August

by Gabrielle Lord

  ‘Cal, I can’t leave you guys behind. I won’t leave you behind.’

  ‘Please, Winter, I’m begging you. All I care about is getting Gabbi back. Whatever happens after that, I can deal with. I’m sure Sharkey will have Boges looked after, so don’t worry about them, either. Sharkey, Boges and I will be a tough fighting team,’ I said, my pulses quickening in anticipation of the ambush.

  ‘And if they’re expecting a demure girl who’s come along with you to be a babysitter, then they’re in for a big shock!’

  ‘You ready, then?’

  ‘Let’s do it.’

  We stepped out of the bush and onto the road a little before the bridge began. Through the clearing night sky, a half-moon showed and the rushing sound of the flooded river just ahead of us filled the night. It roared away beneath the bridge, in a fast-moving channel about as wide as the highway. Then the racing water narrowed and curved around a bend to disappear into the gloom of the night.

  We waited at our end of the bridge. There were no signs of people, other than us. At this hour, only foxes and night birds were out, and from somewhere on the river flats, I heard the eerie shriek of plovers piercing the night.

  Winter stood, brave, on my left. My whole body was sweating. In my mind I was chanting: I’m coming, Gabs. I’m coming to take you home. In my hands I clutched the parcel they were expecting. I prayed that Sharkey and Boges were in position, keeping up their end of this plan.

  A cold, light breeze rustled the silvered leaves of the gum trees, crowded near the riverbanks. Clouds slowly moved across the half-moon, and our world became even darker. I glanced at the time. It was after ten o’clock–and there wasn’t a soul in sight.

  A light drizzle started up. I heard a sound and swung round, but there was nothing there. Spooked, we moved further onto the bridge.

  What if the kidnappers had changed their minds, seen something they didn’t like and backed off? I felt the beginning of a sob rising up in the back of my throat, and I swallowed it down. I should have convinced Mum back in January to leave the country with me and Gab. None of this would have happened if we’d done that. Gabbi would be safe with Mum and me, in some secure location, not in a coma, being used as a bargaining tool by evil people set on solving the Ormond Singularity first. I should have–

  My mobile rang, and I grabbed it from my pocket.

  ‘I’m here,’ I said to the kidnappers, ‘just as you said I should be–standing at the township end of the bridge. Where are you? Where is Gabbi?’

  ‘You’ll see in just a moment. Wait right where you are.’

  The line went dead.

  The sound of a speeding car tore through the night air from the other side of the bridge. Headlights appeared, approaching the bridge from the opposite end.

  ‘It’s them!’ cried Winter, shivering beside me. She tightened her hold on my arm and I tightened my hold on the parcel.

  The car paused as it reached the start of the bridge, then began crawling towards us, and the middle of the Spindrift River bridge.

  It came to a stop and we squinted in the bright lights shining on us. It wasn’t the Mercedes I’d come to know so well. It was a different silhouette altogether.

  The headlights suddenly went out.

  I was desperate to believe that Sharkey and Boges were just behind us, in similar darkness, waiting for the perfect moment to pounce.

  I could hardly hear anything over the rushing water of the river–it seemed to intensify to match my adrenaline. The driver, in shadowy silhouette, opened the car door and stepped onto the bridge.

  ‘Stay here,’ I whispered to Winter, putting a restraining hand on her arm. ‘I’m going to move in closer.’

  ‘Here I am,’ I called out, stepping towards them, and waving the parcel over my head. ‘I have everything you want. Let Gabbi go!’

  For a long moment, the figure just stood there, unmoving. My eyes vainly tried to make out whether Gabbi was in the car.

  Then his voice hissed through the darkness. ‘Come closer!’

  ‘Not until I see what you have first,’ I said. ‘No deal without that. I want to see my sister.’

  The man turned back to the car. Was he going to drive away?

  ‘Hey!’ I called after him. ‘We had a deal! Where’s my sister?’

  The figure leaned into the rear of the car for a moment but I couldn’t make out what he was doing.

  What was going on? He stepped away.

  The car he’d arrived in suddenly shot backwards. The headlights flashed back on.

  There was another guy–a driver!

  Now, in the high beam of the headlights, I could see a large bundle lying on the side of the bridge.

  The bundle moved.

  ‘It’s Gabbi!’ Winter cried.

  ‘Gabbi!’ I yelled, instinctively running forward. In the blaze of the headlights I could see the top of her pale forehead poking out of the sleeping-bag she was cocooned in, and her golden hair shining. She was just metres from me!

  Now was the time for my back-up to appear.

  A harsh voice brought me to a sudden halt.

  ‘Stop right there! Leave the information you’ve bought with you on the ground,’ he ordered, moving around to stand visibly in the small pool of light from the bridge. ‘And put your hands up in the air.’ He was a man I’d never seen before, wearing a padded ski-jacket and a beanie pulled down low to his eyes. His jaw was hard, and his lips formed a thin line above his unshaven chin.

  ‘Did you hear me?’ he snarled. ‘Put the documents down and put your hands up!’

  I did as he said and put the parcel on the ground. I kicked it in his direction, three or four metres away. ‘This is what you need,’ I said, slowly raising my arms. ‘These are all the drawings that my dad did before he died. I also have my notes, some important letters and other crucial pieces of information. It’s all there. And here I am,’ I said, blinking in the headlights, spreading my hands further to show that I meant to give them no trouble.

  He stepped towards the package and bent over to pick it up. ‘Is this everything?’ he snarled.

  ‘Everything,’ I said. ‘There’s no way I’d risk my sister’s life by holding anything back. So now my friend is going to collect Gabbi. OK?’

  Winter stepped out of the shadows and stood beside me. She held her hands up in the air, like me.

  The kidnapper nodded and Winter slowly approached Gabbi, lying silent on the road.

  ‘You,’ he gestured to me, ‘move slowly towards the car. And don’t try anything smart.’

  Where were Nelson and Boges?

  I crept closer, unable to take my eyes off my sister. Winter stooped to pick Gabbi up, while I kept walking towards the kidnappers’ car.

  The headlights suddenly died again and we were plunged into darkness. Even the low bridge lights went out.

  I saw a shadow move in the kidnappers’ car.

  Where were Nelson and Boges?!

  I swung back, intending to warn the others and help Winter carry Gabbi away from here, but the ski-jacket man’s vicious voice shouted out, ‘Move and I’ll shoot!’

  Winter gasped. I froze.

  ‘OK! OK!’ I cried. ‘We’re not moving!’ I wouldn’t dare do anything that would endanger Gabbi’s life further.

  Nelson and Boges! Hurry up!

  Almost the second I thought this, I heard the roar of a fast accelerating car behind me.

  Nelson’s car screamed onto the bridge, headlights blazing!

  The guy in the ski-jacket jumped backwards, shielding his eyes from the high-beam brilliance!

  They were here!

  ‘He has a gun!’ I shouted as the car screeched and skidded to a halt beside me.

  Nelson and Boges exploded out of the car–the engine still revving–and Nelson sprang at the man with the gun, smashing him down onto the roadway, the gun skittering out from his grasp. Boges ran to pick it up.

  ‘Watch the other guy in the car!’ I shouted to him. Bog
es held up the gun and pointed it at the kidnappers’ car, moving it shakily, unable to lock onto the target’s position. I spun around to Gabbi and Winter.

  ‘Get her in the car!’ I hissed as Winter lifted Gabbi from the roadway, struggling with her inert form. Before I had the chance to help her, the second man from the car materialised between us.

  He ran towards Boges in a black blur and kicked the gun from my friend’s hand, before hurling him heavily to the ground. Next he took a swing at Winter and wrenched Gabbi out of her arms, flinging her tiny, fragile body over his shoulder like it was nothing but a sack of grain. Winter tumbled to the ground.

  The driver stood tall and menacing, wearing a black fedora, pulled low, and a black trenchcoat.

  I lurched at him, but he held Gabbi high, out of my reach. ‘Get back, you crazy little punk!’ He spat at me as he retreated, and reached behind his back with his free hand.

  ‘Stay down!’ I ordered my friends, thinking this guy was reaching for a gun. Sharkey was still fighting and rolling around with the other gunman in a desperate struggle nearby. All my focus was on Gabbi.

  ‘Let her go, you scumbag!’ Winter yelled from behind me.

  ‘You want her? Then get in the car and tell your friends to rack off!’

  I leapt towards the car, but as I did the fedora-wearing man sidestepped to the edge of the bridge, still holding my sister aloft. His trenchcoat flapped wildly in an eerie, sudden gust of wind.

  ‘Here, catch!’ he screamed.

  We all watched in horror as he lifted my sister over the bridge railing and threw her off.

  I fell to my knees. Everything around me went hazy and I felt like throwing up. I barely heard the splash as Gabbi crashed into the wild river below.

  ‘Gabbi!’ I screamed. ‘No!’ I scrambled to my feet and raced towards the edge of the bridge, climbing up the railing. I had to save her!

  ‘Cal, no!’ I heard Winter cry, desperately.

  I stood up and dived head first into the fast-running, freezing water, without a care for the jagged rocks below.

  Under the water I felt like I was in a dreamworld. I couldn’t believe this was happening. I fought the surge and kicked my legs, finally emerging and breaking through the surface.

  ‘Gabbi!’ I screamed into the darkness as the water thrashed me along. How was I going to find her? The river quickly carried me further and further away from the bridge.

  I desperately twisted around, searching for my sister. I hoped the sleeping-bag would have cushioned her fall a little, and that it would help keep her afloat … just long enough for me to find her.

  I couldn’t see anything as the river carried me down, just the chop on the flooded river’s surface and the banks looming black on either side.

  ‘Gabbi!’ I screamed at the top of my voice, half-choking. ‘Gabbi!’

  I dived repeatedly, finding calmer water underneath the surface. With every plunge, I reached out into the murky blackness near the bottom of the river, hoping to touch her. I was frantic. In her unconscious state, Gabbi would have no chance–no survival instincts would kick in. Once the sleeping-bag became saturated, it would drag her down to her death.

  I groped around in the water, but all my scrabbling fingers could find were stones and mud, decaying timber and leaves.

  The cold was getting to me. My ears and head were aching.

  I made another panicked dive and collided with a large, submerged log. As I pulled myself away from its clutches, my hands touched fabric! Thick fabric! A sodden sleeping-bag!

  I had found her!

  I grasped around, pulling at it, looking for her arms so that I could pull her out and take her to the surface with me. I was counting on her still being alive!

  But I couldn’t find her arms–or her legs. I couldn’t find her at all. The sleeping-bag was empty. My sister had been washed away in the torrent!

  As I resurfaced, a terrible shriek ripped out of my body. I kicked at the log at my feet, and tore at the empty sleeping-bag, screaming into the night air, howling like a wolf.

  Gabbi was gone.

  She was gone!

  I swam to the edge of the river. It took me five attempts to scramble up the bank.

  I had failed in everything. I had lost the Ormond Jewel and the Ormond Riddle.

  And now I had lost my little sister’s life.

  Copyright

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  Text copyright © Gabrielle Lord, 2010.

  Illustrations copyright © Scholastic Australia, 2010.

  Illustrations by Rebecca Young.

  Cover copyright © Scholastic Australia, 2010.

  Cover design by Natalie Winter.

  Graphics by Nicole Leary © Scholastic Australia, 2010.

  Cover photography: boy by Wendell Levi Teodoro (www.zeduce.org) © Scholastic Australia 2010; close-up of boy’s face by Michael Bagnall © Scholastic Australia 2010; person in straightjacket © photooiasson/ Shutterstock; underground tunnel © Perov Stanislav/Shutterstock. Internal photography: spiky-haired boy on page 063 and 062 © istockphoto.com/Birgitte Magnus.

  This electronic edition published by Scholastic Australia Pty Limited in 2012.

  E-PUB/MOBI eISBN 978 192198 860 8

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