KILLER T

by Robert Muchamore

  ‘I Skyped with my granddad in Devon. He says everything is locked down. Everyone is supposed to stay at home apart from key workers like cops and medics. He was all stiff-upper-lip don’t worry, Harry, we’ll all be fine, but you could tell he was scared. And my nan came on and kept saying how much she loved me and that it was the first time she’d ever been glad me and Kirsten are so far away.’

  ‘And your dad? Isn’t he in London?’

  ‘I’ve tried, but his phone’s dead and he didn’t answer my messages.’

  ‘Bummer,’ Matt said.

  Harry shrugged. ‘If I couldn’t get through to my grandparents and cousins I’d worry. But my dad’s shady. He goes off radar for months even when things are normal.’

  Gemma stepped naked from the bathroom and yelped when she saw Matt.

  ‘Jesus!’ she squealed, hopping back into the bathroom and slamming the door. ‘You could have warned me, Harry.’

  Harry laughed as he grabbed a T-shirt, pulling it over his head and following Matt across the hallway to his bedroom.

  He’d bought the swanky apartment with money he’d made selling some of his five per cent stake in Elliegold Media to Kent Clark. After a few battles, Matt’s parents reluctantly agreed to let the besties live together for their last year of high school.

  ‘Is your girl Lana coming to Axl’s party tonight?’ Harry asked Matt.

  ‘I got sooo lucky,’ Matt said cheerfully. ‘Lana apologised to me, because she’s got this girls’-night-out thing. I was all, like, oh, that’s so sad. But inside I’m smiling my ass off, because Axl’s big brother’s party was total depravity and people are saying tonight is gonna be worse.’

  ‘A ton of people who know Lana will still be there,’ Harry noted. ‘And you sobbed your little heart out the last time she ditched you.’

  A shout came from across the hall. ‘Harry, did you see where my underwear went?’

  ‘Matt kicked them under the bed,’ Harry called back.

  ‘Tell your boyfriend he’s a jackass,’ Gemma yelled irritably.

  ‘I didn’t cry,’ Matt lied, shaking his head. ‘And at least I don’t sleep with random girls who wait till you fall asleep and steal your Mini.’

  Harry was enjoying the banter. ‘At least I still have my licence, Mr Ninety-Miles-Per-Hour-Through-a-LIDAR-Trap.’

  ‘I’m outta here, you guys,’ Gemma said, sounding ticked off as she came out of Harry’s room.

  ‘Pat her down for car keys,’ Matt joked as Harry stepped into the hall to say goodbye.

  Gemma’s hair was combed straight but still wet, and she wore denim shorts and a red sports tank with a big Nike tick stretched over her chest.

  ‘Be cool to hook up again some time,’ Harry said, making it sound like that wouldn’t be a big deal.

  He moved for a goodbye kiss, but Gemma stuck her hand in the way.

  ‘I first met you when you were going out with Anita, and you were a nice guy,’ Gemma said. ‘But the muscle and the money have gone to your head, Harry. Acting like a sleazy jock doesn’t suit you, and you’re smart enough to know better.’

  ‘Women be crazy,’ Harry told Matt as the front door slammed.

  But Harry was a lot less sure of himself as he strode on to his balcony. He felt dead inside as he leaned on the hot metal railing and looked at the sun fading behind The Strip’s giant hotel towers.

  He was eighteen years old. He had a sweet apartment, a lively sex life, an orange Porsche and a place on New York University’s renowned photography course in the fall. But Gemma’s words stuck in Harry’s throat, because none of that stuff had made him happy.

  41 INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS

  Charlie had bought nice clothes and a few expensive things for her room, but, apart from Juno, everyone she knew thought she worked for the Radical Cake Collective, so she couldn’t go flashing big bucks around. She’d bought a two-year-old Volkswagen after she’d got her licence and the car felt especially small as it approached the giant arched gates of Highgrove, one of Vegas’s oldest and most prestigious gated developments.

  After passing the gate, a black man in a breathing mask came out with a pressure hose, spraying Charlie’s car with insecticide, then going down on one knee to blast the tires and the underside. As Charlie watched the milky solution drain down her windows, a call rang through the centre console. Unknown number.

  ‘Charlie? It’s Owen. I was at the Science Outreach day last week.’

  ‘Oh, hey,’ Charlie said, remembering giving her number to a tall ginger guy with a cuddly-mad-professor vibe.

  ‘There’s a place called Tenders downtown,’ Owen said. ‘It sells vinyl and coffee. My friend Seb is playing there tonight. I thought, maybe, you’d like to come by.’

  ‘Ahh,’ Charlie said as the masked man wiped insecticide smears off her windscreen. ‘It’s kinda short notice, Owen. Maybe another time.’

  ‘When are you free?’ Owen asked.

  The masked man waved Charlie’s VW forward. As she gently pressed the accelerator, he started blasting a big Range Rover with dogs in the back.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Charlie said, looking across at a huge three-storey house with fountains along the driveway.

  Owen cleared his throat. ‘It’s no biggie. But you said you weren’t seeing anyone, and you gave me your number. Just say if you want me to quit bugging you.’

  Owen was cute, but Charlie was always busy, studying, and working, and visiting Ed. Dating was a hassle, but she hadn’t kissed a guy since Christmas. School ended in five weeks, and a summer fling had a certain appeal …

  ‘I think I’m free Thursday night,’ Charlie said impulsively. ‘I’m driving so I can’t check my calendar. Call me Wednesday and we’ll meet up for coffee.’

  ‘Awesome,’ Owen said happily. ‘Enjoy your weekend, whatever you’re up to.’

  ‘I’ll try,’ Charlie said. ‘Hope your pal’s set at Tenders goes well.’

  Charlie drove slow, reading the numbers off stone plinths at the foot of each grand house. Number twenty-eight was a colonial-style monster, but one side was covered in blue tarps, with an extension being built beneath a scaffold.

  Mango’s oldest, Josh, raced to the door and gave Charlie a hug. Charlie said hello to Mango and her stand-offish wife, Veryan.

  ‘You have to see my new bedroom,’ the seven-year-old said as he tugged Charlie’s arm.

  After climbing a curved marble staircase, Josh showed her several huge, bare rooms and took her to the edge of the construction zone, which was going to be a pool and a large indoor garden. Then Josh showed Charlie his room. He had a bed shaped like a racing car, and Lego sprayed over the floor. Josh proudly held up a Lego box and told Charlie he could build it easily, even though the box said age eleven plus.

  Mango and Veryan’s five-year-old daughter trailed Charlie and Josh for the last part of the tour and both kids looked sad when Mango said she needed to talk to Charlie in private.

  ‘They’ve grown since I last saw them,’ Charlie said as Mango led her into a library.

  The room had a sneezy sawdust smell from newly installed shelves, but the books remained in moving boxes and there was a brand-new desk still covered in polystyrene blocks.

  ‘The indoor garden will be amazing,’ Charlie said.

  ‘The kids can play out here now,’ Mango explained. ‘But who knows what the situation will be in a year?’

  ‘They reckon LHV has hit mainland Europe,’ Charlie said. ‘The first case was detected in Calais yesterday; by this morning there’s over three hundred reported cases, as far south as Milan.’

  ‘Scary,’ Mango said as she moved a box file off an armchair so that Charlie could sit down. ‘As soon as that antidote gets released, I want to go straight to the lab to make our own batch. Even if you’re in school.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Charlie agreed. ‘Hopefully it’ll be a couple of weeks before it crosses the Atlantic.’

  ‘I wouldn’t bet on that,’ Mango said. ‘Judging by the
symptoms, LHV is a modified Ebola virus. That’s a tropical virus, so chances are it’ll be suited to hot climates like this and much harder to kill than SNor … So, how did the lab session go last night?’

  Charlie didn’t like lying, but she’d decided it was too risky to tell her boss about Juno’s private job.

  ‘The power supply in that storage unit scares me. It blew twice. The second time the fuse panel was hot to touch. We finished up using the diesel generator in the RV, but it’s noisy and it doesn’t power everything at once.’

  ‘I’ll get an electrician down there before your next lab session,’ Mango said.

  ‘When are we getting the new equipment?’ Charlie asked. ‘You said it would be two weeks over a month ago. It’s getting to the point where something jams, or has to be repeated every time we’re in the lab.’

  ‘Juno’s heavy handed,’ Mango said acidly.

  Charlie knew there was some truth to this, but she was fed up with her boss failing to bring in more reliable equipment. And while Charlie had saved a decent nest egg for college, Mango’s enormous new home and Juno making fifty grand from one batch of an easy-to-produce muscle mod made her feel short changed.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ Charlie said, a nervous edge coming into her voice. ‘I’m taking a lot of risks for a small share of the money we make. I’m getting four to six hundred dollars for complex mods you’re charging fifteen thousand for.’

  Mango leaned forward in her armchair and narrowed her eyes. She employed eighty people in the bakery, so she was used to dealing with people asking for a raise.

  ‘What rate were you thinking?’ Mango asked.

  ‘I don’t want a raise – I want a percentage,’ Charlie said. ‘I know you have a lot of expenses, but I thought fifteen per cent would be more than fair.’

  Mango smiled and shook her head, like Charlie had made a joke.

  ‘Charlie, you earn seven hundred and fifty dollars for a three-hour shift. You’d be lucky to earn sixty in a shop or a restaurant.’

  ‘The restaurant doesn’t sell hamburgers for fifteen grand,’ Charlie pointed out. ‘And I wouldn’t go to prison for grilling meat.’

  ‘Fifteen per cent is over two thousand dollars per job. You did six jobs last night.’

  ‘I think you can afford it,’ Charlie said firmly.

  Mango tutted. ‘Everything costs, Charlie. Three years ago, I could buy a hundred bone-marrow extraction kits for seven hundred bucks. Now they’re a registered product. Decent ones have to be smuggled in from Mexico and they want ninety dollars per pack. Same goes for proteins, enzyme packs and auto-immune drugs.

  ‘You walk in the RV and it’s all there waiting, but it takes careful planning to keep everything in stock without tipping off the cops.’

  ‘You’re not doing badly, though,’ Charlie said, sweeping her arm out at the rows of freshly built shelves. ‘How much is your indoor pool and garden. Two million? Three? I could set up my own lab and do one job a week, and make more money than you pay me to work three long shifts.’

  ‘Nobody knows who you are,’ Mango said tartly. ‘I can charge fifteen grand for a procedure because I’m a qualified doctor, with hundreds of satisfied clients and a reputation for excellence. I never tout for work; every job comes through personal recommendation.

  ‘If you set up your own lab, you’d have all the stress and the risks, but you wouldn’t be competing with me. You’d be competing with Chinese labs that people find on the dark web. They charge five hundred dollars per mod, which wouldn’t cover the cost of base enzymes and auto-immune drugs.’

  ‘I don’t want to be your competition,’ Charlie said sharply. ‘I appreciate all that you’ve done for me, Mango. But the laws keep getting tougher. I’m risking serious jail time every time I step into the RV.

  ‘My plan was always to quit when I started college. But I’ve already saved enough to make college life bearable and it’s not worth risk and stress all through my last year of high school just to make a hundred grand or so.’

  ‘When things have gone well, you’ve had generous bonuses,’ Mango said. ‘When you asked for help, I took on your friend and paid her well too.’

  Charlie got out of the armchair. ‘I don’t want to fight with you. I’ve said what I came here to say. And it was nice to see your six-million-dollar house.’

  Mango was irritated by the sarcasm as Charlie stood and marched between boxes on the way to the library door.

  ‘I’m not prepared to offer you a percentage,’ Mango yelled after her. ‘But I do value your work, so I’ll discuss with Veryan, and we’ll see what we can squeeze out of the budget.’

  42 ONE-ONE-SEVEN

  Steak and Eggs was a sprawling pool deck and club on the roof of downtown’s trendy Red Spot Casino. The Nevada drinking age was twenty-one, but Axl Darmon was a spoiled Queensbridge senior, whose something-big-in-solar-energy father had spent thirty grand hiring the entire rooftop club for his son’s eighteenth-birthday bash.

  Harry and Matt’s Uber dropped them in an underground car park, and scarily huge bouncers scanned barcodes on their invites before letting them ride a glass elevator up the side of the building to the twenty-third floor.

  ‘Those doormen were all natural,’ Matt joked as downtown’s glitz reflected on the elevator’s polished surfaces.

  They were sharing the elevator with two Queensbridge girls, who both wore Ralph Lauren polos and short skirts over their swimming costumes. A girl with huge teeth gave Harry a smile.

  ‘Who’s your friend, Harry Potter?’ she asked.

  Matt didn’t seem eager as the girl began flirting with him. The elevator doors opened to a wave of party noise and a tower of champagne glasses. As Harry grabbed a glass of bubbly, a pool attendant stepped up and apparently knew who he was.

  ‘Your cabana is prepared, Mr Smirnov.’

  Matt gawped as the pool attendant led them past ordinary partygoers fighting for space on plastic loungers to a swanky poolside cabana.

  ‘Big shot,’ Matt teased as Harry smirked. ‘I’ll never hear the end of this, will I?’

  Harry barely knew Axl Darmon, but Axl’s dad’s energy business advertised on Vegas Local, and everyone in town knew Harry and his aunt were friendly with Kent Clark, whose casinos and hotels used more solar panels than anyone else in town.

  The cabana’s interior had six chairs round a circular table, a full bar and a bed behind sliding doors at the back. Outside, Harry had eight poolside loungers with cards saying Reserved for Guests of Mr Smirnov on the neatly rolled towels, while nozzles overhead countered smouldering heat with a mist of water.

  ‘This is the bees,’ Matt said.

  By the time Harry gave the pool attendant a ten-dollar tip for an overlong demonstration of a tablet for ordering free food and cocktails, several girls hovered in the shallow water by the cabana’s steps.

  For Harry, the greatest prize was Lupita Diaz, dripping in a black bikini. A few years earlier, princesses like Esme Diaz had been an impossible dream; now her equally beautiful kid sister was practically begging for attention.

  ‘Step up,’ Harry told Lupita before offering her a cocktail.

  Matt invited more beautiful girls up the steps as Harry finished his champagne, drank a Long Island Iced Tea and flirted with Lupita on a double-width lounger.

  The next cabana was packed with beefy dudes being loud and annoying, and there seemed to be a Roman orgy taking place behind the cloth flaps. Harry was startled when one of them crossed to his side and offered a vast hand.

  ‘JJ, wow!’ Harry said, forcing a smile, even though the Janssen family stirred unsettling memories. ‘NFL big shot now! I saw a mock draft predicting that you’ll get picked by the Lions.’

  ‘I hate Detroit,’ JJ said. ‘The Texans would be nice. My offensive coordinator from Midland took a coaching job there. But don’t put that on Vegas Local.’

  ‘No fear,’ Harry said as Lupita smiled and bumped JJ’s fist.

  The pool a
ttendant put two platters of canapés on the bar and everyone dived in. JJ’s buddies had interpreted their main man stepping across to Harry’s cabana as an open invite and suddenly all the girls were getting hassled by loud college-age guys. Harry decided to escape, stripping off his tank top and swaying from the booze as he waded into the pool.

  It wasn’t even nine, but Steak and Eggs was popping. Kids of sixteen and seventeen were wasted and JJ’s pals were sneaking inside to snort cocaine. Lupita wanted to make out, but Harry was too trashed and she bounced to another cabana.

  He wound up beached on the big lounger, a touch queasy, tapping to pounding music and occasionally getting jolted when someone squeezed past.

  ‘Awesome party,’ Matt said, gesturing towards a girl on his arm. ‘I’m taking Hermione to our apartment to show her the view,’ Matt said. ‘I’ll see you back home.’

  ‘It’s so cool that you guys don’t have to live with your parents,’ Hermione said. ‘I can’t wait to get to college.’

  Harry wished he hadn’t drunk so much as he watched Matt head to the elevator. But he didn’t hold the thought, because Fawn Janssen was striding towards the cabanas with purpose.

  ‘JJ,’ she barked.

  Fawn was twenty-nine and the fact that every other girl was ten years younger and dressed for the pool made her seem gigantic in her tight purple dress and high-heeled boots. Harry had met Fawn when he’d photographed her house, and she shot him a fierce glare of recognition as she crossed in front of his cabana, then up the steps and through the flaps into JJ’s.

  ‘Rooster in the hen house,’ one of JJ’s mates boomed. ‘Feathers gonna fly!’

  Harry was drunk and knackered, but his instinct for a story trumped both handicaps. He pressed the record button on his phone as Fawn started yelling.

  ‘You dirty cheat! Get these tramps outta here.’

  Harry recognised a pair of eleventh-grade Queensbridge girls. The first stumbled through the flaps into the arms of a huge, guffawing jock. The second was propelled by the sharp heel of Fawn Janssen’s boot, crashing into an empty lounger, followed by the top half of her bikini.