Fall by Candice Fox Read Free Book Online Page A

would be no handling evidence for her.
    â€˜There are programs you can download onto your phone specifically for running,’ Hooky said. ‘They play your music, track your progress, time you, mark your distance and elevation.’
    She gave me a bunch of very quick instructions. I stopped the music and brought up a screen full of numbers and images.
    â€˜How the hell do they do that?’
    â€˜GPS.’ She rolled her eyes. Eden looked over my shoulder. Hooky made me bring up a green and grey map crisscrossed with colourful lines and numbers in flashing bubbles.
    â€˜See here?’ Hooky pointed with her pinky finger. ‘She did two laps of the park yesterday afternoon, 5.14 pm. Then she went off track … through the bushland over there, Queens Park Road. There was a pause of … three minutes. Then we’re onto a road. Her pulse goes up from 180 to 210 beats per minute.’
    â€˜This thing can do heartbeats?’ I looked at Eden. She was deadpan. I guessed this kind of technology had been around for a while. I felt old.
    â€˜Then she’s off again.’ Hooky frowned at the phone. ‘She speeds up to forty, then sixty kilometres an hour. Either the chick was running like the Terminator or she’s been put in a car.’
    â€˜Fuck me!’ I said. ‘We can follow this right to the crime scene?’
    Hooky tugged my arm back down so she could see the phone. ‘Yup. Looks like the killer drove her out to … Mangrove Road, Ashfield. Stopped for fifteen minutes. Then drove her back here.’
    I pressed the bubble on Mangrove Road tentatively, not sure what would happen. A window opened marked with a small red X.
    Heart rate error. Connection lost.
    â€˜We’re going to need a secondary team to follow us anda third to check out the pick-up point by Queens Park Road.’ Eden turned and began walking towards the car. She beckoned for the head crime-scene tech and gave him instructions as she hobbled down the slope, her aluminium crutch making holes in the wet grass. ‘Frank, give me that phone. We need to get screen shots of the map and send them to headquarters.’
    I glanced back at Hooky as I ran towards the car. She was at the top of the hill smiling to herself.
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    Eden gets this look about her when she’s on the hunt. She always has. Pointed. Cold. I like to try to keep things light and casual, especially when I’m a passenger with no way to control how fast the car’s going or which route we take. If I can’t keep a lid on my excitement, I start chewing my nails, my knuckles, my collar. My stomach starts churning.
    Since her run-in with a killer, Eden’s pointed look has developed a really deadly edge. She drives like she’s handling a getaway car, sailing through gaps she has no cause to be confident about. I hung on to the seatbelt and tried to remember if you’re supposed to go stiff or limp in a crash. We headed across the city towards Ashfield with people leaping from crossings and holding their children as the sirens announced our approach. The radio was playing, and as news broke on the hour Eden glanced at it.
    â€˜â€¦ the remains of at least four people in a burned-out Kombi van outside the Black Mutt Inn near Suffolk Park, just south of tourist hotspot Byron Bay. It is believed at least some of the victims suffered gunshot wounds. Police are asking –’
    Eden switched the radio off.
    â€˜Ashfield,’ I said, glancing at the phone now and then, trying to avoid making myself sick. ‘Why Ashfield?’
    â€˜I don’t know,’ Eden said.
    â€˜Bit of a horrible name for a place. Ashfield.’
    â€˜You should pen a stern letter to the mayor.’
    â€˜Maybe I will. The bus!’
    â€˜I can see the fucking bus, Frank.’ Eden swerved.
    â€˜Jesus Christ, we’re both gonna die.’
    â€˜Would you shut up?’
    â€˜Would you look at the road?’
    Eden