First Drop

Twelve

For a full five seconds after Trey made his announcement, nobody spoke, then Henry said faintly, “What do you mean, you’ve tried it?”

Trey shrugged again, kicking at the curling edge of the mat with studied casualness. “Dad wanted to integrate a neural network into the program, which is, like, artificial intelligence,” he added to me, with that airily precocious tone I disliked so much. “He did all the setup on it, but he couldn’t get results that were, like, consistent enough and he gave up on it. So I’ve been kinda playing around with it some.”

“And you’ve gotten it to work,” Henry said. It was a statement, not a question, with a touch of something in his tone that could have been wonder.

“Not yet,” Trey admitted, colouring, “but I’m real close. I reckon Dad just expected it to learn real quick. He just kinda underestimated how long you gotta spend hitting the neural net with data before it learns the patterns, breaks it down into numbers. It just needed more time, that’s all.”

“Your dad must be real proud of you,” Henry said. I glanced at him sharply but his face was as guarded as his voice.

Trey flushed. “He doesn’t know,” he said. “Not how far I’ve gotten with it, anyhow. I’ve been kinda working on it someplace else – where he wouldn’t hang over my shoulder all the time, y’know?”

“Bet that took some processor power,” Henry said, and Trey nodded.

“So that’s why you were nicking stuff from that computer shop at the Galleria,” I put in and he flushed again.

“Dad’s never believed I can do anything,” he threw back at me, and the old whiny note was back well in evidence. “Even when I was a kid, he’d buy me model aircraft and stuff, then he’d kinda take them off me and put them together himself. It was like he never trusted me to do it right.”

“So nobody knows you’ve been working on this alongside your dad?” Henry said. There was something calculating about him now. “You’ve done this all by yourself?”

“Yeah,” Trey said, defiant.

Henry shook his head, smiling. “That is outstanding,” he said at last. “Absolutely outstanding. I would sure love to see some of what you’ve done.”

Trey stared at him for a moment as the realisation of actual adult approval settled on him. “No problem,” he said, his enthusiasm bubbling over. “It’s all with—”

“Hold it right there,” I cut in. I turned to Henry who quickly hid his flash of annoyance at my interruption. “You’re the one who told us to trust no-one. What makes you an exception to that rule?” I demanded. “Half the people we thought we could trust have been trying to kill us over the last twenty-four hours and now – finally – I think I know why.” I glared briefly at Trey. He dropped my gaze like a hot brick. “You said you could help us, Henry. Well before Trey goes handing over anything, I think you should show us how exactly you intend to do that.”

Henry pulled a rueful face. “OK, OK, I can appreciate your caution. And you’re right, why should you trust me?” He leaned back in his chair. The frame creaked under the strain. For a moment he just smiled at us, spreading his palms wide. I could almost hear his brain turning over furiously while he tried to think up a good reason. At last, he said, “Let me just ask you this, Charlie – what other choices do you have, huh?”

I didn’t answer. Silence is always the best course of action if you don’t have anything worthwhile to say.

“Face it, you need help,” he said. “I been watching the news. I know the kinda crap you’re in. You need to negotiate some kinda deal with the people who are after you, otherwise you’re gonna be running for the rest of your lives.” He sat forwards again, intent. The sweat prickled across his upper lip, forming a pale moustache of perspiration. “I can do that. I can negotiate that deal for you.”

“How?”

Henry indicated the array of computer equipment surrounding him. “Check it out,” he said with pride. “I can reach anyone with this setup, anywhere in the world.”

“How are you going to find them? We don’t even know for sure who they are,” I said, ignoring Trey’s quick wriggle of dissent.

Henry gave me a crafty look. “I got a few ideas where to start. I been following the story kinda closely and besides—” he tapped the side of his nose with a forefinger, “—I’ve kinda done this sorta work before.”

“Yeah, so I’ve been told,” I said, cynical. “Desert Storm, wasn’t it? You must have been about twelve at the time.”

He had the grace to colour, glancing at Trey. “Yeah, well,” he said, shrugging, “the kids go for that kinda thing. Sometimes you gotta embellish a little, y’know? Adds to the rep.”

I regarded him for a moment with my head on one side. “So what’s your angle, Henry? Why are you offering to help us?”

“Easy – I want a copy of that program,” he said, and his voice had hardened now. “Maybe a little startup capital, too – though I can round up enough to get me started,” he added hastily when he saw the warning glint in my eye.

I raised an eyebrow at Trey. After all, he had more say over what happened to this program than I did.

The kid shrugged. “OK,” he mumbled. “I guess.”

“OK,” I said to Henry. “You’ve got a deal.” I gave him the number of Trey’s phone. “Call us when you have something to tell us, OK?”

“No problemo,” he said, struggling to his feet. He was almost bouncing now, his glee almost uncontained. “You won’t regret this.”

“I hope not,” I said, keeping my gaze flat and my voice cool. “I sincerely hope not.”

***

I declined Henry’s offer of a return trip to the car park by the bridge in the ailing Corvette. Instead, we left on foot. Trey phoned Scott as soon as we were off the front porch and we walked to intercept him.

Apart from that brief call, Trey trudged along in silence with his head bowed and his hands deep into his pockets. I left him to ferment his thoughts for half a block or so before I butted in.

“Why didn’t you tell me about the program?” I said quietly. “Why all that bullshit about your dad working for the government, hmm?”

He didn’t answer right away. In fact, he took so long I nearly repeated the question. Finally, he looked over and regarded me gravely.

“I guess I was scared to, like, tell you the truth,” he said at last and his voice sounded raw, teetering on the edge of tears.

“Scared?” I echoed, nonplussed. “Scared I’d do what?”

He hunched his shoulders. “Want it for yourself, I guess,” he said.

I thought of Henry’s greedy face and nodded slowly. It was a reasonable fear, I supposed.

“Trey,” I said. “My first duty is to protect you. Everything else comes after that.”

“Yeah,” he muttered. “Whatever.”

Stung, I grabbed his arm and yanked him to face me. “No, I’m serious,” I snapped, “Don’t just dismiss me like that. This is what I do. It’s what I am.”

Trey met my eyes for a moment, his face stubborn with his disbelief. “Yeah,” he said. “Just like Ms Raybourn and Mr Whitmarsh and Chris, huh?”

For a moment I didn’t reply. What could I say to him?

He pulled out of my grasp and spun away so I wouldn’t see him crying. I let him weep. I suppose, in the circumstances, I would have felt pretty gutted, too.

***

Scott picked us up two blocks away from Henry’s place. His shiny Dodge looked too cool and too new in the shabby neighbourhood where all the cars had a two-tone thing going between the paint and the rust.

Scott clearly wasn’t prepared to wait until we got back to the house before hearing all about the meet. He jumped straight in with a hundred questions. Aimee and Xander had shifted to the back to let Trey and me have the seats in the cab, but it didn’t stop them chiming in through the small sliding window behind us. They were too full of themselves to notice that Trey wasn’t contributing much to the general conversation.

I took my lead from the boy, giving brief answers that were as vague and noncommittal as I could get away with.

Eventually, Scott shook his head in exasperation.

“I swear to God, man, that Henry must be some piece of work,” he said, and I could still hear the excitement running through his voice, just under the surface. “One meeting and you’re even giving us the whole Big Secret thing, huh?”

“There’s nothing to tell,” I said. “He promised to help.” But I was watching Trey as I said it and I couldn’t help wondering – if Henry was the answer to all our prayers – why the kid suddenly looked set to cut his own throat.

***

It was late by the time we got back to Scott’s place. The opportunity to sleep somewhere clean and comfortable, and relatively safe, was too tempting to pass up on. I left the kids sprawled in front of the TV and turned in.

I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to unravel the beaded bits in my ridiculous pink hair, but felt stupid asking so I left them as they were but I dropped the necklace Aimee had provided in a heap on the bedside table. I took the SIG out of the little backpack and shoved it under the pillow, just in case.

I undressed slowly, weary beyond words. The guest room had mirrors on the wall behind the double bed headboard. The sight of my strange reflection kept catching me out, like someone else was in the room with me.

I climbed into bed and was just reaching for the light switch when there was a hurried tap on the door. Before I could speak it opened and Aimee stuck her head round.

“Oh hi,” she said. “I was kinda hoping I’d catch you. Can we talk?”

I sat up, trying not to hug the bedclothes around me too prudishly.

“Help yourself,” I said, waving a hand towards the end of the bed.

She came in, closing the door behind her. Instead of sitting down she came and stood by the bed with her hands in her back pockets. It made her shoulders hunch forwards awkwardly. Her eyes kept dropping down past my chin, then popping back up again, nervous.

I sighed. “What’s on your mind, Aimee?”

“I was just wondering what—” she broke off, thought some and tried again. “How did you get that scar?”

I was silent for a moment, mentally arguing over whether to tell her the truth, a convenient lie, or simply to tell her to mind her own bloody business.

“Someone jumped me,” I said at last, watching her face. “They tried to cut my throat.”

She nodded without showing surprise. There was little more than curiosity in her voice as she asked, “What happened to them?”

Now that question I wasn’t sure I was prepared to answer. “Why?” I hedged.

“Well, aren’t you scared that one day they’ll, like, come back?”

Now there was one thing I could be sure of . . .

“No,” I said.

“Oh.” She eyed me for a few moments, then nodded and started to turn away.

“Why the quiz?” I asked as she reached the door.

She shrugged. “I just wanted to know that Trey’s gonna be OK. I’ve known him since we were six – like, forever,” she added. “His birthday and mine are a week apart so when he lived up here we used to have, like, joint parties and stuff. He’s the brother I never had.”

The mention of birthdays sparked a memory. “So you were around when his mother disappeared?” I asked. She nodded. “You remember anything about it?”

Another shrug. “Not really,” she said. “I know what Trey thinks might’ve happened, but I heard my mom and dad talking about it, a while after. They said she was always gonna go sometime – Trey’s mom, I mean. She just never liked giving up her job to bring up a kid. I think she resented him, or something. He just can’t see it, that’s all.”

“Yeah well, parents can give you the impression they think you’re a waste of space sometimes,” I said tiredly, thinking of the ups and downs I’d been through with my own. “I think it’s part of their job description.”

She smiled, with that slightly worried look behind her eyes, like she didn’t really get the joke.

“So, you feel any more reassured?” I asked.

She frowned for a moment, hesitating.

“Aimee,” I said, straight and steady. “I won’t let anything happen to him – or any of the rest of you, for that matter. Not if I can help it.”

She carried on frowning for a moment, her eyes flicking over my face. “Yeah,” she said then, slowly, “I guess you won’t.”

I watched the door close behind her and debated in passing on turning the key but quickly dismissed the idea. If anything happened in the night, I didn’t want to have to waste time fumbling with the lock.

I reached up and killed the light but sleep eluded me. I lay awake in the gloom, my eyes just about able to make out the twirl of the ceiling fan above me, and let my restless mind roam. A good many questions had been answered tonight, but at the same time just as many new queries had been thrown up.

I struggled to stop my mind turning things over, so that when I eventually drifted into sleep, it was edgy, fitful and disturbed by savage dreams. I woke distressed, reaching for Sean, only to find the bed beside me cold and empty.

***

Saturday morning dawned with that hazy brightness of English midsummer, which seemed to indicate it was going to grow up into another hot and sunny day. Did it ever do anything else round here?

I was up and showered and dressed by seven, so I sat out on the small screened rear deck, drinking coffee and watching the nimble little geckoes flit across the concrete path just beyond the mesh.

From where I was sitting I could hear but not see the neighbours. Over to my right the kids had been bribed into washing the family speedboat. They were using a hose with a spray nozzle on the end of it and the exercise soon degenerated into a shrieking water fight. Then it all went suddenly quiet and I heard the murmur of adult voices. Just when I thought the kids were getting a ticking off for the noise and the mess, hostilities resumed. By the sounds of the squealing laughter, the parents had now joined in.

I tried to picture my father, a consultant surgeon, or my mother, a Justice of the Peace, indulging in such juvenile behaviour but my imagination wasn’t up to it.

I wondered what their reaction would be when they heard it on the news that their daughter was wanted for murder and armed kidnapping. It would have been reassuring to have known, without the shadow of doubt, that they’d support and defend me regardless. Past experience, however, told me they would probably want overwhelming proof before they’d believe my side of the story about what had really happened.

I sat and wallowed in a little bitter remembering, the way you’d kick your heels in a muddy puddle, just for badness. It took a while before I’d got it out of my system and stopped feeling sorry for myself. It might be dirty water but it was all under the bridge now. My relationship with my parents had certainly improved lately, even if it hadn’t quite recovered completely.

Unlike Trey’s.

Trey had claimed that his father must have set him up at the Galleria – that he’d arranged in some way for Oakley man and his partner to catch him shoplifting. I wasn’t actually convinced that the boy hadn’t been stealing. By all accounts it wasn’t the first time he’d been brought home in disgrace for petty theft. The chances were, if he hadn’t been doing anything wrong on that particular day, then he was caught for something he’d got away with in the past.

But if Keith had paid Oakley man to snatch his son, why not do it then, when the boy was alone? Why wait until he had his own bodyguard, however inept they believed me to be?

It simply didn’t make sense.

I made a mental note to grill Trey for the details on his arrest when he surfaced, then I went into the kitchen and poured myself another coffee.

***

I had to wait another hour before Scott appeared, by which time I was back out on the deck, soaking up the shaded heat. He poked his head round the open sliding glass door with his hair sticking up more haphazardly than it did normally. How do teenagers do that?

“Hi,” he said, groggy and sounding slightly gurgling, like his throat was full of phlegm. “You wanna Coke?”

I indicated my coffee cup and shook my head. He withdrew back into the house. That was the last I saw of anyone until after nine, when Xander and Aimee rang the front door bell.

Scott let them in. He was wearing the same clothes he had on yesterday. So was I, come to that, but he had a choice.

“So,” Xander said, rubbing his hands together. “What’s the plan for today, man?”

I shrugged. “We wait for either Henry to call, or Madeleine to e-mail,” I said. “Then we act on whatever happens first.”

Xander looked deflated. “You’re not gonna spend all day hanging around the house?” he said, making it a question. “It’s Spring Break, man!”

Scott shuffled, looking uncomfortable. “I guess she’s right – we oughta stay put,” he said miserably.

Xander and Aimee both cast reproachful eyes in my direction. When I couldn’t stand the guilt they were putting onto me any longer, I retreated back out onto the deck with yet another coffee. At the rate I was consuming caffeine, I wasn’t going to sleep for a week.

I hadn’t time to finish my cup when Trey slid the door open and came out. I could tell by the set of his face, and the fact that he shut the door behind him, that he was there for an argument.

“I wanna go out,” he announced, scowling. It was as much of a shock to see him with his startling white hair as it was to see myself. “I don’t see why we have to sit around on our butts all day. When Henry knows anything, he’ll call.”

I sat back in my chair and looked at him for a moment. He hadn’t mentioned the possibility of missing contact from Madeleine, and neither did I. “So, the fact that between us we’re wanted for murder by half the police in the state has no bearing on this?” I said mildly.

He glowered some more, his bottom lip starting to edge out.

I sighed. “Where do you want to go?

“Excellent!” He flashed me a fast grin, his expression changing in a second, like he’d flicked a switch.

“Don’t get all excited,” I said, scowling myself now. “It was only a question.” Then I noticed the other three standing up close to the inside of the sliding door, flattening their noses against the glass and crossing their eyes.

Trey saw them and his grin widened. “Looks like you’re kinda outnumbered,” he said.

I sighed again, heavier this time and got to my feet. “Story of my life,” I said.

***

In the end, we compromised. We spent the morning at the house, which included Aimee reapplying my make-up disguise, then climbed into Scott’s Dodge and headed for the main strip, and the action.

Scott checked his e-mail just before we left the house, but there was still nothing from England. I think I was halfway resigned to the fact that we weren’t going to hear anything until Monday morning. I just hoped that Henry hadn’t managed to get us into even more trouble by then.

We had brunch at a little diner on the corner where Earl Street met North Atlantic Avenue. The five of us sat at a table outside, shaded from the sun by a giant umbrella. All the kids with the flash cars were cruising past along North Atlantic, playing their music loud and fighting over who looked the coolest in the heat.

Some of the cars were fitted with hydraulic suspension. If they thought they had an audience, the drivers made them hop and bounce along the road, occasionally lifting one wheel off the ground completely like a giant mechanical dog in search of a very large tree. I marvelled at the ingenuity and wondered at the point.

There were bikes, too, big custom-painted Japanese stuff, mostly ridden by suntanned kids wearing little more than swimming costumes. I was wincing too hard at the prospect of gravel rash if they came off to be impressed by the rolling burn-outs they indulged in. When they stopped I could see they’d worn their back tyres almost completely flat in the centre, which would have made the bikes go round corners like a drunken tea trolley. I started to feel old and sensible.

The cops were a heavy presence but their eyes seemed to glide over the group of us as we sat there, drinking malted milk shakes like we hadn’t a care in the world. The white spiked hair made Scott and Trey look enough like brothers to avert suspicion and Aimee’s work on me was holding up under the strain. Besides, weird-coloured hair seemed to be the order of the day round here. I almost began to relax.

And then Trey’s phone rang.

“Yeah?” he said and mouthed, “It’s Henry,” at me. I hutched closer, putting my head next to his so I could listen in on the call.

“I’ve had a response from the people we were talking about,” I heard Henry say, “but they want proof I’ve got, um, access to you. They wanna e-mail you a coupla questions and you gotta be here to answer right off. You gotta get down here in half an hour, or the deal’s off. You understand?” He was talking fast, his voice breathless.

Trey glanced at me. I shrugged, then nodded.

“OK,” Trey said. “No problem.”

“Outstanding,” Henry squawked. “Remember – don’t be late or the deal is off. These people are kinda serious.”

“We’re on our way,” Trey said and ended the call.

Yeah, a voice in my head piped up, but to what?

Scott was already on his feet, dropping a few dollars onto the table. “All right,” he said, “let’s roll.”

As the others pushed back their chairs I held my hands up. “Hang on a moment,” I said and everybody stilled. “Henry asked just for Trey. Now Trey doesn’t go anywhere without me, but that doesn’t mean all of us are going.”

Xander pulled a face. “Aw c’mon, man,” he moaned. “You can’t shut us out now.”

I caught Aimee’s glance, looked away. “I can’t look after all of you,” I said.

“We’re not asking you to,” Scott said quickly. “It’s just—” He broke off, slumping back down into his chair and grimacing as he searched for the right words.

“Don’t cut us out of this – not now,” Xander said with a note of quiet pleading in his voice. “You can’t let us get close to the action when it suits you, man, and then kinda dump us when it don’t, y’know.”

I looked at Aimee again, hoping she would be the voice of reason. She just smiled and picked the keys to Scott’s pickup off the table. “You don’t take us with you,” she said sweetly, swinging the keys tantalizingly from one finger, “and how you gonna get there in time?”

***

Getting to Henry’s place in time was the thing that proved the most difficult. After my reluctant capitulation Scott retrieved his Dodge from the car park behind the Ocean Center where he’d left it and edged out into the slow-moving traffic on North Atlantic. It had snarled to a crawl, not helped by the police cruisers which seemed to be pulling over an unending stream of cars into the centre lane and booking them on the spot.

After fifteen minutes we’d barely made three blocks and I had to make a conscious effort not to look at my watch every thirty seconds. Besides, Scott was looking nervous enough for all of us, fingers beating a relentless tattoo on the top of the steering wheel.

“Aw, come on, will ya?” he kept muttering through clenched teeth as he forced his way into a gap that didn’t really exist in the next lane on the grounds it had moved six inches further forwards than the one we were in. The driver he’d just cut up blew his horn and gave him the finger.

“Same to you, asshole!” Scott shouted into the rear-view mirror.

Four cars ahead of us a traffic cop was writing a ticket for some other poor unlucky driver at the next intersection.

“Hey, calm down,” I said, eyeing the cop. “The last thing we need right now is for you to get involved in a road rage punch-up.”

Unfortunately, the cop’s attention had been grabbed by the horn and the raised voices. I saw a pair of sunglasses swing in our direction as his head came up. Christ, why did they all wear dark glasses? I started to pray silently that he’d let it ride, ignore us.

I should have known we wouldn’t be that lucky.

As the lights changed and Scott began to move forwards, the cop pointed firmly at the Dodge and then to the centre lane with a contemptuous flick of his wrist. His manner had an overwhelming authority about it. I could feel Scott start to cringe in his seat.

“What do I do?” he asked, his voice tight with either excitement or fear. “You want me to make a break for it?”

I looked at the sea of creeping vehicles that surrounded us. The cop’s partner had joined him now and he was staring in our direction, hand drifting towards his hip in a reflex gesture. There was another police car waiting in a motel forecourt less than two hundred metres further on.

Alongside me, both Scott and Trey had turned as pale as their hair. Aimee and Xander were kneeling behind the cab, their faces pressed in through the sliding window. They looked scared.

I glanced down. The SIG was in the open bag on my lap. I had four rounds left.

I couldn’t risk it. I couldn’t risk them.

I sighed. “No,” I said, aware of a sickly taste in my mouth. “I think we’d better see if we can talk our way out of this one. Just do what he wants, Scott. Pull over.”