First Drop tcfs-4

by Zoe Sharp

  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 gr
in 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.”

  Thirteen

  In the end, the cops neither recognised nor arrested any of us.

  They read Scott the riot act about lane discipline and proper signalling, and they made a big deal out of checking the truck over but in some ways it was all routine. We were just the latest in a long line of kids they’d booked that weekend for some minor violation or another. Not the first and definitely not last by any means. They didn’t even bother to search the rest of us and they didn’t ask for ID.

  As soon as I realised there was nothing sinister about the stop, I felt the muscles across my shoulders begin to unlock, one by one. I took my hand off the pistol grip of the gun in the bag and propped my elbow on the edge of the door instead, resting my chin on my palm. Then I sat in my side of the cab and chewed gum with my mouth open and tried to look teenage and bored.

  Scott stood in front of the Dodge, between the two cops. His whole body language was submissive, head bowed, hands clasped behind him. Every now and again he stole a glance back into the cab. If the cops had been a little more on the ball they should have taken that as a cue to rip the inside apart lo
oking for a stash of soft drugs at the very least. I suppose the kid must just have had an honest face.

  And all the while, the seconds ticked on into minutes. By the time ten had passed Trey had started to fidget.

  “I’m gonna call him,” he whispered to me, talking out of the side of his mouth. “I gotta tell him we’re gonna be late.”

  He eased the phone out of his pocket and started flicking through the buttons, but soon discovered that Henry’s number had been withheld. I realised that an e-mail address was the only contact we had for the man. OK, we could find his house again, but being able to give directions doesn’t generally mean much to Directory Enquiries, unless the US version was much more accommodating than it was at home.

  Trey held the phone in front of him, so tense that it almost vibrated in his hands, hoping for another call. But as Henry’s deadline approached he didn’t make contact again.

  With the engine, and therefore the air conditioning switched off, the heat expanded inside the pickup cab until it was crushing us into our seats. It didn’t seem to make any difference that the windows were all open. In fact, that probably made it worse.

  By the time the first cop finally handed Scott his ticket and told him to beat it and to be more careful in future, we were already twenty minutes beyond our half-hour maximum time limit.

  Scott climbed back into the cab, looking very pink around the ears as he twisted the ignition key.

  “For God’s sake don’t spin the wheels setting off,” I said quietly, “or we’ll be here all day.”

  He threw me a miserable glance but drove away with commendable sedateness, still clutching the crumpled ticket in his right hand.

  “Jeez,” he said, close to tears, once we were on the move again. “I’m real sorry, guys. I let you down.”

  “It was just luck,” I said, pinching Trey’s arm when he opened his mouth to disagree. “Just be thankful they didn’t do a full search.” I threw him a quick reassuring smile. “And don’t worry about it. It could have been worse.”

  Me and my mouth.