The Truth App

by Jack Heath

  Cars and trucks zoomed past, so loud and close that the rushing air nearly knocked the bicycle over. If Jarli and Bess didn’t come home tonight and the police started asking questions tomorrow, Jarli wondered if any of the drivers would remember seeing two teenagers on a bicycle. Probably not.

  They rode past a petrol station, a fast food place and the Big Canary—a tourist attraction which got hardly any tourists and even less maintenance. The giant statue’s concrete feathers were stained with the poo of real birds. Then there was just kilometre after kilometre of withered bushland.

  The green sign came before Jarli was ready for it.

  The trail was ten metres beyond it, just like the old man had said. It was just wide enough for a car to drive through, and there were fresh tyre tracks in the dust. Tall trees bent over the trail, dry branches creaking in the wind. The setting sun cast long shadows which could have concealed anything.

  Jarli and Bess climbed off the bike. The old man hadn’t said how far up the trail the warehouse was, only that it wasn’t visible from the road. Jarli was supposed to knock on the door, alone. Then Anya would come out.

  Bess had already typed a message on her phone. She showed Jarli.

  Jarli took the phone.

  Bess took it back.

  Jarli forced a smile. This was a terrible time for jokes.

  Bess was typing again.

  Jarli hopped back on the bike and rode carefully down the trail. The front wheel bumped and shuddered across the dirt. Screeching insects fell silent as Jarli rode past. He wondered if the old man would hear him coming. Maybe even now he was in the sights of a rifle.

  He won’t shoot me, Jarli reasoned. At least not until he’s sure I brought the laptop.

  He heard the warehouse before he saw it. A banging, grinding sound was coming from inside. Some kind of machine—the same one he’d heard on the phone. Jarli was amazed that the building even had power—when he spotted it through the trees, it looked like it had been abandoned years ago. No glass left in the windows. Parts of the wooden walls rotted away. Creeping vines carpeting the roof, like a camouflage. The building would have been invisible from the air.

  The brown ute with the bull bar was parked nearby, scraped paint from the crash obvious this close. Seeing it sent a spike of terror through Jarli’s chest. He felt like he was spinning again, back in the car crash with Dad. He couldn’t make his feet move.

  Don’t be a wuss, he told himself. Anya’s counting on you.

  He didn’t know her very well. But he knew she hadn’t frozen up when he needed her help. She had helped him after the crash, warned him about the old man at the school, and followed him up to the cliff to see if he needed help.

  Jarli forced himself to walk past the brown ute, then all the way down the hill towards a narrow door around the side of the warehouse. He knocked.

  NOTHING HAPPENED. He pulled out the mobile phone to ask what was going on, but the machine noise made it impossible for Jarli to hear the old man's voice.

  Jarli raised his fist to pound on the door more loudly—

  And then the door slowly creaked open.

  Jarli backed away, but no-one was standing there. The door had opened on electric hinges. Probably by remote. This building looked ancient, but someone must have made modifications very recently.

  The rectangle of darkness beckoned to Jarli.

  This wasn’t the deal. He was supposed to knock, then Anya was supposed to come out. That was what the old man had said.

  But no-one seemed to be coming. And Jarli couldn’t stand here all night.

  Jarli took a deep breath, as if he was about to go underwater. Then he stepped into the warehouse.

  The door slammed closed behind him.

  TRAP

  Bess watched from the bushes at the top of the hill as Jarli disappeared into the warehouse.

  ‘No, no!’ she muttered. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. Anya was supposed to come out.

  She pulled out her phone to call the police. But she still didn’t know which officer was part of the conspiracy. She couldn’t trust the cops.

  Glen Durras’s documents were on her phone. She could send them to the police and the media, just like he had asked. But if the bad guys realised she had done it, they might hurt Jarli and Anya. She should only do that as a last resort, if she was sure Jarli wasn’t coming back out.

  Bess had known that something would go wrong. Now, as usual, it was her job to get Jarli out of trouble.

  He thought of her as the helpless one, she knew that. He didn’t pity her like everyone else—he didn’t assume that her life was a living nightmare, like some of the other kids—but he still felt responsible for her. He never seemed to get that it was the other way around. He would be pretty much helpless without her, at least at school. Lots of people would be, come to think of it. Whenever there was a problem, it was always Bess coming up with good ideas—or gently talking people out of bad ones. And every time Jarli offended somebody by being too direct, Bess was always the one who made it OK. ‘When Jarli said cricket was boring,’ she had explained to a horrified classmate, ‘what he meant was that it has a slow pace. It’s more suspenseful than other sports.’

  But she’d never had to rescue him from a kidnapper before. This was a new low.

  She checked her watch. She had promised him a distraction. She had five minutes left to come up with one. But the noise from the warehouse was loud. Even if she screamed—which had been her plan—no-one inside would notice. The old man would never hear her.

  She could go down there and bang on the door with her crutch. But if the distraction worked, she wouldn’t be able to run fast enough to get away. And Jarli wouldn’t leave her behind, so they’d both be caught.

  She had to come up with something else. Something loud enough to be heard, but far enough away to stay safe—and alarming enough to need the old man’s attention.

  She emerged from the bushes and hobbled towards the ute. A horn blast would probably do the trick. The old man might not even recognise the sound of his own horn—he might think someone else’s car had arrived. Maybe even the police. But what if the ute was locked?

  It won’t be, Bess told herself. It’s parked in the middle of nowhere.

  She took the long way around, limping through the shrubbery, keeping as many trees as possible between her and the warehouse. She didn’t see anyone, but couldn’t shake the feeling that she wasn’t alone. Was someone watching through those broken windows?

  Hair standing on end, Bess stopped to peer into the shadows.

  That’s when she spotted the other car, further away, hidden behind some trees. It was an expensive-looking black sedan. Someone else was here! Jarli had walked into a trap. Bess took a deep breath. She had no choice but to go on.

  She crept up to the ute.

  ‘Please, please, please,’ she whispered.

  She tried the handle. Locked. This far from town? Where was the trust?!

  She looked at the car window and hefted her crutch. Would she be able to break the glass?

  Maybe. She could swing that crutch pretty hard. She had used it as a cricket bat once, when she’d been smoothing things over with the kid Jarli had offended.

  A window smashing would make a lot of noise, especially if the car alarm went off. That might be even better than a horn. Bess gripped her crutch and waited. Ten minutes, she had told Jarli. He had been gone for seven. In three minutes she would upload the documents and make her distraction.

  ‘Hello?’ Jarli called out.

  If anyone responded, he couldn’t hear them over the machine.

  ‘Anya?’ he yelled, louder.

  Finally the machine switched off. The silence left Jarli’s ears ringing.

  As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw that this must once have been a timber shop. Steel beams, like raised train tracks, lined the concrete floor where logs would once have been stacked. A rusted power sander stood on a rickety workbench. There was
a big tool cupboard, currently closed. A generator was sputtering near the wall, filling the air with a faint stink of petrol. Various types of saws hung on the walls. They looked like shark’s jaws, kept as trophies by fishermen. An open door led to what might have been an office.

  He couldn’t see Anya anywhere.

  A light clicked on, dazzling Jarli. He held one arm up in front of his face. It was like being on a stage. The spotlight somehow darkened the rest of the room.

  Then he heard the old man’s voice:

  ‘Where’s the laptop?’

  It sounded like he was somewhere on the other side of the room. His voice, rough and gravelly, was more frightening in person than on the phone.

  ‘In my backpack,’ Jarli answered.

  ‘Take out the laptop and put it on the floor, where I can see it.’

  Jarli hesitated. ‘But—’

  ‘Do it!’

  Slowly, Jarli did as he was told.

  The old man spoke again. ‘Now, where’s the girl?’

  ‘I thought you had her,’ Jarli said. ‘That’s why I’m here.’

  ‘Not Anya,’ the old man said. ‘The cripple.’

  Jarli’s heart beat a little faster. ‘You mean Bess? What about her?’

  ‘You brought her with you.’

  ‘No I didn’t.’

  A beep from the other side of the room. Lie The old man had a Truth app installed.

  Jarli squinted through the light. He could see a silhouette next to a closed door—the old man. And he wasn’t alone. Another person stood in the shadows next to him, too tall to be Anya. Too broad across the shoulders.

  ‘Where is Anya?’ Jarli demanded, changing the subject.

  The old man pointed at the closed door next to him. ‘Through there. But you don’t get to see her unless you tell me where the cripple is.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  Another beep. Lie

  The other man spoke up. ‘There’s no point lying to him, Jarli.’

  Jarli gasped. It was a familiar voice, yet his brain refused to recognise it.

  But when the man stepped out of the shadows, Jarli couldn’t deny the truth any longer.

  ‘Where is Bess?’ Mr Gorman said.

  REVEALED

  ‘Mr Gorman?’ Jarli asked. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Just tell us where Bess is,’ Gorman said. His usual friendly smile was gone and his voice had a hard edge. He was standing perfectly still. In his perfectly tailored clothes, he looked like a shop-window dummy.

  Jarli was desperate for a reasonable explanation. Maybe Gorman’s car had broken down on the edge of the highway, and when he was walking back to town, he’d found the trail and followed it to the warehouse. Maybe he thought the old man was a cop or something. Or maybe he had been kidnapped too?

  Somewhere, deep inside his panic, Jarli knew that none of these ideas really made sense. What made more sense, seeing Gorman standing there, so serious, so commanding and sure . . . What terrified Jarli so much he couldn’t even process it, was the idea that Gorman had hired the old man. Dad had told Gorman about the VIPER file—and he had tried to have Dad killed.

  ‘No-one else needs to get hurt,’ Gorman said carefully. ‘I know your father copied the VIPER file. I know that he bought a new laptop on his credit card, and I know that Cobra couldn’t find it when he searched your house.’

  The old man—named Cobra, apparently—stared impassively at Jarli.

  ‘I planted a listening device inside your home this morning,’ Gorman continued. ‘We’re running a pretty complicated operation here, and I didn’t want your dad to expose it. I needed to see if he knew that the car crash was an attempt on his life, and whether or not he’d warn his family. He didn’t—but I overheard a conversation between you and Bess. I know you found the laptop and I know she got into it. My aerial drones followed her from your place to here, but they lost her on the dirt trail. So, where is she?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Jarli gasped.

  Beep. Jarli saw Gorman’s phone screen flash orange: half-truth Jarli didn’t know exactly where Bess was, but he knew she was nearby.

  ‘Once the evidence is gone,’ Gorman said, ‘it’s just your father’s word against mine. Why would I hurt Bess then? I just need to see if she has the files and if she sent them to anyone.’

  The app wasn’t beeping, but Jarli still didn’t trust Gorman. He knew now that his dad’s boss was ruthless—he had made all the people in the VIPER file vanish, and then when Dad found out, he hired Cobra to kill him. Jarli couldn’t believe he hadn’t worked it out earlier. Gorman was rich enough to HIRE A KILLER. He could access CipherCrypt’s servers because he designed and owned them. Jarli had seen him hanging around the police station just after the old man’s phone mysteriously turned up there. He had collected Jarli’s family from hospital—making a show of caring, but really grilling them for details. He’d even provided chicken soup for Dad . . . which Hooper had eaten right before she had to be rushed to the emergency vet.

  ‘You killed my dog!’ Jarli screamed. He charged at Gorman. His anger made him feel like he had super-strength. He expected to crash into Gorman and send him flying across the room.

  Cobra blocked Jarli with one outstretched arm. It was like hitting a steel bar. Jarli fell to the floor, wheezing and definitely powerless. Cobra pinned him to the concrete, crushing Jarli’s injured shoulder with a steel-capped boot.

  ‘Tell me where Bess is, or Anya dies,’ Gorman snarled when Jarli had stopped coughing.

  Jarli couldn’t trade Anya’s life for Bess’s. ‘I don’t know!’ he cried.

  The phone beeped again. Jarli knew the bad guys wouldn’t believe him, but he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  ‘For a smart kid, you’re pretty stupid,’ Gorman said. ‘Let’s see if you’re willing to look Anya in the eye and tell her that she’s going to die.’

  He gestured to Cobra, who hauled Jarli to his feet and dragged him towards the closed door. Jarli tried to twist out of his grip, but it was impossible.

  Gorman opened the door. ‘Bad news, Anya,’ he said. ‘Jarli has just decided . . .’

  He trailed off.

  Jarli saw that the room had nothing in it other than a workbench with a table saw on it. Under the saw was a puddle of metal splinters and a shredded handcuff.

  Anya wasn’t there.

  LURKING

  Anya was in the tool closet, bleeding.

  Given that she’d been using a table saw to cut through a handcuff attached her wrist—with her hands behind her back and a bag on her head—the cut on her hand wasn’t too bad. Probably not even deep enough to need stitches. But it stung and the pain was distracting. Plus, she had left a trail of bright red drips, leading all the way from the workbench to the tool closet. Anyone looking down would see where she had gone.

  She had hoped to get further away—at least out of the building, and possibly all the way back to Kelton. But then Jarli had turned up. She couldn’t leave him behind, so she’d stayed. Even though she had no idea how to get them both out alive.

  It was pitch black in the closet, and there was no room to move. The air smelled like dead mice. Hammers and saws hung from rusty hooks, poking into her back. If she moved, they would probably rattle. So she stayed still.

  ‘Where is she?’ a voice demanded. It was the guy Jarli had called Gorman.

  ‘She was here a minute ago,’ the old man said. ‘She can’t be far away.’

  ‘Well, find her! Now!’

  Footsteps echoed through the workshop. It had sounded like Gorman was wearing running shoes. The old man—Cobra, Gorman had called him—wore boots. Anya thought he was the one walking around.

  ‘Run, Anya!’ Jarli screamed.

  There was a sharp slap, and he fell silent. Anya’s heart raced.

  She could hear Cobra lifting things, walking, pausing, walking some more. He was drawing closer and closer to the closet. She didn’t think
he’d spotted the blood yet. But he would look in here soon, one way or the other.

  If Anya waited until he opened the closet door, she wouldn’t be able to overpower him. There would be no room to move. But if she leapt out when he was too far away, he would see her coming. He might even have time to take a shot at her. She would only have a hope of success if she attacked when he was exactly the right distance away.

  The old man’s footsteps drew closer. Anya took a deep breath, preparing all her muscles for a sudden explosion of force—

  And then a phone chimed.

  The sound seemed to come from the other side of the warehouse, where Anya thought Gorman was holding Jarli.

  ‘Oh, no!’ Gorman said after a pause.

  ‘What is it?’ the old man asked.

  Run, Jarli, Anya thought. While he’s distracted!

  ‘Viper sent me a message.’ Gorman’s voice was shrill with panic. ‘He says someone just uploaded all Glen’s evidence to social media.’

  ‘Must be the cripple,’ Cobra snarled. ‘I’m going to kill her!’

  Anya heard Jarli gasp. ‘No!’

  ‘Viper says the press have already picked up the story,’ Gorman said. ‘They’re demanding a statement from the police force. We’re done for.’

  ‘I can’t go back to prison,’ Cobra growled. ‘Not because of a bunch of idiot kids. We have to deal with them once and for all. Then Viper can get us out of here.’

  His last footsteps had sounded close to Anya’s closet, but his voice was more distant, as though Cobra was facing the other way. Now or never, Anya told herself.

  She burst out of the closet and charged.

  Cobra reacted quickly. He whirled around and swung a hairy-knuckled fist at Anya. It was the sort of blow which would have knocked her down when she was a beginner boxer, but not now. She ducked under the punch and felt it skim the top of her head. The follow-through had shifted his whole body, and an instinctive, split-second calculation told Anya that he was about to put his weight on his right foot. So she kicked it out from under him.