The Genius Wars by Catherine Jinks Page B

hospital.’
    ‘Why?’ said Fiona. But it wasn’t her husband who answered.
    ‘To ask him about that Bluetooth project.’ Cadel had forgotten all about it. ‘What did he say?’
    ‘He said he spoke to the fellow who’s been monitoring transmissions,’ Saul replied.
    ‘And?’
    ‘And there
was
a signal outside the computer labs today.’ Saul hesitated, his solemn gaze settling on Cadel like something made of granite. Clearly, the news from Richard Buckland wasn’t going to be good. ‘A transmission was logged in at 2:38 p.m.,’ the detective finally revealed, with obvious reluctance. Then, after another brief pause, he concluded, ‘And it came from your phone, Cadel.’

EIGHT
    Cadel spent the night under his own roof, after all. But he didn’t sleep much.
    He had crawled into bed at half past eleven, after two full hours of feverish activity. The cybercrime team had arrived at Judith’s house while he was still cleaning up her databanks; Cadel had found himself being consulted about passwords and protocols until Saul had finally dragged him out of the place. Back at home, the detective had made a series of flustered phone calls while Cadel was kept busy answering questions, checking window-locks, and helping Fiona to unpack their bags.
    Only later, when he was alone in the dark, with nothing to distract him, did Cadel at last begin to feel the full, jarring impact of what had happened that day.
    Sonja was in hospital. With a
head injury
.
    And it was all his fault.
    Lying on his back, staring into the shadows, he couldn’t stop thinking about the look on her face. His brain kept hitting some kind of internal rewind button; the same scene replayed itself, over and over again. First came the accelerating wheelchair. Then the look on her face. Then the cry. Then the crash. Then the blood …
    Cadel covered his eyes.
    It wasn’t your fault
. Fiona had told him this repeatedly. But Cadel knew that he was to blame. Sonja had ended up in hospitalbecause she was his friend. And Prosper English had almost certainly put her there.
    Cadel seemed to hear Prosper’s voice echoing around his head:
I’ll happily shoot Sonja if you give me the least bit of trouble
. It was a chilling memory – and an instructive one. Had Prosper tried to kill Sonja because Cadel was giving him trouble? Was that it? Or had Sonja simply been the means to an end?
    Perhaps she hadn’t been Prosper’s prime target. Tossing and turning, Cadel forced himself to confront the truth. Chances were good that the attack had been aimed at him.
Prosper wants to hurt me
,
that’s for sure
, he decided.
But is he trying to do it through Sonja? Or am I the one he wants to kill?
    The threat was certainly there. It had always been there. How many times had Prosper placed a gun to Cadel’s head, in the past? Twice? Three times? Yet the trigger had never been pulled. Always, some kind of warped, possessive, unstable attachment had stayed Prosper’s hand. No matter how much he might have deplored his weakness, he had been incapable of harming his own son.
    Except, of course, that Cadel wasn’t his son after all.
    Cadel chastised himself for being such a fool. He knew Prosper. He knew what kind of a man Prosper was: practical, ruthless, manipulative. Yet deep in his heart, Cadel still couldn’t believe that Prosper had actually tried to kill him. Deep in his heart, Cadel didn’t
want
to believe it. Because that would mean the complete extinction of an ancient, fragile, buried spark of feeling – a tiny, glowing ember that had nourished him for a very long time.
    Prosper had been the centre of his world, once. Prosper had listened to him, and instructed him, and bought him presents. Prosper had
understood
him – or so Cadel had thought.
    It was difficult to accept that Prosper might now want to kill him, simply because the connection between them had proved to be a false one.
    But why wouldn’t he want to kill me
? Cadel reflected.
I know enough to