reeve's house?' Luke was asking.

‘Sure, if we want to get a door slammed in our faces,' I said, sitting down and handing Jordan a burger.

‘Thanks,' she said. ‘Yeah, I don't think he'd be too happy with us if we started visiting him at home. Not fair on his family either. We have to ambush him in town.'

She glanced sideways at the empty table next to us, like she could see something we couldn't.

‘Ah, yes,' I said, ‘the old
sit around eating burgers and wait for him to come to us
ambush.'

She kicked me under the table. ‘Just keep an eye out.'

I shoved some chips into my mouth and looked out across the street. There were plenty of security guys around, but no sign of Reeve. And, really, he could be anywhere. Phoenix is a small town, but it isn't
that
small.

I turned back to the others. Jordan was making a show of looking around, but her eyes kept flickering back to that same empty table.

‘What are you looking at?' I asked.

‘Nothing,' said Jordan, quickly staring off in the other direction.

Luke leant over to Jordan. ‘Are you sure this is right?' he asked in a low voice. ‘Maybe you just –'

He stopped mid-sentence and stood up, staring over in the direction of the medical centre.

‘D'you see him?' I asked, getting up too. But it wasn't Reeve that Luke was looking at.

A hundred metres away, Dr Montag was coming down the front steps, talking to a woman in a business suit.

Luke's mum.

‘Huh,' said Jordan. ‘You didn't say anything about a doctor's appointment.'

‘I didn't
know
anything about a doctor's appointment,' said Luke, taking a few steps towards them. ‘Although it's not as if she fills me in on everything she …'

He trailed off as the doc and his mum reached the bottom of the steps. Montag put an arm around her waist, pulled her in close, and kissed her.

From the look on Luke's face, his mum definitely hadn't filled him in on
that.

The words ‘poetic' and ‘justice' floated into my mind, but I pushed them aside as Luke started running towards his mum.

‘Whoa,' I said, grabbing the back of his shirt. ‘No, you don't.'

‘Get off me!' Luke shouted, and I heard something rip as he tried to pull free.

A bunch of other kids stared over at us from their tables.

‘Luke, stop,' said Jordan. ‘You can't go over there.'

‘I can if you let
go,
' he grunted.

‘And then what are you gonna do?' hissed Jordan. ‘Attack Montag? Out here in front of everyone? How exactly do you see
that
ending?'

Luke grunted again, but he stopped struggling. He watched, sweat beading on his face, as his mum waved goodbye to the doc, and walked back around to her office.

We let Luke go and he sat back down in his seat. The other kids slowly went back to their conversations, clearly disappointed they hadn't got to witness another public beating.

‘We'll deal with Montag,' said Jordan, sitting down too when she was sure he wouldn't bolt. ‘Before this is all over, we'll –'

‘It wasn't
him
I was going for,' Luke muttered. ‘It was
her.
'

The rest of the afternoon was a write-off.

Looking for Reeve dropped right off the radar. Luke was too busy fuming about his mum, and Jordan was too busy trying to calm Luke down.

The weird thing was that, as furious as he was at Montag, he seemed to be more angry at his mum for seeing some other guy so soon after his parents' divorce. Apparently betrayal wasn't so easy to swallow when Luke was the one on the receiving end.

As far as he was concerned, the fact that this
other guy
happened to be part of Shackleton's genocidal super squad was a minor side issue.

Also, funny how no-one jumped to any conclusions about
Luke's
mum being in cahoots with the Shackleton Co-operative. I guess it's only my parents who are guilty until proven innocent.

I got home to find Dad's bike on the veranda. My brilliant idea of asking him about the security doors was suddenly feeling a whole lot less brilliant.

I let myself into the house, planning to head up to my room for a bit and figure out how to casually bring up the topic of magical mystery doors without sounding suspicious.

Unfortunately, Dad had other plans.

He was sitting at the foot of the stairs, waiting for me, like I was sneaking in at 2 a.m. instead of the middle of the afternoon.

‘Crap,' I said, seeing the look on his face. ‘I mean, hi. What's going on?'

‘We need to talk,' said Dad, standing up. He had a folded sheet of paper in his hands. I was pretty sure it wasn't a wonky heart drawing.

Chapter 16

W
EDNESDAY
, M
AY
27
78
DAYS

‘Um, okay, sure,' I said, moving to walk past him up the stairs. ‘Let's talk. Just let me dump my stuff –'

‘
Now,
Pete,' said Dad, blocking my way.

I actually gasped.

Dad
never
spoke to me like that. He didn't give orders. It just wasn't him.

Who are you?

I stepped back from him.

‘All right,' I said, dropping my bag on the floor. ‘What did you want to talk about?'

‘Dr Galton sent this out to everyone in the office yesterday morning,' said Dad, unfolding the paper in his hands and holding it out to me.

It was a print-out of an email.

Dear staff,

I've been asked to make you aware of three students whom Officer Calvin and his team have identified as possible security risks.

The students' names are Jordan Burke, Luke Hunter, and Peter Weir (see photos attached), and they have already been caught engaging in acts of trespassing, vandalism and theft.

Officer Calvin has requested that any suspicious activity – no matter how seemingly minor – be reported directly to security.

Thank you for your co-operation in this matter.

Regards,
Victoria

At the bottom of the email were three headshots. My Phoenix High photo and old school photos of Jordan and Luke.

This email must have gone out to the medical centre staff too. That explained why the nurse had been so quick to run off and dob Jordan in to security. And why Mike's mum was suddenly giving me the cold shoulder.

They were getting the whole town onto us.

I looked up from the page.

‘You want to tell me what all this is about, Pete?' asked Dad.

I scanned the email again, searching for some excuse, some way out of this, but my brain was like sludge.

‘I don't know,' I said.

‘You don't know,' Dad repeated. He let out an exasperated sigh and sat back down on the stairs. ‘Didn't I
tell
you those two friends of yours would get you into trouble?'

‘You're saying this is
their
fault?' I said.

‘Trespassing?' said Dad. ‘Theft? I know it hasn't always been smooth sailing for you at school, Pete, but you never –'

‘They're making it up!' I said. ‘We never did any of that stuff!'

‘Pete, Officer Calvin is chief of security,' said Dad. ‘He's already got a million things to deal with. Why would he waste his time making up fake security threats from innocent students? What kind of town do you think this is?'

‘I don't know, Dad,' I spat, frustration getting the better of me. ‘Why can't you walk in a straight line ever since you got back from Mr Shackleton's office?'

No answer. Dad just locked onto me with a sick expression that made me wish I hadn't asked.

The silence stretched out. I could hear Dad's laptop whirring in the next room.

It was a full minute before he spoke up again.

‘I don't want you hanging out with Luke and Jordan anymore.'

‘C'mon, Dad,' I said. ‘No. You can't tell me who to –'

‘I'm serious, Pete,' said Dad. ‘Don't make trouble for yourself. This isn't a path you want to go down.'

‘And what path is that, exactly?' I asked.

Dad stared at the ground. When he looked up again, he had a pleading look in his eyes that was scarier than anything else I'd seen so far.

‘Please, Pete,' he whispered. ‘I just don't want you to get hurt.'

He stood up, wincing, but determinedly putting his weight on both feet.

‘Dad …' I said. ‘What did they
do
to you?'

‘Nothing,' he said forcefully. ‘He took back the email printout, folded it up, and stuck it in his pocket. Then he reached out and put an arm around me. ‘Just promise me you'll stay out of trouble, okay mate? Keep your head down and don't give Officer Calvin any excuse to suspect you.'

‘Yeah, all right,' I said. ‘I'll see what I can do.'

Dad staggered slightly, legs almost giving out again.

I had a feeling that excuses were the last thing Calvin needed.

T
HURSDAY
, M
AY
28
77
DAYS

‘You couldn't get
anything
out of your dad?' asked Jordan as she, Luke and I pushed our bikes out through the end-of-day bottleneck.

‘I told you, he didn't want to talk about it,' I said. ‘I can try again tonight, but I doubt it'll do any good.'

I'd told Jordan and Luke about the email Dad showed me, but not about the conversation we'd had after.