Twenty-Five Percent (Book 2): Downfall by Nerys Wheatley Page A

away.”
    “No, we couldn’t,” Micah said. “We have a habit of doing heroic stuff. It’s a real pain in the arse.”
    Jean stopped eating, looked up at him, and did something completely unexpected. She laughed. “You’re certainly my heroes.”
    “Where were you going?” Micah said. “We’re heading for Sheffield, but we can drop you off.”
    Alex didn’t say anything. He wanted to help her, and they couldn’t just leave her, but now they had to find somewhere else to cross the river which was going to add more time to their journey.
    “I live a little up the river, on the other side,” she said, waving one hand in the general direction.
    “We have to get across too,” Alex said. “But not being able to use the bridge, it’s going to take us a while.”
    “Maybe we could find a boat at the marina,” she said.
    “Marina?”
    “There’s one just along from where this road meets the river. My ex-husband has a boat there, we could take his. He loves that thing, spent more time with it than me when we were married.” Her mouth curled into a wicked smile. “He’d be devastated to see it gone.”
     
    . . .
     
    It only took ten minutes to reach the small marina.
    Alex had moved to Sarcester from Edinburgh to attend university. He hadn’t been too concerned about where he went other than it was somewhere far from where he grew up. Not that he disliked Edinburgh, but he’d been nineteen and had itchy feet and not too much sense, as was evidenced by the way he chose where he would get his education. He’d stuck a map on its side to his bedroom wall, put on a blindfold, got a friend to spin him round several times until he was dizzy but facing in the right direction, then stuck in a pin. It had actually hit somewhere out in the countryside, but Sarcester had been the closest university.
    After he graduated, he decided to stay. It might have been because he liked the place. It might also have been because of Milly Parkinson, who he’d been madly in love with for half of his final year. But another year later he and Milly were over, yet he still stayed. The city had grown on him.
    So he had driven over the river hundreds, if not thousands of times in the time he’d lived there, but he’d never had a clue about the marina. It made him wonder what else was out there.
    The gate onto the site was closed and locked, but it wasn’t a very strong lock and Alex broke it easily. They drove through the car park and down to the water’s edge.
    “Darn it,” Jean said as they came to a stop at the head of one of the docks along which the boats were moored. “It’s not there.” She pointed to an empty space a little way along the pier. “The bastard must have come and got it while I was stuck in that car, waiting to die. I bet he didn’t even try to find out if I was alright.”
    “Maybe we could take another one,” Alex said, looking around at the selection of vessels, which ranged from glorified rowing boats to small luxury craft that probably cost more than he made in a year. “Micah could hotwire one.”
    Micah pulled off his helmet and glared at him. “One time, I mentioned it. One time and you just can’t let it go.”
    “They keep spare sets of keys for all the boats in the office,” Jean said, pointing at a long, single storey building set back from the water with a sign saying ‘The Wild Goose’ over a set of glass double doors at one end and a single door with a sign saying ‘Office’ at the other.
    “Okay,” Alex said, slightly surprised this was going to be so easy, “let’s pick a boat.”
    They wandered along the dock, searching for something suitable.
    Many of them didn’t have enough deck space for the motorcycles and after ascertaining that none of them knew how to actually pilot a boat, Alex was reluctant to go for anything that looked too sporty and fast. He also avoided anything with a mast since he had not the first idea about what to do with one. Finally, near the end of