First Drop tcfs-4

by Zoe Sharp

  I watched my words penetrate, saw Xander take on board the truth of them and mentally step back. Even if he couldn’t bring himself to back down physically. Eventually, Aimee wedged herself between us.

  She walked Xander back until his calves hit one of the waiting chairs, then she gently pressed on his shoulders until he sat. He complied without resistance, keeping his eyes on me all the while.

  Aimee came back to us, managing a rueful smile. “Look, you guys better go,” she said. “Soon as we know anything, we’ll call you.” Her smile expanded when she turned it on a dejected Trey. “I’m real glad you’re OK.”

  As she made to go back to Xander I caught her arm. “There’s one more thing,” I said quietly. “You remember I gave Xander the hard drive from Henry’s computer?”

  She nodded. “You want it back?”

  I shook my head. “It’s no good to us without access to a computer to put it into,” I said. “But we still need to know – now more than ever – who he contacted.”

  She shrugged, her disinterested look clearly suggesting I was being insensitive to ask after something so trivial at a time like this. “Why?”

  I paused, trying not to show my impatience, while I hunted for a way to persuade her. “Because otherwise we’re not going to find out who the guys who shot Scott are really working for,” I said.

  I watched that hit home. She nodded again. “OK, I’ll, like, see what we can do.”

  We left quickly, trying not to attract any attention. Suddenly the hospital seemed to be full of people in uniform but none of them appeared to be looking for two kids. And if they were, we didn’t appear to be the kids they were looking for.

  Although I was reluctant to abandon our transport, keeping hold of the Taurus would have caused more problems than it would have solved. Nevertheless, I couldn’t resist checking it over before we left it for the last time, just in case there was anything tucked away in there that we could use.

  It wasn’t until I opened the boot that I realised just how carefully Jim Whitmarsh and his men had planned our abduction from Henry’s place. The whole of the inside of the boot area was lined in heavy plastic, the kind that builders use. It had been taped down around the edges and, when I cut an experimental slit in it with my Swiss Army knife, I found it was two layers deep.

  “What’s that for?” Trey asked, still subdued.

  “For a man who claimed to have had a change of heart about killing us immediately,” I said, voice grim, “Whitmarsh was certainly taking precautions not to leave any forensic evidence that we’d been in his car.” I glanced across at him and suddenly felt the need to reinforce my earlier actions. “If I hadn’t got us away from him, he was planning to kill the pair of us, sooner or later. You do realise that, don’t you?”

  After a moment’s pause Trey nodded, although without making any comment on whether he’d come to terms with what I’d had to do or not. He stood and watched while I wiped the inside of the Taurus down as best I could and locked the doors. Then we walked out of the car park into the blazing heat on International Speedway Boulevard. The massive spectator stands of the Daytona Speedway loomed away to the west of us, on the other side of the eight-lane highway.

  I stopped by the first storm drain we came across and dug the keys out of my pocket. But as I dangled them over the slats of the grid Trey’s obvious surprise made me pause. “What?”

  “You can’t just, like, dump the keys down a drain,” he said, actually sounding shocked.

  I looked at him for a moment, head on one side until he realised how that sounded and coloured up. So, it was OK to shoot at people and steal their car, but . . .

  I shook my head and let go of the keys. They bounced once and disappeared into the gloom. Kids today. I’d been one myself but I swore then I’d never understand them.

  ***

  We walked as far as the next diner, where we found a bunch of kids who were heading to the strip and were easygoing enough to offer us a lift. Then Trey and I spent most of what was left of the afternoon hanging out around the Boardwalk area, looking at the crazy cars on display, being deafened by the bands that were playing. I hadn’t heard of any of them but they were pretty good on the whole. Even if they didn’t know where to find the volume control on most of their amplification.

  Trey was moody and quiet, which suited me because it left me largely alone with my thoughts. I was still trying to work out what on earth was going on and failing to put together anything that would hold water.

  I tried all the permutations I could think of, however unlikely they seemed, starting with the facts as I knew them. Keith had vanished. Oakley man was trying to kill us. Whitmarsh, originally hired to protect the family, had been at first trying to kill Trey, but was now trying to capture him alive – for the short term, at least. Gerri Raybourn was trying to frame me for kidnapping the boy – and possibly the father, too.

  It all boiled down, as far as I could see it, to who had possession of the program Keith had been working on at the time of his disappearance. There was too much potential money at stake for it to be a coincidence.

  Keith had part of it, although the fact that he’d run when he was apparently so close to completion had suggested to Henry that Keith had realised he was unable to finish the job. But if people thought the program didn’t work, why had they put all this effort into going after Trey? Revenge?

  But whose revenge?

  If it was the company Keith worked for – and therefore Gerri Raybourn and Whitmarsh – that would make a certain amount of sense. Maybe they’d started out for revenge, but then Henry must have let it slip that Trey might just have the missing pieces. Their agenda had abruptly changed from trying to eliminate the boy to needing him alive if they were going to have any chance of their promised millions.

  And just when I thought I might have put it together, it all started to unravel again. As I understood it, Trey only had a small part of the program. With Keith missing and possibly in hiding, how were they planning on getting hold of the rest?

  Unless Keith was involved, too. But in that case, if he was trying to get rid of Trey because he might stir up trouble over his mother, why stop now? And where did Oakley man fit in? After all, he claimed he was the one who’d tortured and executed poor Henry. Had he been bluffing just to scare us?

  The one thing I was trying not to think about was what had happened to Sean, but I couldn’t help it. Especially not after Whitmarsh’s throwaway line. “You put up more of a fight than Meyer,” he’d said, “that’s for sure.”

  Even so, I wouldn’t allow myself to give up all hope. I couldn’t allow it.

  ***

  As the light started to drop we grabbed some food in one of the crowded barbecue places on the main strip, squeezing into a booth to share a table with a group of kids who’d driven down from Georgia just for the weekend.

  Trey livened up enough to chat to them over a meal of burger and fries but I could see the effort it was costing him to act normal. When he thought nobody was looking his eyes had begun to carry a haunted, hunted edge. He’d picked at a hangnail on the side of his thumb until he’d peeled strip after strip of skin away, making it bleed. He was worrying at it now, I noticed, as unconscious an action as a nervous twitch.

  He couldn’t, I realised, go on like this much longer. He may be an irritating brat with the usual modern teenager’s blasé attitude to danger, but faced with its constant reality he was starting to suffer. What had begun as a live-action version of one of his computer games had turned into a nightmare he couldn’t just pull the plug on when things got tough.

  Whatever I was going to do about the situation, I needed to do it fast. Before he came apart at the seams.

  Sixteen

  It was just as we were leaving the barbecue joint that Trey’s mobile rang. He dragged the phone out of his pocket and looked at the display almost fearfully.

  “It’s Xander,” he said, not making any moves to pick up the call.

&
nbsp; I let it go two more rings, then sighed, lifting the phone out of his hands and hitting the receive button.

  “Hi Xander,” I said, careful to keep my tone neutral.

  “Oh, hi Charlie,” he said, sounding just as cautious, just as low-key.

  “How’s Scott?”

  He hesitated and for a second I feared the worst, but when he spoke I realised he’d just wanted to make me sweat. “He’s outta surgery. His mom and dad are with him,” he said grudgingly. “The doctors still aren’t sure if he’ll, like, be able to walk real good, but at least he’s gonna make it.”

  Trey, not having wanted to take the call, was hovering at my shoulder, trying to listen in but the passing traffic made it hard for him to hear. Instead, he plucked at the sleeve of my shirt and mouthed, “How is he?” at me.

  I gave him a tentative thumbs up and pushed him away. “That’s good news,” I said to Xander, stalling. There was a tightness in my chest as I worked myself up to asking him about Henry’s hard drive, knowing how crass it would make me sound. In the end, I didn’t have to.

  “Anyways, Aimee said you needed to know what was on that hard drive so’s you could nail the bastards who shot him,” Xander went on.

  “That’s right,” I said, surprised enough to push my luck. “When do you think you might have the chance to have a look at it?”

  “Already done, man. I looked at it soon as I got home from the hospital. Soon as my mom and dad were done chewing me out, anyways. You want the whole thing or just the highlights?”

  “Whichever,” I said faintly. “Can you tell who he contacted?”

  “He sent the first one just to the security department at the company Trey’s dad works for. It was kinda mysterious, y’know? Henry just kinda asked them if they’d lost something and what kinda reward was on offer for the person who, like, found it.”

  Some “negotiation on our behalf”, Henry, I thought bitterly. “Did you manage to find the replies?”

  “‘Course,” he said, a little disdainful. “It wasn’t encrypted or nothing. I just had to hook the drive up and go look in the In and Outboxes. You don’t even need a password. It was a real cinch.”

  “So what did they say back to him?”

  “Well, there was some messing about backwards and forwards while they goes, ‘What have you found?’ And Henry goes, ‘What have you lost?’ In the end it was Henry who goes, like, ‘You wanna do a deal or not?’ and that’s when they cut the crap.”

  “I’ll bet they did,” I muttered. “I don’t suppose they did anything stupid like signed a name, did they?”

  “Didn’t have to,” he said. “Henry’s original mail mighta gone just to security@, but the reply came from jwhitmarsh@.”

  I nodded. No surprises there, then. “So what did Whitmarsh say?”

  “He wanted some kinda proof that Henry had gotten hold of Trey for real, so Henry spills it about you and Trey changing your hair colour and stuff.”

  Bastard. I remembered the lack of any real surprise on Whitmarsh’s face when we’d come out of the house and he’d seen our changed appearance. Now I understood why.

  “What then?” I asked, keeping my teeth together with the effort of not breaking into a fit of cursing at Henry’s obvious duplicity. He’d died terrified and I pitied him for that, but the fact that he’d never had any intention of helping us took the edge off my sympathy.

  “Whitmarsh, he goes, ‘OK, I’ll go check with my superiors about what we can offer you.’ And then, like a coupla hours later he comes back on line and goes, ‘I’m authorised to go to five grand.’”

  “Five thousand dollars?” I echoed. Not even thirty pieces of silver plus inflation? It seemed such a measly bounty to pay on somebody’s life. Two people’s lives, when I thought about it. In fact, it was actually quite insulting to have so low a value placed on me. Two for the price of one. It made me feel like a supermarket special offer. “How did Henry react to that?”

  “He went kinda nuts, man,” Xander said, “really lost it. He accuses Whitmarsh of taking him for some kinda fool who don’t know what’s at stake. How he knows that without Trey they got zip and how they should be talking about five hundred grand.”

  “I bet that went down well,” I said, unable to keep the irony out of my tone.

  “You’re kidding me!” Xander said, missing it entirely. “So Whitmarsh comes back with, ‘You’re bluffing. You don’t know what you’re talking about.’ And Henry goes, ‘Oh yeah?’ and he launches into a load of bullshit about how Trey’s been teaching some intelligent software all about how to figure out Wall Street. Is that right, man?” he finished uncertainly.

  I glanced at Trey, who’d given up unsuccessfully trying to eavesdrop. He was now sitting on the railing near the door into the diner and blowing bubbles with his gum. He got too adventurous with the last one and it burst all over his face. He tried to peel the exploded goo off his nose and cheek but only ended up sticking his fingers together and increasing the mess. As computer geniuses went he seemed pretty unlikely, I had to admit.

  “Yeah,” I said. “That’s right.”

  “No shit,” Xander said in wonder, and I could almost hear him shaking his head.

  “Did they ask Henry for his address?”

  “No, but it wouldn’t have been hard to find out. He was mailing out from his own website – y’know, the conspiracy theory one we told you about? It was kinda dumb of him if Whitmarsh’s got pals in the cops. They’d be able to trace him easy.”

  “Was there anything else?”

  “No, that was it. D’you reckon this guy Whitmarsh is the one killed Henry?”

  “Could be,” I said, even though I knew it wasn’t quite as straightforward as that. “I’m still trying to work it out.”

  There was a pause, then Xander said, “Look, man, tell Trey I’m kinda sorry I blew up at you guys at the hospital. I was just kinda worried about Scott, y’know?”

  “We all were.”

  “Yeah, well, I know that,” he muttered. “Anyway, I gotta go. I’m not really supposed to be on the phone. My folks have gone kinda ape-shit at what’s happened. It’s really freaked them out. I am so grounded.”

  “Thank you for doing this, Xander,” I said, meaning it. “It helps a lot.”

  “Yeah, well, you’re welcome,” he said, embarrassed. “Oh, one more thing, you guys. Don’t go back to Scott’s place. It’s not just that his folks are back, but the cops are all over it.”

  “OK,” I said. “Thanks for the warning.”

  “No sweat,” he said. “You could come stay here but, like I say, I think I’m grounded ‘til I’m, like, twenty.”

  He made twenty sound both a long way off and an extremely advanced age. I was around twice as many years past twenty as Xander still had to go to get there in the first place. It made me feel suddenly very old.

  As I ended the call Trey hopped down from his railing. “So what did he say?” he demanded.

  “Well, Gerri seems to be letting Whitmarsh do the talking for her but—”

  “Not that!” he interrupted, scathing at my mistake. “About Scott! What did he say about Scott?”

  “He’s out of surgery,” I said. Trey heard the ‘but’ in my voice and made an impatient, get-on-with-it movement with his hands. “There might be some doubt about how much mobility he’s going to regain.”

  Trey stared at me for a moment with his mouth open. The misery spread across his face like a window cracking in slow motion. He slipped his hands into his pockets, hunching his shoulders forwards, and turned away from me.

  I let him get halfway across the car park before I gave in and hurried after him. He didn’t want to look at me, wrenching away when I tried to catch hold of his arm. I tired of this game faster than he did. Eventually my temper frayed far enough for me to catch a flailing wrist and twist a lock onto it. The action brought him up short with a startled cry.

  He turned a reproachful, tear-riven face in my direction, staining me with
guilt. I pushed it aside.

  “Stop it, Trey,” I said, snappy as he struggled ineffectually against the lock. “We don’t have time for self-pity. It’s a luxury we can’t afford. So Scott’s badly hurt. That’s terrible, but there’s nothing you can do to help him right now other than doing your best to get to the bottom of this. Giving in and throwing a wobbly makes a mockery of what he’s going through. It makes it all for nothing.”

  He stilled and was quiet for several seconds. I could see his chest rising and falling as he took a couple of deep breaths to steady himself. Then he said, with a surprising dignity, “Would you let go of my arm, please?”

  I complied instantly, ready to catch him again if he ran, but he didn’t move.

  We stood like that for a time. Above us, the sky had taken on that dramatic pinky blue tinge as day fled into evening, leaving a masterpiece of shape and colour spread across the heavens. Below it, oblivious to the beauty unfolding overhead, traffic sped by along Atlantic Avenue.

  It was only when a bright yellow drophead Mustang full of noisy kids turned in a touch too fast off the road and swung in our direction that we moved. Trey was docile now, allowing me to lead him across the road, jogging obediently alongside me through the gaps between the cars. The light was dropping more quickly and they all had their lights on. We walked down the nearest beach ramp and out onto the sand.

  It was only then that the boy cleared his throat. “So,” he said, “what did it say?”

  I didn’t need to ask what he was talking about, but I searched his face as if to check that he really wanted to know this time. There was no trace of sarcasm there.

  I gave him the full report of what Xander had told me. When I was done he was quiet again, frowning. Henry’s duplicity, I considered, must have been hard for him to take. Trey was learning some tough lessons about trust lately.