The Great Escape by Natalie Haynes Read Free Book Online Page B

one other room that Millie couldn’t quite remember. She must have looked glumly through its windows a dozen times, but she just couldn’t quite place what it
was. Eventually, she gave up trying, and they agreed that her plan of action was simple: clean what she was asked to clean, and don’t look too interested but pay attention to anything she
saw, in case it was useful. Don’t attract anybody’s notice. That was it.
    Millie told her dad that she’d come with him tomorrow, and he had been pleased, if surprised. Max had decided to spend the night outdoors and would turn up again the next
afternoon for a report. So everything was settled quite easily and Millie gave the whole thing very little thought, which was a shame, because if she had thought for a few more minutes, she
wouldn’t have been in Bill’s van, turning into the driveway of the Haverham lab, before she remembered that the far wall of the forgotten room on the ground floor, opposite the window,
was taken up by a huge bank of television screens, connected to CCTV cameras, which covered the whole building – including, of course, the front doors.

Chapter Twelve
    Millie felt sweat bead on her forehead. How could she have been so stupid? This was a scientific laboratory, the chances were it contained drugs. There was a security man in
the lobby, and the building was patrolled by more of them at night – she’d seen them arriving early for a shift once. The research the lab carried out was controversial at best, and had
attracted the attention of a band of determined and angry protesters. Any one of these reasons was enough for the building to be covered in cameras. How could she have thought otherwise? Even if
she had never been there, even if she hadn’t seen the cameras, spinning slowly and silently around to keep a check on what she was doing, she should’ve realised. She was such an idiot.
Of course they knew about Max’s escape – they would have seen a tape of the whole thing. This was a trap. Max had been right all along. She wondered if they’d called the police.
Had she stolen Max, if they had stolen him in the first place? So maybe they couldn’t call the police. But the cats had been stolen abroad, if Max was anything to go by, and that might not
count. How would the police in Haverham know about a spate of Belgian cat thefts?
    These thoughts fizzed around in Millie’s head, as her dad and Bill unpacked the van, filled the buckets, and went inside to find out where they were to start. The security man was the same
one who’d been there on Tuesday, and he smiled at Millie. She felt a little better as she smiled back. He wouldn’t be smiling if he knew what she’d done, surely. Unless it was
deliberate, and he was trying to put her off her guard . . .
    After an hour of cleaning the inside of the windows she’d cleaned only two days before on the outside, she began to wish someone
would
come and start shouting at
her, just so the endless waiting would be over.
    As it happened, she didn’t have much longer to wait. A woman came out through the nearest stairwell and said something to her dad. He nodded, looking surprised, and followed her. Five
minutes later, the same woman approached Bill, and he too disappeared. Millie looked over at the security man. He smiled again.
    ‘Everyone’s leaving you to do all the work today, huh?’ he said. ‘That happens to me all the time.’
    ‘I wonder where they’ve gone,’ Millie said, hoping she didn’t sound as desperate as she felt.
    ‘There’s probably some other things that need cleaning upstairs. Doors and windows and such. With the cleaners on strike, everything is getting messed up – the windows are
dirty, the rubbish is piling up—’
    ‘Oh, are they on strike? No wonder. The windows down here are massive – they probably got sick of cleaning them.’ Millie sounded so boring she was embarrassed. But she was
desperate to keep the conversation going to try to