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“Fine,” Davey sighed. “Get on!”

“Are you talking to me?” Steph asked, folding her arms, intent on holding her ground against… well, whatever she was holding it against. She wasn’t quite sure.

“You!” Davey nodded sharply.

“I’m not going anywhere!”

“You bloody are!”

“I bloody well am not!”

Davey rolled his eyes and took a deep breath. Steph could see that the older man was finding the whole thing quite amusing. This annoyed Steph.

“Look!” Davey said through gritted teeth. “Either you get on and we escort you back or we call the police and have you done for trespassing.”

Steph considered this for a second.

“What do you mean ‘back’?”

“I mean back to the office.”

“Office?” the older man laughed. “Office?”

“Well, Michael, what do you call it then?” Davey asked.

“I dunno… back to base?” Michael shrugged.

“What?” Davey smiled – this was the first and one of the rare occasions Steph would see him smile. “We aren’t a bleeding army camp!”

“Could have fooled me!” Steph put in.

Davey turned on her. Steph raised her eyebrows. She’d have loved for him to have a comeback. That said, she was not letting herself become completely absorbed by the flow of idle talk. She was somewhat curious as to why she had been offered a choice between the police and going back to their… whatever they decided it was. Didn’t they want to contact the police? Steph suspected not. Also having a chance to see a little more – she assumed that was what they were affording her, even if inadvertently – was too good an opportunity to miss. Not that they would know that.

“What would happen if I went with you?” Steph asked.

“That’s up to the boss,” Davey replied. “Probably reward you for your invasive curiosity rather than having you dealt with by the law like you deserve!”

Frowning, Steph decided to go and sit behind Michael. Davey muttered something under his breath that Steph could not quite catch. Michael was really laughing now.

“Some men know how to get the girl! Stick with me, Davey boy, you might learn a thing or two!”

Steph held on, slightly concerned she didn’t have a helmet. What had been running after the deer? It certainly hadn’t been a straggler. And why was Davey such a miserable prick?

SEVEN

The quad bikes, much to Steph’s annoyance, made their way to a secure-looking gate in the outer fence. An electric fob unlocked it, and they were soon on their way skirting around the outside fence. They continued to cover ground that Steph had yet to explore and – after what must have been fifteen minutes – arrived in a small clearing near the fence. There, Davey took his fob out again and pressed a button. To Steph’s astonishment, the ground seemed to open ahead of them.

Steph couldn’t help but be impressed. The opening had been so well camouflaged and the dirt, plants and dead leaves seemed to move with the door as if they were part of it. The men drove their quad bikes straight into the hole in the ground to reveal a well-lit tunnel. Steph looked over her shoulder and the daylight disappeared on her, behind its iron curtains.

They were not in the tunnel long before daylight at the other end began to make itself apparent. Davey slowed his bike at this point but left enough power running through the wheels to zip up the slope leading back into the world before stopping. Michael stopped behind him. A small square area of fencing surrounded the opening with a gate at one end. Davey pressed his fob again and the gate opened.

From there the small convoy followed a barely visible track through the trees. It was unclear where they were going until a large building loomed into sight. From what Steph could see, the building was a modern-looking house. A mansion really. It had tall glass windows fronting it and the type of timber cladding one would expect to see in one of those property shows where a couple with too much money tried to carve out whatever design was in their head.

It was odd. The place didn’t seem right. It didn’t fit with whatwas going on around it. The place looked, from the outside, like it should be a large family home in some equally large open space for some even larger-headed investment banker. Instead, it was surrounded by trees and ringed by another electrified fence. Once more Davey pressed a fob and they were inside the ‘compound’ as Michael would later call it.

If the location of the building seemed out of place to Steph, the inside did little to alleviate the oddness of it all. Steph walked into what she expected to be a grand hallway leading perhaps to one of those sweeping staircases that she used to see in the films her mother would watch incessantly. Instead, what she walked into was open plan, awash with the colour white and dotted with numerous green palms in large black pots. There was something clinical about it all, only broken by the varnished wooden pine that was spattered around the place like an afterthought.

In one direction, Steph could see a small cluster of computers, but nobody working on them. In another, she could see what looked like a large lounge area with an oversized television. There was a staircase, but it lacked the grandeur Steph had anticipated, its glass sides leading to a floor that wasn’t visible from the ground level. Behind the staircase were two grand pine doors fitted with large glass windows. It was through one of those doors that Davey and Michael led her.