Freddie was still floundering like a fish out of water as he slid into the seat opposite Brookie at a low table in the corner and handed the movie star a mug of hot chocolate. His hands were trembling so violently that he was in danger of spilling his own hot chocolate, and he couldn’t stop opening and closing his mouth. There were so many things he wanted to say, but while many of them would have been appropriate as a fan, none were appropriate in context because of the reason Brookie had come.
“How is—?” he eventually stammered out, but Brookie began with a question of his own at exactly the same time.
“Why are you—?”
They both fell silent, Freddie looking awkwardly at the ground and Brookie contemplating the whipped cream on top of his hot chocolate.
“You first,” said the elder boy.
Freddie bit his lip.
“How’s Fran?” he asked quietly.
Brookie frowned at the cream and scraped a tiny bit of it onto a spoon and popped it into his mouth.
“I’m not totally sure how to answer that,” he admitted, “but physically, she’s in pain.”
Freddie looked up, distress clear in his eyes. “It’s not bad, is it?”
Brookie grimaced and shrugged. “She was shot in the leg. The bullet skimmed the back of her knee. It’s nothing drastic and she’s had stiches, but she was in the water for a long time, which caused her to bleed more and faster, and she passed out from shock and ended up hypothermic. It was bad, but it could have been a lot worse.”
Freddie slumped down in his chair. “I told her not to come,” he whispered numbly. If the police had got involved while she was there and recognised her, it would have been disastrous.
Brookie spooned more cream into his mouth, pulled a face, and then began to drink the hot chocolate.
“I probably would have done if it was my little brother.”
“But she knew it was dangerous for her.”
There was a minute pause as Brookie surveyed him over the rim of the mug.
“And why was that?”
“Because she—” Freddie came up short, his breath catching and his eyes widening in terror. Can I actually trust him with this? he wondered. How much does he know? And has Fran told him anything?
Placing his half-full mug on the table, Brookie traced his index finger around its rim, wiping away any excess cream.
“Last night, she confessed to me that she thought dressing up as a boy and going to the same school as me would mean she could get close to me and thereby closer to Bruno Merton,” he said conversationally.
Drawing himself up, Freddie thumped a fist onto the table, making his mug jump. “That’s a lie!” he seethed. “She did it for her own personal safety because some weirdoes have been trying to get hold of her for the past ten months!”
Brookie’s finger slowly came to a halt and reversed.
“I know,” the movie star said. “Just a little test.”
“You’re a b*stard,” Freddie grumbled, finally sipping at his hot chocolate.
To his surprise, Brookie chuckled. “You two are definitely related.” He hesitated, still grinning. “Please don’t misunderstand me. I wasn’t entirely sure whether or not to trust Frankie’s story, and she said that you were one of the ones in on it, so, naturally, you two should have corresponding versions of events. I was just trying to throw you off. You see, if the pair of you had fabricated her story and I said she’d told me something different, there’s a high likelihood it would have confused you and caused your confidence to falter as you’d no longer know if your story tallied with hers. But you just look frightened and angry, which lends some credence to what Fran told me.”
“What did she tell you, then?” Freddie challenged.
Brookie merely smiled at him. “Why don’t you tell me?”
He did, practically word for word. The remainder of his hot chocolate was turning cold by the time he finished, and he downed it in an effort to soothe his nerves while he waited for Brookie to respond. The other boy was deep in thought, and Freddie thought he recognised a hint of the way Brookie played a character showing remorse or sorrow from the screen.
“I think I’ve been too harsh on her,” he murmured eventually. “She’s a genius. An absolutely insane bloody genius.”
Freddie couldn’t help putting up his hand. “Uh, no offence, but your behaviour in regards to my sister is giving me whiplash, and I’m really worried about what you’re going to do with this information.”
“That depends.”
Freddie groaned. “On what?”
Brookie drew out an iPad from a backpack that he’d stowed beneath the table. “I presume you know about the murders that have been going on in the surrounding area.”
“Yes…?” Freddie frowned, wondering where Brookie was going with this.
“There are some people who think that Fran might be involved with them.”
“They’re idiots,” Freddie said with finality. “Fran would have to have been a ninja to be able to get to all the places and kill all those girls.”
“The police are investigating the possibility of gang crime.”
Freddie sat back and folded his arms. “I know.”
“And the other problem is that Fran is suspected as the murderer.”
Freddie slumped down in his seat, pouting sullenly. “You just said that.”
“No, I mean that Fran’s alias, Frankie, is suspected as the murderer.”
“What?”
Brookie slid the iPad across the table to show Freddie a news article that he’d pulled up.
“The police interviewed her briefly,” Brookie informed him as Freddie skimmed the article, “but nothing much happened, so I’m assuming they didn’t think they had a strong enough lead.”
Freddie looked up briefly. “But she didn’t do it.”
“How do you know?”
“She’s my sister. I’ve known her since I was born – she wouldn’t do something like that.” Brushing his hair wearily out of his eyes, Freddie returned to the iPad.
Brookie cocked his head inquisitively to one side. “Would you say you’re the person who’s closest to her?”
“Yup.”
“Is there any possibility of her having a mental health disorder? Specifically something like DID?”
Freddie glanced up at him. “Come again?”
“Multiple Personality Disorder,” Brookie clarified. “Is there any possibility that she suffers from it?”
Freddie bit his lip and then shrugged. “Don’t know much about it, to be honest, but I think I would have noticed if she started claiming to be more than one person.” He tapped absentmindedly at the screen and peered down at the new article that was showing.
To Brookie’s bewilderment, Freddie’s entire upper body went stiff as he read on, eyes growing wider and wider, until Freddie placed the iPad back on the table with a shaking hand as the colour drained out of his face.
“More bad news?” Brookie took the iPad back.
“She was recognised yesterday.” Freddie stared at the table, his lips barely moving as he spoke.
A shock of alarm hit Brookie. “Who by?”
Freddie pointed at the iPad. “It’s all in that article I just brought up. I think it was one of the gang members. It said she reappeared on home territory during the shootings and then vanished again without a trace.” He suddenly gripped his hair in his fists and clamped his arms around his face. “Godd*mmit, I told her not to come! They’ll kill her if they find her!”
Brookie half-rose from his seat in alarm. “What, the gang?”
Freddie parted his arms just enough to let him meet Brookie’s gaze. Something about the look in Freddie’s eyes was wild and terrified.
“Yes, them too, but no, not them! The… the weirdoes. The creepy stalkers.”
It was Brookie’s turn to go pale, and he hastily sat down as his head began to reel.
“They’re stalking her so they can kill her?”
If anything, Freddie looked even more terrified.
“How do you know?” Brookie asked him.
“It’s a guess.” Freddie tried and failed to keep his voice even. “But an educated one.”
Brookie raised an eyebrow, inviting Freddie to continue.
“See, some people think that Fran and the murders are connected, and some are convinced they aren’t, but all those girls who were killed have one thing in common – they might be anywhere between twelve and twenty, but their birthdays are all the same.”
Brookie’s eyebrows dived down into a frown. “And…?”
“And the freaky thing is that it’s also Fran’s birthday. November the twenty-first.”
“But why would they want to kill Fran, and why Fran specifically?”
Helplessly, Freddie shook his head. “Malcolm’s promised to tell me if anything crops up to explain that, but we have no idea.”
Brookie just stared at him. “This whole situation just gets more disturbing by the second.”
“I don’t know what to do,” Freddie fretted. “Malcolm and Aidan only told me that much yesterday because they only figured it out recently, but I don’t know how to tell Fran, and I’m worried our phones are being tapped.”
“I’ll tell her,” Brookie offered immediately. “It’s the least I can do. If you’re getting regular information, too, that might help us, I think it’ll be a good idea if you tell me.”
“But how are we going to manage a regular flow of information? If I’m suddenly in constant contact with you as Brookie-the-movie-star or Brookie-the-roommate-of-a-potential-killer when that roommate happens to be my sister, people are going to get suspicious. And the first person they’re going to check is your roommate. I can’t actually let anybody find out. After Fran being spotted back in her hometown, people are going to expect me to be in contact with her, or for her to try to contact me, because there’s now proof that she’s alive. We’re already worried our phones are being tapped.”
“Can’t you get the police to—?”
Freddie leant across the table. “The police. Are not. All. On. Our. Side. Don’t you get that? That’s why Fran had to disappear. I can’t afford to draw attention to myself any more than she can, and since you’re constantly in such close proximity to her, neither can you.”
“Hey, I’m a public figure!” Brookie protested. “I get even more media coverage than she does!”
“It’s not what’s normal – it’s the change. And because you’re a high profile figure, if somebody finds out that you’ve started regularly colluding with the brother of somebody whose profile has gone viral because she’s missing, all kinds of conspiracy theories are going to be cooked up, and whether or not good people and the police decide it’s worth looking into, the weirdoes will probably see a connection, and we can’t afford that.”
Brookie couldn’t help staring at the boy again. Freddie’s jaw was set, his face just inches from Brookie’s own, and his brown eyes were alight with a fire that Brookie had only ever seen when Fran was angry or plotting something evil.
“D*mn, kid, you’re bright,” he muttered, leaning back imperceptibly. Freddie could be every bit as scary as Frankie. “But if I’m going to help, I need to be updated on anything you know about the weirdoes.”
“I already tell Fran what I can over the phone.”
“But you guys have to pretend that she’s somebody else, right? Like, a friend or something?”
Freddie slumped and sighed. “Yeah. Which means I can only tell her anything that’s not being kept completely confidential, or that I’ve had a hand in working out myself.”
They both fell silent. One of the Café Nero staff members took away their mugs.
“Bingo!” Brookie suddenly exclaimed. “I think I remember Fran telling me at some point that you’re a fan, right?”
“Huh?”
“You’re a Brookie and a Bruno fan, aren’t you?” A grin was creeping onto Brookie’s face, and he stretched, putting his hands behind his head.
“Yes, and?”
“Fan mail and fan meets! That’s how we’ll exchange information! And I can get you to see your sister, too.”
Freddie’s nose crinkled as he screwed up one side of his face in thought.
“You are completely nuts,” he concluded.
“No, I’m not!” Brookie’s grin was growing broader by the second. “You haven’t seen Fran for a while, have you? She’s constantly homesick, even if she doesn’t want to admit it. The opening of Born in Paris is over the half-term holidays and my agent’s putting pressure on me to publicise the fact that I’m playing Miden in Stonehelm, so it’ll be easy to push in more conferences and fan meets probably right up until Christmas – I can get you to meet up there, if you want. And then you can communicate information to me in fanmail. Neither of us is going to be free to take calls the entire time, and it would be easier to go to authorities of some kind if stuff is written down rather than having to remember what was said. I get an absolutely insane amount of fan mail every day – emails, cards, letters, presents – if you can manage to send it in a way that’s not easily traced to you, and we have a pre-arranged signal so that I know it’s from you, you can get all the information you need across to me without a problem.”
Freddie’s nose gradually began to uncrinkle.
“Um… what if I don’t feel comfortable giving the information in a written form?”
“Then I’ll just organise a fan meet with ten VIPs who get to talk to me in private, and we’ll rig it so you’re definitely one of them.”
Freddie chewed on the inside of his cheek.
“I still don’t get exactly how this works.”
“Okay.” Brookie dropped his hands. “We’ll use an old gmail account of mine and you can write anything into an email and then send it to me – gmail’s banned at school, so I can’t ask you to just save it for me to see. If you can access it at school, do it there, otherwise make sure you’re not on a home computer or something. The login details are stuntmaster44@gmail.com and the password should be p-0-l-3-c-A-t-0-8.”
“Stuntmaster44@gmail.com. P-0-l-3-c-A-t-0-8. Wait. Polecat 08?”
Brookie waved a hand. “I was obsessed with polecats when I was eight. Don’t ask. If you just go onto my website and input that information into the ‘Contact Brookie!’ section with a subject message of ‘polecats’, or if you email the email I use for fans, which should be on the website somewhere, I’ll know it’s from you. If you think there’s a problem with writing something down, like you’re worried about hackers or that the police know, or somebody sees or something, or you want to talk in person, just send me an email with ‘Tell me about Stonehelm’ as the subject, and I’ll try to organise a fan meet. But hopefully it’ll never come to that.”
“How am I going to be able to get to that, though?”
“If you send me a message with ‘Tell me about Stonehelm’, check the website every day until news for something to do with meeting the fans goes up. Then just put down the gmail address as your address, and I’ll make sure you get a ticket.”
“And what about if you have information that you need to give me?”
“I’ll email. I can’t see a situation in which I’d need to pass information to you, though.”
“What if the weirdoes come to school, or Fran figures out something and tells you and we might need it for the investigation?” Freddie pointed out.
Brookie’s brow furrowed. “Then I’ll panic. I’ll probably ring. I got your number off Frankie.”
For the first time since Brookie had seen him, Freddie relaxed.
“It’s not fool-proof, but it’s probably as good as we’ll get,” he acknowledged. “I don’t know how many of my movements are going to be watched now that Fran’s shown up again, but I suppose this has a chance of working.”
“If you’re worried it won’t, keep asking about Stonehelm. There are plenty of security guards around at the fan events; you’ll have nothing to worry about if you manage to get to one of them. I can assure you we’ll be able to talk in complete privacy if we need to.”
Freddie nodded, a tentative smile beginning to make its way across his face. “Right. Give Fran a hug from me. I need to get back to school before I get suspended for truancy.”
Brookie laughed. “I need to get to the film site for Stonehelm before the director blows a fuse. I asked for two hours, but I’m still cutting it fine.”
There was a soft knock on the door. Peeking at her watch, Fran saw that it was already half-nine in the evening. She’d been in bed, asleep, for most of the day.
The knock came again, and then the door was pushed open anyway.
“Hey.” Seeing she was awake, Rico waved at her. “Brookie asked me to check on you.”
Fran grimaced. “Where is he?”
“Filming. He won’t be back until tomorrow. Are you feeling okay?”
Fran rolled over. “Just tired.”
She heard Rico chuckle. “But you’ve been asleep all day.”
“Still tired.”
“Fine. I’ll check on you again tomorrow morning if you’re not at check-in.”
The door clicked shut and Fran closed her eyes. A bright afterimage of Rico beginning to smile lingered, and she felt her cheeks heating.
The next thing she knew, she’d been jerked back to consciousness by her phone buzzing. Groaning, and with half a mind to kill whoever had texted her at such an obnoxious hour, she reached under her pillow for her mobile. It took several seconds for her to adjust to the backlight of the screen as she unlocked it, and she pawed at her sleep-filled eyes for a few moments before she was awake enough to see the text.
I’ve got your back. I know you don’t particularly like me, but if there’s anything you want to talk about, I don’t care if it’s four in the morning – just ring me. I’ll be back tomorrow evening. Xx
Fran blinked blearily at the message, trying to work out who it was from, and suddenly spotted Brookie’s name at the top of the screen. The conniving little weasel had somehow found an opportunity to put his number onto her phone!
With a half-sigh, half-groan, Fran wondered if it was worth responding. But try as she might, she couldn’t fight off the creeping sense of relief, or the little smile that was tugging at the corner of her lips.
B*stard, she texted back. I was asleep.
Somehow, she was sure that Brookie would be chuckling as he read it.