Read Online March by Gabrielle Lord - Free Book Online

moment, so I’m sure he could handle your query, if you’d like me to put you through?’
    ‘No, thank you,’ I said before hanging up the receiver with a clang—Wayne would definitely not be able to help me with my query.
    I really didn’t want this guy to turn out to be a dead end. I needed to talk to him … see if he had any information for me … but what had happened to him? What was wrong with Eric?

    I dreaded returning to St Johns Street, but then I thought of Oriana and the words on the piece of paper on her desk … It was possible that the words to the Ormond Riddle were in her study, just waiting for me to collect them.
    I hoped my plan would work.

14 MARCH

    293 days to go …

    The new break with the Ormond Riddle—well, I-D-D-L-E —appearing on a piece of paper on Oriana’s desk had distracted me from my trip to Mount Helicon, yet again. It was going to be a few days before Boges would be free again, but I definitely thought this potential piece of information was worth sticking around for.
    By torchlight and with the aid of the cracked mirror, I applied some cheap, temporary black dye to my short hair. I’d bought it earlier from a little city supermarket. My hair looked like one big oil splat on top of my head, reminding me of the day I first met Sligo … and Winter … the day I narrowly escaped death in an oil tank.
    Winter.
    If she was only going to deceive me now, why had she helped me in the first place?
    I leaned my head over the sink and rinsed the bluey-black dye out of my hair. I watched the dark colour trails weave their way down the sink, slowly becoming paler, until eventually the water ran clear.
    I smoothed my hair right down so I looked like a real dork. When I put on a pair of round, black-rim glasses from Repro’s collection, I looked like Harry Potter on a bad day. But that didn’t matter. Just as long as I didn’t look like me.
    What would Winter think of me if she could see me now, I wondered. She’d probably laugh, I decided. Boges definitely would. Maybe I’d been a bit heavy-handed with the dye. I always thought it would be best to go for subtle changes in appearance with the use of props, rather than clumsy attempts at disguise. At least this one would wash out soon enough.

    I lay back on my sleeping-bag, still going over my plan to get into Oriana’s place. I couldn’t wait to speak to Boges, and I couldn’t wait to get inside the house … once more.

17 MARCH

    290 days to go …

    The ringing of my phone made me jump. I grabbed it and saw that it was a call from a private number.
    I picked it up, and waited to hear who it was.
    ‘Cal?’
    ‘Jennifer?’ I asked, tentatively.
    ‘Yes, it’s me, Cal.’
    ‘I’ve been hoping so bad that you’d call again!’ I rushed the words out so fast that it must have sounded like one indecipherable moan—I couldn’t help myself, I’d been waiting, hoping, to speak to her again ever since I missed the meeting with her at the sundial.
    ‘I was there at the zoo,’ I began explaining. ‘I tried so hard to make it, and I really was almost there but … then I ran into some trouble.’
    ‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘I know all about that now. Forget it. Let’s just hope that the third time islucky. Cal, can we meet up tomorrow night, after I’ve finished work? There’ll be no-one around to give you trouble. Just you and me.’
    I didn’t quite like the sound of that. It was one thing to meet someone in broad daylight, in a public place, but it was quite another thing to meet someone all alone at night in a strange place. I’d learned that lesson from our first failed meeting, when Oriana and her thugs grabbed me.
    ‘I’m guessing you’re not talking about the zoo then. Where do you work now?’ I asked, cautiously. ‘At another hospital?’
    ‘No, I haven’t nursed for some time now. I’ve been working in laboratories. Right now I work at the government labs just out of town. Do you know the Labtech