Trojan Gene

by Meg Buchanan

  Ela starts tapping away at the screen, and I get moving again, see the flash. She puts the Com on the dashboard. As we drive back to town, she tells me the rest of what happened with Henry and Charlie.

  “As soon as I saw Henry, I slid my thumb across my Com to reconnect with you.” She sounds a bit frightened, but mostly she sounds really annoyed at letting herself get caught.

  “Doing that probably saved your life. At least when I came looking for you, I knew what had happened and where they were taking you.”

  “That’s what I was hoping.” In the dark she looks over at me, all hair and eyes. “I just hoped you were listening to it all. So you’d know they were waiting for you.”

  “I wasn’t listening.” An old ute comes towards us, with its lights on full beam, they nearly blind me, goes. “I put my Com in the pannier.” Another stupid mistake. That one nearly cost Ela her life.

  “I’m glad I didn’t know that.” The Com on the dashboard flashes. Ela picks it up and reads the text.

  “Fitzgerald?” I ask, and she nods. “What does he say?”

  “He’s at the station. Meet him there.”

  “Okay.”

  Ela slides across the bench seat, so she’s closer to me. I put my arm around her and drive one-handed. “How are you going to change gear?” she asks.

  “I’ll figure something out.”

  I feel like pulling over to the verge, stopping the Land Rover, and just holding her. Not an option with Fitzgerald waiting in town for us and the Willises behind us trying to get free. I should have taken Henry’s keys, so they had to walk into town. Just another mistake in a long list of them.

  “What happened then?”

  “Charlie Willis came into the room and blocked my way. He must have been in one of the bedrooms watching me walk down the passage.”

  “The creep.” I hold her a bit tighter.

  “He’s strange,” she says.

  And the story went on from there.

  While Henry and Charlie concentrated on the map, Ela eyed the Com. She thought maybe she could use the HazeApp and get away from them.

  “Don’t even think about it,” said Henry. “You wouldn’t have time to call for help even if you got to it. We need you to take us there. We don’t want to be stumbling around in the dark all night.”

  “You could go in the morning,” Ela suggested.

  “Nah. Come on.” Henry folded up the map and put it in his pocket. “Let’s get going before Fraser gets here. We’ll deal with him later.”

  He picked up his rifle and walked towards the door, pushing Ela ahead of him. They got to the carpark at Karangahake, Henry got out and put his rifle in the tray but kept his hand near it.

  “I was hoping I’d get a chance to run then,” says Ela. “But I didn’t. Then I looked around the carpark for anyone who would help. Not a single car, not a single soul wandering around. Even the bush looked unhelpful.”

  Charlie got out of the ute. “I thought you wanted to get Fraser too.”

  “Not yet,” said Henry. “We’ll deal with her first, then him. Fraser’s sure to try and find her. He likes being the hero.”

  Then Charlie went around to the back of the ute and picked his rifle up out of the tray.

  “Don’t wave that thing around,” Henry snarled at him. “Put it down.”

  “I didn’t think they’d fall for going through the tunnel,” says Ela. “So I walked past that track and along the side of the mountain. As we walked along the walkway, it was getting darker and darker. Charlie gave Henry one of the torches, and we followed the narrow beam of light. When we crossed the small wooden bridge, I deliberately looked down at the river on the other side. That bridge marked the way up to the waterfall where the vault is.”

  Henry suddenly stopped. “Where do we go up?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure,” said Ela, and she looked around like she was confused. She was still trying to slow him down.

  “But he shook me,” says Ela, sounding indignant. “So, I decided not to antagonise him after that. I pointed to the wooden bridge in front of us. I told him to go over the bridge and along the walkway a bit further. I was cold. It was getting dark, and all I had on was this thin little dress and ballet shoes. I wasn’t dressed for a walk in the bush at night.”

  “Right,” said Henry. “Follow me. You come behind her,” he said to Charlie and then turned to Ela. “Stay close and no tricks.”

  They walked along the bank in single file, working their way up the slope and sometimes climbing over rocks. Henry lit the way with his torch, and Ela kept close, so she could see.

  “And that’s when I tried to get away,” says Ela. “I saw my chance.”

  Charlie climbed along behind her, his torch shining everywhere except straight ahead. She could hear him puffing and wheezing. She didn’t like how close he sounded. She could almost feel his breath on her neck. Suddenly she felt the rifle barrel move up the back of her leg. She frantically pushed it away, slipped and grabbed Henry’s t-shirt.

  “It made him drop the torch. The torch landed in the water and went out.”

  “Clumsy of him,” I say.

  “Yeah.” Ela grins at me.

  Henry grabbed her arm again and glared at his brother. “Keep your mind on the job.” He took a step towards Charlie. “Now I’ve dropped my torch.”

  Charlie smirked at Ela. She moved closer to Henry. She thought he was less of a threat than Charlie, but she was wrong.

  “Give me that,” said Henry. He grabbed for the torch Charlie was holding. “You get down there and get the other one.” As Henry reached for the torch, he let go Ela’s arm. Charlie climbed down the bank and into the water. He reached for the torch, and Henry shone the light on it to help him.

  That was her chance. She ran at Henry and shoved him. He lost his balance and disappeared over the bank. She leapt off the rock and dived for the edge of the bush before they had time to move and then ran. She didn’t know where she was going. She only knew she was safer on her own than with them.

  Suddenly alone in the dark, she looked around wildly worried if they got close and she moved they’d see her, and if she stood still they might crash into her. But she was in a white dress in the bush, and they had torches, so seeing her was the most likely thing. She kept moving away from the noise they were making. She stepped as quietly as possible, heart pounding in her chest. When she hadn’t heard any noise for a while and couldn’t see the light from the torches, she relaxed. She thought she’d lost them and started to breathe more easily. She crouched low behind a bush, planned on staying there and giving them time to be a long way away before she started moving again. Then she stood up ready to move as quietly as she could through the bush away from the clearing.

  Now it was just a matter of trying to find her way home. She moved on cautiously, treading lightly and working through the bush carefully. The ferns caressed her face and arms as if they were trying to hide her. She pushed them aside and crept through the darkness.

  Suddenly she was caught in the beam of light. She could see Charlie’s face in the shadow behind the torch.

  “I’ve got her,” he called out. She spun around ready to dive back the way she’d come, but another torch came on, and she was caught in the cross beam.

  “Don’t even think about it,” said Henry the way he did at the house. “Try that again, and I’ll let Charlie loose on you.” He took his belt off, slid the end of the belt through the buckle. “We need to take some precautions.” He grabbed her arm, slipped the loop over her hand and pulled it tight.

  “That’s how I finished up with the belt around my wrist.” She waves the damaged wrist, so I can see it. “They were taking precautions. Not long after that we got to the clearing, and then you turned up and rescued me.”

  “You were doing all right,” I say. “I couldn’t believe it when I saw you knee Charlie.”

  “That was very satisfying,” says Ela.

  Chapter 31

 
WE GET TO THE PUB and go up the stairs.

  Mum appears behind us.

  “I thought I heard something. What are you doing here? Weren’t you picking up Jacob and staying the night with him?”

  “We got the day wrong,” I lie. “He isn’t coming home until tomorrow.”

  Mum looks like she doubts I would get the wrong day but lets it pass.

  “Fitzgerald called. He wants you at the station now.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Why does Fitzgerald want to see you in the middle of the night?” Mum asks.

  I shrug. Mum lets that pass too. Then she stares at the bruise on Ela’s cheek and takes in her raw looking wrist. “What happened, Ela?”

  “The Willises got me. Charlie hit me.” Ela sounds cross again.

  “Jack are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

  “Soon.” I turn and go down the staircase again. “If Henry or Charlie turn up before I get back, call me. I’ll come straight here.”

  “What about Monsanto?” Ela asks, as we get out of the Land Rover at the station.

  “Leave him there.” We walk to the light in the doorway, go in.

  “What happened?” Fitzgerald asks, looking first at Ela, then at me.

  “The Willises had her. Listen to this.” I hand Fitzgerald my Com.

  Fitzgerald takes it and listens. He turns the Com off and holds it in his fist. “Are they looking for the vault?”

  “Yeah.” I flop onto a chair. “They haven’t found it. Ela took them to another waterfall.” I rub my forehead. “What happened with Lucinda?”

  “Doctor’s with her. He’ll stay with her until the morning. Then we’ll decide what to do.”

  “Will she be all right?”

  “Yeah. She needed antibiotics. Johnson says it was lucky you called for help when you did.”

  One thing he approves of. “Are they still at the vault?”

  “No. They’ve been moved to a safe house where they should have been taken right from the start.” Fitzgerald moves on. “Where are the Willises now?”

  “You got those maps of the mountain?”

  Fitzgerald nods and goes into his office. Comes back with a map. Sits down on the chair beside me and spreads the map out on the table. Ela moves to the other side of me. Leans over to see the map better.

  “Here.” I point at the fake site.

  “That’s nowhere near the vault. Why would they believe it was there?”

  “We made a map to trick them,” says Ela.

  “You made a map?” Fitzgerald is shitty. He’d warned us off enough times. “What was that meant to achieve?”

  I interrupt to take the heat off Ela. “I was trying to keep them away from the vault and give you time to sort out Vincent.”

  “But it didn’t go quite to plan?”

  “Not quite.” I rub the side of my mouth. “I didn’t think they’d go after Ela.”

  “It didn’t occur to you to call me again when you found they had her. Get some more help?” asks Fitzgerald.

  “I didn’t have time. And I knew you were busy.”

  “Not that busy. Call for help when you need it.”

  “Okay.” I sound exhausted.

  “How are Henry and Charlie?” asks Fitzgerald. I think he heard the tiredness and backed off.

  I give Fitzgerald a sidelong look.

  “That good?” he asks.

  “Yeah. I split Henry’s skull. Ela broke Charlie’s nose.”

  Fitzgerald looks at Ela, a bit surprised. “That right?”

  She nods.

  “Now I have to clean up after you again,” says Fitzgerald in that tone of voice teachers use when they’re trying to sort out a problem kid. He leans forward, his elbows on the table, arms still folded. “What I hear is Henry and Charlie are in the bush tied up, one with a broken nose and the other with a split skull, waiting to be arrested. Is that right?”

  “No, I think they’ll get loose, pretend nothing has happened.”

  Fitzgerald looks doubtful. “Why would they do that?”

  “They’ve messed up. They just abducted someone, so they’ll know you’ll be after them. And they’ve let Vincent down, and they’re already scared of him. I think they’ll disappear.”

  Fitzgerald leans back in his chair and gives that some thought. “Yeah. Maybe they’ll do us a favour and leave. So, what are you doing now?”

  “We’ll go back to the pub. If I’m wrong, and they come after me, I don’t want Mum on her own. I’ll call you if there’s a problem.”

  “Make sure you do, and we’ll keep an eye out for them too,” says Fitzgerald. “In the morning go visit Jacob. Tell him what’s been going on.”

  Yeah, right. Telling Jacob anything about today is something I’ll put off for as long as I can. Even when we pick him up, I’m not planning on mentioning any of it unless he does.

  Fitzgerald catches the silence. “You’re going to have to face him some time,” he says.

  *

  The next day, Jacob is sitting in his arm chair in his lounge. He’s watching Ela. We’ve just picked him up from the hospital.

  I’m sitting on the couch. Ela’s curled up beside me, all tiny skirt and shiny red boots and long cloak. Those hours in the bush yesterday frightened her more than she’s saying. They made her quiet again.

  “You two getting on then?” Jacob asks. He doesn’t look happy about that.

  Ela nods, and leans further into me. Jacob doesn’t look too happy about that either. The chair he’s sitting on is slashed. His crutches are beside him. Mug and sausage roll on the side table. He watches us.

  I’m watching back, waiting for the broadside. He’s just gathering up ammunition.

  His first move is to nod at the bruise on Ela’s cheek, then move his eyes to me.

  “Jack, why was Ela alone in the house and not with you?”

  Before I answer, Ela jumps in with a jumbled explanation of me working, and her arriving back early after visiting him and deciding to wait for me at the house.

  Jacob looks from me to her like he knows he isn’t being told the whole story. “Did you arrange for Ela to meet you at the house, then weren’t there when she turned up?” He looks away to Ela and back at me again. Waiting for clarification.

  “Yes,” I say.

  Ela jumps in again. “Jack called me and told me he’d be late and not to go to the house. I decided to ignore that.”

  “Stay out of this, Ela,” Jacob orders. “This is between Jack and me.”

  He turns to me again. “You disobeyed a direct order?”

  “Yes,” I say again.

  “Explain.” And Jacob just sits there, waiting.

  I tell why I was held up. Tell him about Lucinda being sick and needing to get a doctor and leaving Ela on her own. I figure that’s what he wants to hear, me admitting I got it wrong. I’m pretty sure Fitzgerald would already have told him.

  “You were told to protect her,” says Jacob.

  Ela butts in again. “You’re being unfair, Jacob. It was my decision, not Jack’s, and he had to help Lucinda.”

  “Stay out of this.” He turns back to me. “Why was Lucinda in the vault?”

  I tell him about rescuing Lucinda. It goes down about as well as I expected it would.

  Ela butts in. “Someone had to rescue her. They couldn’t just leave her there. You and Fitzgerald weren’t doing anything.”

  “Stay out of this,” he warns her again. If she keeps this up, Jacob will have a go at her not me. Maybe that’s what she wants. She’s trying to deflect him, protect me like she said she would.

  He focuses back on me. Explains all his objections to the way we rescued Lucinda. Turns out he already knows Nick, Scott and Curley were there and will be having a word with them soon. He doesn’t appear to know Ela was there. That’s one thing in my favour.

  “It wasn’t Jack’s fault,” Ela butts in again. “Joe and Nick were going to do it anyway.”

  “Jack should have ta
lked them out of it.”

  “They were going anyway.” She’s starting to get angry. “It was their idea. Jack couldn’t have talked them out of it, so he had to help them.”

  At that Jacob turns and looks at her. “And where were you while this was happening? Why do you know so much about it?”

  Ela glances at me. I shake my head, the tiniest movement. It’s all over before Jacob turns my way again. Ela doesn’t enlighten him. Says she was in bed at the pub.

  Jacob continues to ask questions, and I answer them. If Ela interrupts, he tells her to stay out of it. If it looks like I’m sliding over any details, trying make things look better, he barks a question at me along the lines of ‘whose idea was that?’ and ‘you did that how?’ I don’t mention the HazeApp. Just say we hid in the utes.

  When I’m finally finished talking, I hear a lot about not being able to follow instructions. In fact, he points out at length everything we did wrong including using the vault instead of a safe house.

  “You went directly against orders you were given,” says Jacob. “You could have been captured and interrogated. You have endangered everyone. Joe and Lucinda are fugitives now. And Vector will take some sort of punitive action because of what you did.”

  Like me, he’s pretty puzzled why that hasn’t started already. He’s especially not too happy we did it all without checking with him or Fitzgerald first.

  I sit there and take it.

  Ela’s given up arguing with him. But her hand snakes out of the cloak to hold mine. We don’t tell him we didn’t consult him and Fitzgerald because we didn’t think they’d go for the idea. That might set him off again.

  Actually, he could have saved his breath. After the way I felt when I knew the Willises had Ela, I’m planning on listening if I’m given an order by Jacob or Fitzgerald from now on.

  “We’re just starting to trust you, and you do this. You’re no use to us if you’re a loose cannon,” says Jacob.