by Adam Maxwell
“Sure can,” said Zoe with a grin. “Don’t worry though, you lot are far too dull to warrant additional attention. It’s bad enough having to spend time with you in person without being forced to listen to your tawdry babbling on the phone. Especially Katie, she never shuts up.”
Everyone laughed, the tension in the room falling away slightly.
“So you intercepted a phonecall?” asked Violet, still smiling but wanting to get things back on track.
“A text,” Zoe corrected. “From Rollo Glass. Apparently the painting is being put into storage.”
“Because of your visit?” asked Violet, and then, realising the implication, “I don’t mean you blew it, I just mean in case anyone else wants to jump on the bandwagon.”
“It’s okay,” said Zoe. “No, it seems pretty routine. I think he just has so many paintings that he rotates them.”
“Same as me,” said Barry. “Only mine are done by my niece. And she’s four.”
“No need to jump to her defence, Barry,” Violet smiled. “If it wasn’t for Zoe’s smarts we’d be busting in to find our target gone.”
“So what now?” asked Lucas pointedly. “We change the plan? Hit it on the way out?”
“Not enough time to plan,” said Violet. “They’ll use a security firm and we’d need a man on the inside.” Violet stared at Barry, making the calculations in her head. “No. No time.”
Violet clicked her tongue on the roof of her mouth and began pacing.
“No,” she said, weighing up the case for and against in her head. “But if we kick it up a notch. With a couple of minor alterations we could pull this off. Especially with all the extra data Zoe managed to pull from her little undercover operation.”
Zoe did a miniature salute with her index finger.
“Right then,” said Barry. “Then what the fuck are we waiting for. Let’s do what you say, boss. I’ve been twiddling my thumbs for too long anyway. Might as well get in gear before I get bored and start blowing shit up.”
“Wha–” Zoe began.
“How long did Damien say the painting would take?” Violet interrupted, aiming the question at Lucas.
“What day is it?” Lucas asked and then, before anyone could answer, “today was the earliest he said it might be ready. I can give him a ring if you like and ask–”
“No,” Violet stopped pacing and pointed at Barry. “You. Go and be... oh fuck it, Barry, go and be rude to him, he’s a waste of blood and organs anyway and if he’s not finished give him some sort of incentive.”
Barry nodded.
“And take Zoe,” said Violet, glancing at the bag of surveillance tech from the van. “Good experience for you Zoe. Making sure the dog doesn’t slip his leash.”
Zoe shrugged.
“What about us?” asked Lucas, gesturing towards Katie.
“Mr Vaughan,” Violet sighed. “Do you imagine I keep you around for your good looks?”
Lucas began to verbalise something but Violet cut him down. “I need your brains.” She turned to Katie and gave her a wink. “And your looks.”
*
“So is this all you do then?” asked Zoe, finally breaking the silence between herself and Barry after an awkward first five minutes. “Drive fast and paint cars?”
Barry was staring petulantly out of the windscreen, concentrating unrelentingly on the rush-hour traffic. He glanced occasionally in the rearview mirror and frowned slightly. They had moved around two hundred metres in five minutes and things were showing no sign of getting any better. Zoe had a feeling that Barry was also smarting because she’d wanted to take the Aston Martin. He told her no and took the old car instead, the Mark One Escort. His pride and joy.
Not that this vintage bucket of bolts was a bad car. It just wasn’t an Aston Martin.
“I’m good with my hands,” said Barry. “All sorts of ways.”
“I bet you are, big boy,” Zoe smirked, watching Barry’s face drop in embarrassment.
“I’m a dab hand with explosives too,” said Barry, trying to steer her away from making him feel like a pervert. “And how old are you. You look...”
“About twelve years old, yes I’m aware of that...” Zoe snapped.
“Glove compartment,” Barry said matter-of-factly, before turning the handle that wound down the driver’s side window. He reached out and adjusted the side mirror.
Zoe popped the glove compartment and reached inside. There was a block of something in a grey wrapper. Maybe twenty centimetres long, maybe ten centimetres wide and the same in height.
“Plastic explosive,” said Barry and then scratched his nose and yawned.
“Jesus Christ, are you insane? What’s it doing in the glove compartment?” said Zoe, holding on to the block as if it were a baby bird, touching it with only her fingertips.
Barry laughed and moved the car forward another couple of metres. “Don’t worry, without a detonator it’s practically impossible to set it off.”
“Practically?” said Zoe, carefully placing the block back in the glove compartment and slowly closing it. “Meaning that there is a chance?”
Barry checked his mirrors again, his brow furrowed. “Fuck this,” he said, slammed the car into gear and pulled out into the oncoming lane, flashing his lights and honking the horn as he began accelerating towards the cars coming in the other direction.
Zoe winced and pushed herself back into the passenger seat, checking her seatbelt.
“Don’t worry,” said Barry, calmly. “They’ll move out of the way.”
“And if they don’t and we crash. How likely is it the plastic explosive right in front of me will go off?”
“Not going to happen,” said Barry, continuing to slowly accelerate into the oncoming traffic, which was, miraculously, veering out of the way.
“I’m going to close my eyes and when I open them can we be in a slightly less life threatening situation?”
“Spoilsport,” said Barry, turning off the main road onto a quieter, more suburban one. “We’re almost there anyway.”
Barry guided the car down a couple more streets and pulled in to the side of the road. He and Zoe unclipped their seatbelts.
“Wait,” said Barry, frowning again.
“I’m not sitting in the car like a kid.”
“Don’t turn around,” Barry continued. “But someone’s been following us.”
“Even after your trick with the wrong side of the road?” asked Zoe with a smirk.
Barry sighed. “Unfortunately, yes.”
Zoe dropped the smirk and flipped down the sun visor. She adjusted it and stared into the vanity-mirror. “White car?”
“Yeah,” Barry replied. “Amateurs. But persistent. I was thinking if you had any of those magic gadgets of yours you might get a photo while I’m in there.”
Zoe nodded and reached into her shoulder holster, pulled out her tablet. “Reckon I can get something usable.”
Barry opened the door and stepped out of the car, shutting it firmly behind him. Zoe watched as he walked to the front of the forger’s house. It was a big, old terraced house, the green paint on the bay window frame peeling to reveal the white of the previous colour underneath. Barry picked his way up the overgrown garden path and pressed the doorbell. Zoe wound down her window and edged the tablet out just far enough that the camera cleared the door frame; took a couple of test shots.
Glancing back over to Damien’s house, Barry had vanished. Gone inside.
She pulled the tablet back inside and checked the results.
Not good. Two men had left the car.
Zoe had a moment’s panic, hunkered down into the footwell and twisted around. The men weren’t coming for the car, they were heading for the house. She had to warn Barry.
Her hand darted into her pocket, whipped out her mobile and dialled Barry. There was a pause as the call connected. The men were crossing the road.
“Comeoncomeon connect, you shit!” Zoe cursed.
The call
connected. Barry’s phone began to ring. In the glove compartment.
“Bastard!” Zoe shouted. The two men were entering the garden. They were seconds away.
She had no choice, Zoe reached over and slammed her palm on the centre of the steering wheel. The horn blared. Zoe kept her hand pressed on the horn, the two figures turning around to see what the commotion was.
And they started to move towards her. That wasn’t good. That wasn’t good at all. Zoe took her hand from the horn and snapped a picture of the two men. They started running. That was really, really bad.
And then it struck her – lock the car doors! And then something struck one of the men. And that something was a cricket bat. And wielding it was... Barry! Where the hell had he come from?
Zoe’s hand hovered over the button which controlled the door lock, not quite sure that was the right move. The second man turned around to face Barry but Barry was already on top of him, the cricket bat swung high in the air. The man held up his hands to protect his face but Barry’s swing wasn’t aimed at his head. The apex of the swing was much lower, aimed at the ankles and swung with such force that the man was swept from his feet. Barry rode the momentum and ran to the car, jumping inside and turning over the engine.
“Nice distraction,” he said to Zoe and slipped the courier tube over his head, dropping it into her lap along with the cricket bat. “I’d put that seatbelt on if I were you.”
Chapter 31
Barry stamped the accelerator flat to the floor and the car took off down the street, the modified exhaust so loud that Zoe could feel the reverberations in her stomach. She fastened her seatbelt and looked over her shoulder out of the rear window. The two men were getting to their feet and running to their car.
“I got a picture of them,” said Zoe, nervously.
“I know who they are,” Barry replied, his eyes glued to the road ahead. He twisted the wheel, sending the car into a slide. They almost seemed to come to a stop; Zoe was pinned back in her seat as it jumped forward.
“What do you mean you know who they are?” Zoe held the courier tube tight in one hand and her tablet in the other. “Who are they?”
Barry touched the brakes as they loomed up on a smaller family car. He honked the horn and flashed his lights at them. They ignored him.
“Oh, just some people I owe money to,” he said and then revved the engine.
The oncoming traffic cleared. Barry heaved the car into the other lane and darted forward once more. The houses were thinning out as they headed into an empty commercial district, and with rush hour over, the road ahead was almost clear.
“How much money do you have to owe to warrant sending people to do you harm?” asked Zoe.
“I was on a losing streak at the casino.” Barry glanced in the mirror. The white car careered out of a side street and into their slipstream. “I was losing for, like, thirty two hours straight.”
“How is that even possible?” Zoe asked, her eyes darting to the speedometer as it moved up and up and up.
“Trust me,” said Barry. “It’s possible. You know the Princess Casino?”
“That car ferry that sits in the river?” Zoe craned around in time to see their pursuers ram their rear end.
They lurched unpleasantly forward. There was a tearing noise. The car swerved, but Barry corrected its course.
“They converted it to be a casino. Unfortunately I don’t have Lucas’ super-human ability to win at cards,” Barry said.
“I thought you were supposed to be some sort of genius driver?” Zoe snapped, panicking. “Should I throw the explosives out the window? We could...”
The road began to widen into dual carriageway. Four lanes of fun for them to play with.
“What?” said Barry, watching the white car gaining on them. “Blow them up?” He shook his head. “I’ve got no detonators and besides, it’s too imprecise.”
There was another crunch; this time they had pulled alongside and were trying to ram Zoe and Barry off the road sideways. Looking ahead, Barry slammed the brakes and dropped behind the white Mercedes in the outside lane.
“My beautiful car…” Barry grumbled. He tried to gain on them but the white car accelerated out of the way easily.
“Never mind the car,” said Zoe. “You can fix the damn car, just get us out of this alive, okay?”
“Don’t worry,” said Barry, giving her a wink. “I’ve got a plan.”
He started accelerating towards the white Mercedes once again. This time they slipped into the inside lane, allowing Barry to overtake. He grinned as Zoe stared past him to the passenger in the other car. She could see a trickle of blood on the man’s brow from where Barry had hit him.
The Mercedes lunged sideways again and smashed into them, almost sending them into the central reservation.
“Barry,” said Zoe quietly. “What’s the plan?”
Barry nodded up ahead. There was a car in the inside lane in the path of the Mercedes. But in front of them, nothing.
The Mercedes tried to speed up, to undertake, but Barry had a little held back. He gunned the engine and they jumped forward, matching the Mercedes’ speed. The car up ahead was a hundred metres away.
Ninety metres.
The Mercedes dropped back, thinking he could slip behind Barry and Zoe.
Eighty metres.
One thing he could definitely do was slow down. The two cars remained side by side.
Seventy metres to impact.
Zoe stared at the two men. The passenger in their car was panicking. For some reason that made her more relaxed.
Sixty metres.
Fifty.
The Mercedes accelerated, thinking they could slip in front of Barry and Zoe, but Barry’s plan, whatever it was, had anticipated their ruse.
Forty.
Slowing down had given Barry a little extra kick to match the Merc’s acceleration.
Thirty metres.
Twenty.
As Zoe stared out of the window she could see the driver of the Mercedes; he had two options: slow down, or crash into the car in the inside lane.
Ten metres.
Zoe had read on the internet that in certain circumstances someone’s perception of time could be drastically altered. Like right then, with the adrenaline being overloaded in her system, she could see those two men and she could see the concentration on Barry’s face. The same concentration she experienced when she got lost in her work.
Zoe smiled as she stared at the two men in the Mercedes. Smiled as they crossed the ninth and eighth metre from the approaching car.
Smiled as the Mercedes slammed into Barry’s side of the car, forcing them into the central reservation. Smiled as the Mercedes took their place in the outside lane. And even smiled as the world outside the window flipped upside down and flipped and flipped and flipped.
Such an odd thing for the world to do.
Of course, the world doesn’t do that for long before the whole thing comes crashing down and turns...
Black.
Chapter 32
The first thing Zoe could hear was coughing. It was loud.
She opened her eyes and the black went away.
There was smoke or maybe powder in the air. It smelled dusty. Not like talcum powder. It looked like talcum powder though.
Something was wrong.
Well, Barry had crashed the car. That was something. But something else was wrong. Was she injured? It felt like there was a weight — rather than pushing her down it was as if it was pulling her upwards.
Zoe moved her left arm and immediately regretted it. Pain shot from her shoulder where the seatbelt had held her in place.
Pain. That wasn’t so bad. She could deal with pain. Dying in a car crash or being blown up with plastic explosives, on the other hand, were two things she would have been significantly more cross about.
She tried to speak, but her voice was too hoarse to make much impact on her environment.
Blinking her eyes woozily
, Zoe focused on the motes of dust in the air. She should get out of the car. Yes. She needed to make sure she had no major injuries.
Okay then, here we go. Zoe moved her right hand and clicked the seatbelt release.
Gravity, which until that point had simply been irritated by her, pinned upside down in the car seat, decided to make an example of her and dropped her to the ground — which, from Zoe’s perspective, was the roof of the car.
Momentarily disorientated at seemingly falling upwards Zoe’s brain quickly adjusted as she opened the passenger door and got to her feet. Looking over toward the road, there was no longer any sign of the white Mercedes. They were alone.
They.
Barry. Where was Barry? Zoe limped around to the driver’s side of the car. Barry was lying half in and half out of the car. How had she not noticed that sooner?
“Barry?” Zoe managed to say, her voice cracking as she spoke. “Are you alright?”
Barry groaned and began to move, dragging himself out of the wreck of the car.
He got to his feet; his face was a bloody mess, his left eye closed up, blood streaming from his nose and a gash in his lip. Moving quickly, he came towards Zoe. She flinched slightly as he reached for her head. “You’re cut,” he said.
Zoe reached up and touched her brow. There was a small graze. “What?” she asked. “I’m fine, I think. You’re a mess.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, his hand still held over her ear, cupping her head gently. “I’m sorry.”
Zoe reached up and took his hand, gave it a little squeeze. “I’ll live,” she said. “The seatbelt, maybe the roll cage saved me. Can’t say the same for you.”
Looking inside the car, Zoe grabbed a hoodie from the wreck and tore a couple of strips off it. Taking one, she started to dab at Barry’s nose.
“The seatbelt didn’t break,” said Barry. “I was fine. I was conscious.”
“So what happened?” Zoe asked.
“The blokes from the Mercedes.” He winced as Zoe dabbed at his lip then took the rags from her to finish the job. “Dragged me far enough out that they could start kicking me. Then kicked me until I passed out. But not before they took the courier tube and your tablet thing.”