by Sam Wiebe
Copyright © Sam Wiebe 2020
Published in Canada and the United States in 2020 by Orca Book Publishers.
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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Title: Never going back / Sam Wiebe.
Names: Wiebe, Sam, author.
Series: Rapid reads.
Description: Series statement: Rapid reads
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200177028 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200177044 | ISBN 9781459825772 (softcover) | ISBN 9781459825789 (PDF) | ISBN 9781459825796 (EPUB)
Classification: LCC PS8645.I3236 N48 2020 | DDC C813/.6—dc23
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020930590
Summary: In this work of crime fiction, retired thief Ali is forced to do one more job for her old boss to protect her younger brother and the family business.
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Design by Ella Collier
Cover photography by Shutterstock.com/Olesia Bilkei
Printed and bound in Canada.
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For Carly
CONTENTS
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ONE
DON’T BELIEVE WHAT you hear about me.
I don’t rob people. Robbery means taking something with force. I hate violence, and I’ve never used a weapon in my life. Besides, I’m too good to need force. If I take something of yours, you won’t know until it’s gone, and you’ll never know it was me.
I’m a thief. A great thief. Or I was.
But right now I was a woman waiting in the rain for her brother.
Dean and I pretty much raised ourselves. After our parents’ funeral, we went to live with our aunt Jessie. She owned a bar and restaurant with a small apartment on the second floor. The place is called Kidd’s. Dean runs it nowadays and still lives upstairs.
My brother has always been interested in the restaurant business. I think that’s because to him Kidd’s is home. Dean loves to cook. Tonight, for my first meal after getting out of prison, he promised to make me something called cassoulet. I told him a burger and fries would be all right. But like I said, he loves to cook.
Me, I’m good at other things.
For two summers Aunt Jessie had a boyfriend named Paul. He installed alarms for a security company. Houses mostly. Some businesses and office buildings. I helped him with his tools, and he taught me about the security business.
When a company installs a house alarm, they let the homeowner set the code. But things go wrong. Homeowners forget. For that reason the company sets its own code too, in case of emergencies. Installers like Paul are supposed to pick a unique or random set of four numbers—7093 or 2851. Something like that. They enter this code in their computer so the office has it on file if the owners ever need it.
But installers have bad days too. Some are lazy. Paul liked to get home early, so he would always set the same code. Four zeros.
I was fifteen when I learned this. For a fifteen-year-old, that was a lot of knowledge. Half the houses in our neighborhood had stickers in the window from Paul’s security company. They had the same alarm code. All I had to do was find an open window and I could be inside.
Sometimes I didn’t even need an open window. Paul showed me a little about locksmithing. Not lockpicking—that was illegal. He showed me how to use a tension tool and a lock pick, but said they should only be used if somebody got locked out.
I would practice after school. Or instead of school. Working with Paul was my school.
At that time I didn’t want to take things. I just liked the challenge of getting into places. I wanted to open any door, defeat any alarm, know every code. That was my fantasy.
Being a thief means mastering a lot of skills. I learned to climb by practicing on empty buildings around town. When I was eighteen I worked part-time at a gym that had a rock-climbing wall. After cleaning the floors and emptying the trash, I’d practice climbing, building strength and confidence. Soon I could almost walk up walls.
The first building I broke into on my own was my high school. But not to steal anything. To get something back for my brother.
Dean was always tall and heavy for his age. Other kids liked to bully him. They called him Big Guy or Heavy D. If he fought back, the teachers would get mad at him. He was bigger, so he should act bigger.
At lunch one day there was a fight on the baseball diamond. Two kids had knocked Dean down. A bat was being swung. Dean fought back, and just when he stood up and threw a punch, the lunch monitor spotted him.
Dean was sent to the principal’s office. Principal Rattigan didn’t want to hear Dean’s side of the story. She took his baseball glove as punishment.
That glove was a present from our dad. Dean slept with it on the pillow next to him. He loved it. He asked her to take anything else, but the principal wouldn’t give it back.
Dean and I are close. I knew how upset he was without the glove. After school, when we had finished cleaning up the kitchen, I told him I would get it back for him.
“How?” he asked. “It’s locked in her office. It’s impossible.”
“Maybe for you,” I said.
The principal’s office was on the second floor of the school. Her window looked down on the sports field. There were no trees nearby and nowhere to throw a rope. The doors of the school were all alarmed.
At the back of the school, near the basketball courts, was a toolshed. It took me ten minutes to pick the padlock. Inside I found a ladder that would reach to the second floor.
Up I went.
The principal’s window was closed, but I worked a screwdriver between the frame and the sill and pried up the window. After stepping into the room, I searched the desk until I found Dean’s glove. It was in the bottom drawer, with some other things the principal had collected from students.
I took the glove and climbed out the window. Closed it. Climbed down. I put the ladder back in the shed, locked it up and went home to surprise my brother.
I got away with it. Almost.
Dean couldn’t help telling his friends what his big sister had done. Word began to get around the school. The principal called me to her office
two days later.
“I hear you’re quite the little thief,” Principal Rattigan said.
“No, ma’am.”
“No good will come of that, Alison. Admit what you did. Your fingerprints are all over my office.”
I confessed. Later I would learn that she had made it up. Police don’t take fingerprints for a small crime like that. I got a month of detention and learned two lessons:
1. Always wear gloves.
2. Don’t trust someone just because they’re bigger than you.
My detention went by slowly, but it wasn’t boring. Word of my abilities had gotten around to the older kids at school. I was about to meet the person who would change my life.
Lisa Wan was two years older than me. Already she had a reputation in the neighborhood. Lisa was tough, she was wealthy, and she did exactly what she wanted. She’d never been in trouble at school. That was partly because she didn’t attend class most of the time. And partly because not many teachers wanted to get on Lisa’s bad side. Even Principal Rattigan was afraid to step in. At least, that was the rumor.
In detention Lisa sat on top of her desk, facing away from the blackboard. The teacher who was supposed to watch us was pretending to read a magazine.
“You’re the kid who broke into Rattigan’s office?” Lisa asked. “You must have found a lot of nice stuff.”
“Just a glove,” I said, a little nervous. “I only wanted to help my brother.”
“Next time,” Lisa said, “here’s what you do. Bring another glove. One your brother doesn’t care about. Switch it for his. You think Rattigan would notice? Do it that way and you’ll never get caught.”
I had to admit it was a smart idea.
“Most people only own things to own them,” Lisa said. “What do they care? A smart person can make money buying and selling if they know the real value of things.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“Like anything.”
Lisa and I hung out together long after detention was over. Me, her and Monster. Monster was bigger and taller than Dean. I didn’t know if he was Lisa’s boyfriend or if he just worked for her. He didn’t say much of anything.
Lisa worked at her dad’s pawnshop. But they had an argument, and he fired her for stealing. Lisa turned around and opened her own pawnshop, the Silver Lode, dropping out of school to run it. She bought and sold anything.
Anything.
Bikes. Watches. Hockey equipment. Paintings. Video games. Firearms. Other things too.
Sometimes she’d tell me she needed something special. “I’ve got a customer who really wants a Spectacular Spider-Man issue 200,” she’d say. “There’s a comic convention this Saturday. Booth seventeen will have one. Maybe the dealer knows where you could find another?”
I would go to the show and knock something over. While attention was somewhere else, the comic would go inside my backpack or into the lining of my coat.
That was how I started as a thief.
For seven years I was the best. I made a lot of money, most of it for Lisa Wan. Then came the Peace Valley Apartments job.
A divorced woman wanted some jewelry that her ex-husband had kept. A necklace, three rings and a Cartier watch. She didn’t care how she got it, so she talked to a friend, who talked to another friend, who put her in touch with Lisa. Lisa, of course, hired me.
The ex-husband lived on the top floor of the Peace Valley Apartments building downtown. He kept the jewelry in a safe. It could be opened only by his thumbprint.
Getting those jewels would be an impossible job for most people. Not for me.
How did I do it?
I don’t like to give away too many of my secrets.
But okay.
I followed the husband to his country club. He gave his keys to a valet. The valet parked his car, then hung the keys on a board in her office. When the valet left to park another car, I snuck in and borrowed the keys long enough to make copies. Lisa helped me clone the electronic fob that opened the parking garage of the ex-husband’s apartment.
Now I could get in whenever I wanted. The best part? I returned the keys before the valet needed them. No one was the wiser.
One night when the ex-husband was away, I used the fob to drive into the garage, then took the elevator up to the top floor. I had a key, but I could have picked the lock. Soon I was inside the apartment.
What about the safe and the thumbprint?
Sorry. That secret stays with me.
The woman was happy to get back her jewels. Lisa was happy to get paid. After she gave me my share, I was happy too. Everyone was happy all around.
Except the husband. He’d heard about Lisa and suspected she had helped his ex-wife. He told the police what he thought had happened. Now the police were looking at Lisa’s shop.
A few days later Officer Phil Kushida knocked on my door. He said he had a warrant to search Kidd’s Restaurant and Bar.
Phil and I had grown up together, though he’d gone to a private school. He would often come by the restaurant for eggs and coffee or sometimes just to chat. Never for work. If Phil suspected me before this, he never let on.
“Go ahead,” I told him. I wasn’t worried. I never kept anything at the restaurant.
Phil looked around half-heartedly, like he didn’t really expect to find anything. Until he opened the till. Inside it was the necklace, lying on top of the tray of five-dollar bills.
Phil looked almost as shocked as I felt. Almost. I didn’t say anything as he placed me under arrest.
The woman said I’d threatened her and forced her to tell me where her husband kept the jewels. Remember when I said robbery involves force? That made-up threat is why I was charged with robbery.
No one believed me, except for Dean. And maybe Phil. I was charged and convicted. One year in prison.
The judge told me she had to be severe to help set me straight. “You’re still quite young,” she said. “There’s enough time left for you to get your life back on track. But you have to want it, Miss Kidd.”
I don’t know why or how, but I know Lisa Wan arranged my arrest. I guess she wanted the police to stop looking so closely at the Silver Lode. Lisa cost me a year of my life.
I was angry when I went inside. I wanted revenge. Dean made me see things differently.
Aunt Jessie had passed on by then. Dean was the only one who visited me. He told me that business at Kidd’s was picking up. If I wanted to cook or tend bar, I could do pretty well. And I wouldn’t have to take any risks.
“This is a chance to start over,” Dean said. “You can do anything you want.”
“But I’m only good at one thing.”
“Just because you’re good, Ali, doesn’t mean you have to do it. Your life is yours. Give it a try. Please?”
I promised I would once I got out.
Prison was a lot like detention, only scarier. I worked in the kitchen, peeling potatoes, cleaning dishes, sometimes making stew or mac and cheese.
And what I discovered about cooking was that I didn’t hate it.
With a little creativity you could take ordinary ingredients and make something special. You could remind someone of home or open their taste buds to a totally new experience. There’s not much variety in a prison kitchen, but I made do. I began to look forward to getting out and working with Dean.
I decided I was done as a thief. I wanted something better.
My days inside crept along, until finally my last day arrived. I was released, and I stepped outside the gate, breathing free air. It was cold outside. I looked around the parking lot for Dean. He would be driving a silver Volvo. The car had been Aunt Jessie’s. It was small, and Dean looked uncomfortable crouched in the driver’s seat. But my brother always gets attached to things. His glove, the restaurant, that junk pile of a car. I’ll admit, I was even looking forward to seeing it.
Only that morning I didn’t see the Volvo in the parking lot. There were only two cars, and they were both new. Had something h
appened? Maybe the car had broken down. I went back inside and asked if there were any messages. None for Alison Kidd.
I waited ten minutes. Twenty. An hour. Still no sight of Dean.
Now I was getting worried.
TWO
AS A KID Dean had what’s called a developmental disability. He was slow to learn reading and math. But he was great at other things. Aunt Jessie used to say, “Smart isn’t what you’re born with. Smart is how you use what you’re born with.” It’s true.
I was a good student and a top athlete, and I ended up in prison. Dean barely made it through tenth grade, but he was running one of the best restaurants in the city. He did it with hard work, but also with smart decisions.
Dean was always in a rush as a kid. Because of that his work was sloppy. Then Aunt Jessie told him to stop—not just to slow down, but to stop completely.
“Figure out what’s most important. Do that first. Do it as well as you can. Then move on to the next thing.”
Simple advice, but it worked for Dean. When people called him slow, they missed the point. He was accurate. He was consistent. He cared about what he did.
In the kitchen Dean got good by following recipes to the letter. If something had to cook at four hundred degrees for twenty minutes, he made sure it cooked for that time at that temperature. He paid attention. Soon he was writing his own recipes.
“The first rule,” he said to me when he visited me in prison, “is always watch what you’re doing.”
Again, it seems simple, but how many people really watch? When I started in the prison mess, I had fifty tasks, and I rushed between them. Food got burned. Dishes were only half washed. I wasn’t watching what I was doing. But I learned to.
It had been different when I was a thief. When I was on a job, no one could be more careful. I watched everything, was aware of everything. I was full of nervous excitement. The thought of failure, of being caught, forced me to focus.