Golden

by Mary Victoria Johnson

  Jess Cartwright, hyper-visible in a yellow rain jacket, was staring at us through her glasses with an unnervingly sly expression. Emily was nowhere to be seen.

  “You were eavesdropping,” Hera accused.

  Jess clicked her tongue. “I’m deaf as a . . . well, I’m deaf, my dear. I barely heard anything. Except that you need time to make a getaway, that is.”

  We exchanged a glance of alarm.

  “Mrs. Cartwright—” I began.

  She silenced me with a wave of her hand. “I’m offended you didn’t come to me in the first place. You know I was a Bond girl? I’m an expert in all these things.”

  “Right. Of course.”

  Ignoring our sarcasm, she continued, “How much time do you need?”

  Hera shrugged. “Maybe three hours. But Jess—”

  “One hour of us seniors being bothersome. Easy-peasy two hours after we get stuck when the storm hits. And voilà, your one-hour journey is quadrupled.” Jess winked. “I bet you’re wondering how I know all this! I used to be an actress in James Bond.”

  Hera turned to me, eyes gleaming. “Would that work?”

  I thought about it. There was no way I’d be able to stall for three hours. However, if we ended up getting stuck in the mountains while the storm hit . . . Yet, doing so would be incredibly dangerous. It wasn’t like the majority of the guests had cell phones, and if the road conditions deteriorated, the chances of an accident was exponentially multiplied.

  “Lewis?” Concern crept into her tone.

  “It would work,” I said slowly, “but you have to tell me what’s going on, Hera. I can’t risk all this not knowing why.”

  She waited until Jess had sauntered away toward the bus, then said, desperate, “Look, you could already be charged with obstruction or accessory for helping me. At least this way, you can honestly claim you had no idea what I’ve done. You have to trust me when I say I’ve never done anything bad.”

  “The RCMP might disagree with that.”

  “Do you trust me or not?”

  That, of course, depended on whether I decided to listen to my head or my heart. I’d never been much good at the former.

  I shook my head and gave a short, humorless laugh. “God help me, I think I do.”

  She visibly relaxed. “Can I borrow your phone?”

  I handed it to her. What else could possibly go wrong, anyway?

  I watched her dial a number, grit her teeth when the line went straight to an answering machine. “You’ve got to be kidding me, that little—oh! Hey! Listen, it’s . . . yeah, yeah. Shut up and let me speak. No, I . . . I need a favor. Pronto.”

  JESS’S PLAN HAD PRETTY MUCH ENABLED ITSELF. People were enraptured with Barkerville and reluctant to return to reality, so by giving in to a few last-minute requests, I managed to delay our departure by a solid ninety minutes. It was the rain that ultimately dragged everybody out of the shops and museums and onto the bus, and even then, Sergio took his time maneuvering back toward the highway. Ruefully, I noted the sky overhead was now dark as night, the rain pounding the windshield with enough force that the glass could’ve shattered. The wipers were on full speed, but couldn’t keep up with the extent of the downpour.

  “This isn’t what summer is supposed to be like,” Doug groaned. “Just our luck, this is the week the sun decides to give up.”

  “It’ll pass,” I said.

  “I can’t see out of the windows,” he retorted, as though the storm was my fault. “They’re filthy.”

  The highway out of the eastern mountains into the interior was quite narrow, and as slow as Sergio was driving, there was no avoiding the lake-like puddles lurking along the fringes of the road. The roof of the coach was already covered with sap from being parked underneath a pine tree, and the needles and fragments of pinecones were sliding down the windows in viscous, sticky rivers.

  “It isn’t a long drive,” I replied to Doug, knowing full well that in these conditions, an hour was a very optimistic estimate.

  “And we’ve got each other for company,” his wife said, glued to her Blackberry. “The view isn’t anything but hills and trees anyway.”

  “Is it?” William grunted from somewhere behind them. “We could be in the plains of Tibet for all I can tell.”

  For the most part, everyone was silent, voices short of a shout silenced by the drum of rain. A few people had pulled their curtains closed and were dozing, others immersed in books or newspaper crosswords. I tried phoning my contacts in Quesnel, but to no avail; there was zero cell service out here.

  “Hey.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Tread a little quieter next time, why don’t you? You nearly gave me a heart attack.”

  Hera rolled her eyes right back, sidling into the empty seat beside me. “At some point, Sergio’s going to stop the bus to check the tire pressure or something, and I’m going to meet my friend. I don’t know how to convince the seniors to pretend they never saw me, but . . . ”

  “If you’re not on the guest list and obviously not with us, there’s no reason for the police to interrogate anyone.”

  “True.” She cracked a smile. “Thank you, by the way. I’m sorry you had to deal with all this. I didn’t expect them to look for me on an old person’s road trip into the sticks.”

  I shrugged. “It’s my first tour, it wasn’t supposed to be easy.”

  She hesitated, then said, “And I’m sorry about—well, kissing you. It was unfair, considering.”

  “Come on, I’m already up to my head in trouble. What’s a little more?”

  “You know what I mean. I’m going to leave.”

  “So am I.” I shifted in my seat so I was facing her. “At best, I’ll only be in Canada until the end of the year. We both knew that.”

  A sunny smile spread across her face. “Worth it, though.”

  “Perle warned me about you,” I laughed.

  “I am that girl your mother warned you about.” Hera kicked her legs up against the seat in front of her, body relaxing. She plugged in a single earbud and fiddled with something on her phone. “Here one day, gone the next, getting you to bend the law in the process.”

  I eyed the phone. “Police frequency again?”

  “What, out here?” she snorted. “No, this is Beyoncé.”

  A few people shrieked as a drum of thunder rumbled through the rain, then again as Sergio swerved to avoid hitting a fallen branch. It was the middle of the day, yet even with headlights on, it was impossible to see much. I had to keep reminding myself to let out breaths I was holding, the guilt for dragging us into this still not subsided. RCMP or not, it would be a relief to arrive in Quesnel.

  “We had the most fantastic storms back home,” Hera said wistfully. “They’d go on and on for hours. The lightning was so constant my mom used to be able to get dozens of pictures of it striking.”

  “Oh? You didn’t always live in Vancouver?” It was the first time I’d heard Hera give what sounded like a true account of her personal life.

  “I’m from the prairies originally. Saskatchewan. Everything was intense there. The winters were freezing, the skies were massive, the fields just went on forever and ever . . . ” She laughed. “It was so boring, you wouldn’t believe it.”

  “You prefer it here, then?”

  “Usually. Although sometimes the mountains are a bit, I don’t know, almost claustrophobic. I miss the open space.”

  “You’d like Australia,” I said. “We’ve got plenty of that. And strange animals, and heat.”

  “Well, I’ve always wanted to hug a koala.”

  “Mr. Lewis?”

  I twisted in my seat. A particularly frail lady (Estelle? Stella?) was hobbling toward me, clutching headrests in attempt to keep her balance. Her glasses made her eyes even wider than they already were, like something out of a comic book.

  “We’re being followed again,” she said in a whispery voice. “I thought you might want to know. It’s hard to see through the rain.” />
  Exchanging a glance with Hera, I went to see what the lady was on about. Hera followed, movements becoming more tense and less languid.

  Through the window at the very back of the coach, through a veil of debris and rain, there was the hazy form of another car tailgating us. Although it was hard to see, it did look expensive; a sports car of some kind. Not the sort of thing you’d expect to be used on a road trip in these conditions in a place this remote.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Hera said in disbelief. “A Lotus? How much more conspicuous can you get?”

  “That’s your getaway?”

  Her jaw was clenched. “Looks like it. I suppose I should be glad he didn’t arrive in a zeppelin.” Then her face fell. “This is it, then.”

  Somewhat dazed, I nodded. “Yeah, I guess it is.”

  The lady tapped me on the shoulder, anxious. “Are we in trouble again?”

  Hera answered before I could. “Don’t worry. Not anymore.”

  Sergio, finally realizing he was being tailed, stepped on the brakes and sent everyone lurching. There was a screech of tires as the car swerved to avoid rear-ending us, obscured by a tirade of confused questions being asked at the same time. Sergio “accidentally” turned all the lights off and announced he needed to check that the blinkers were still working, in which time Hera had grabbed her backpack and slipped out into the storm. She didn’t so much as glance at me on her way, which was for the best. It would have only made things tougher. Heartbeats later, I saw the Lotus speed off ahead of us, and Sergio emerged sopping wet and declared everything to be in proper working condition. The lights came back on, and I returned to my seat, feeling hollow.

  “I just want to apologize again for the delay, guys,” I said, cheery tour guide persona turned all the way up. “We thought we’d be able to beat the rain, but nature obviously had other plans! Despite the—”

  I was cut off by a static buzzing that had people clamping hands over their ears until it faded away. Apparently the severe conditions were messing with Sergio’s radio, and ever since he’d shut the lights off, all the electronics were becoming more and more unruly.

  “Wasn’t the whole point of going to Barkerville early to escape this?” Doug snapped when it went quiet again. “Some planning.”

  “I cannot control the weather, Mr. Wimberley. It’s just bad luck, plain and simple.”

  “If we hadn’t dallied so long in the carpark . . . ”

  A woman screamed as a tree branch slammed into the windshield and a thin, spider-webbed crack twisted across the glass. Sergio swore in what sounded like Italian.

  “I have high blood pressure,” Grace moaned, head in her hands. “I knew I should’ve upped my life insurance before coming on this trip, I knew it.”

  “Look on the bright side,” Robbie said, “if the bus crashes and we all die, it will probably make the news. Much more exciting than dying at home of a silent heart attack, is it not?”

  Perle, mortified, cuffed his ear. Grace turned and threw up in her handbag.

  It was impossible to tell where we were, the clouds hanging so low that it was like driving through sea fog. The mountains had vanished, as had all the trees not lining the road, as though the rest of the world had simply been erased. There was just us, the storm, and nothing else.

  I watched the dozens of faces, no one except perhaps Robbie appearing comfortable with the conditions. Several complexions were green, many eyes scrunched shut, and not a single smile was being attempted. My eyes hovered on Hera’s empty seat, then, not knowing what else to do, I brought out the dreamcatcher I’d bought for Chrissy.

  “Did anyone get anything cool?” I asked, remembering the vivacity I’d seen when they’d been shopping. Sure enough, there was a rustle as half the bus began rummaging through their handbags and purses for their purchases, then a murmur as they all began comparing. Fool’s gold, snow globes, T-shirts, syrup . . .

  Just when minds seemed to finally be preoccupied with something other than the storm, Sergio slammed the brakes so suddenly that I, standing in the aisle, nearly fell right over. Grace started crying, insisting she’d pulled a muscle in her neck.

  “Why are we stopping?”

  Sergio swore again, this time very much in English, and pulled on the parking brake. Not a good sign. “Look for yourselves.”

  Like with the bear, everyone got out of their seats and swarmed to the front of the bus. Unlike the bear, it was obvious straight away what he’d been looking at: there was a tree, so wide I wouldn’t have been able to wrap my arms around it, fallen right across the road. There was no way around it. We were stuck.

  “What are we going to do?”

  “Is there another road we can take?”

  “Great. Just great.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  Sergio coughed, looking at me pointedly. “At least we were luckier than those speedsters.”

  I followed his gaze in alarm. Right beside us, on the wrong side of the road, was the unmistakable shape of the Lotus. It had rammed the tree head-on, the hood crumpled beyond repair and airbags puffing up the front seats. Two silhouettes were standing beside it, veiled by the rain. One appeared to be shouting at the other.

  “I suppose,” Sergio said when I remained silent, “we should let them on board. That car isn’t going anywhere.”

  “Neither are we. But yes, you’re right.” Was it terrible that I felt relieved?

  After ordering the seniors back to their seats, I had Sergio open the doors. Grabbing an umbrella proffered by William, I went to see what had happened.

  Hera was wearing a burnt-orange raincoat that reached her knees, water pooling in the hood and running down her face. She looked furious. The guy she was yelling at was about our age, no older than seventeen, and was leaning against the fallen tree as though he hadn’t noticed the torrential downpour at all. He had longish black-brown hair plastered to his head by the rain, eyes that were so green he must’ve been wearing contacts, and clothes that, despite being sopping wet, were cutting-edge fashionable.

  “ . . . how else was I supposed to cover a nine-hour journey in a morning? If you’re going to be picky, then next time you get your backside in a fix, either call someone else or give me a few days’ notice. Sheesh,” he sighed. “If I’m going to steal a car, I’m not hardly going to steal a minivan.”

  “Did you consider not stealing? You aren’t exactly poor, Janus.” Hera glowered at him, not spotting me. “I can’t believe you’d bring such a stupidly recognizable car anyway.”

  Janus shrugged, unconcerned. “It was black, wasn’t it? You should thank me. I nearly went for a purple Lambo.”

  I cleared my throat. Both heads swiveled to glare at me.

  “Long time no see,” I said to Hera.

  Was it just my imagination, or was she relieved too?

  “Actually,” Janus corrected, “it felt like hours. How slow were you lot driving?”

  “Slow enough to miss hitting that log.”

  His lip curled, and he offered a gloved hand. “Janus Ward. You must be Hera’s stooge.”

  “Lewis Crake,” I replied. “I feel the same might be said for you.”

  “Touché.” He turned to Hera, a single diamond earring glinting. “You’re garnering quite the reputation, hey?”

  “Whatever you were, you’re fired,” she snapped. Then to me, “I swear, he was doing nearly two hundred kilometers an hour. It’s a wonder we weren’t killed.”

  Janus threw his arms in the air in exasperation. “What did you want me to do? It isn’t my fault you blew our cover! I was good enough to interrupt my daily schedule—”

  “Of doing nothing.”

  “—to come to save you. It’s rude to be picky about it.”

  “I didn’t blow our cover,” Hera hissed, wringing the rain from the tip of her ponytail. “There was already a tip-off before we left, I just didn’t realize. And don’t forget, you owe me big time.”

  Janus gave a
short, bursting laugh. “You mean with that jet? Please, I could’ve wormed my way out no problem.”

  Hera’s eyes narrowed. “I mean Montenegro, summer last year.”

  “Ah. I suppose I do owe you. I nearly forgot about that one.”

  I cleared my throat again. “Um, could we do this another time, mates? We’ve got a busload of tourists watching. And, if I’m not wrong, an entire division of RCMP waiting for you in the next town.”

  In sync, Janus and Hera glanced between the coach, the fallen tree, and the wrecked Lotus.

  “I feel like this is all I ever say to you,” Hera said, “but I’m so sorry, Lewis. That didn’t go at all how I’d planned.”

  Janus’s piercing eyes were still fixated on the bus, calculating. “Does Lewis know anything important? Or any of them, for that matter?”

  Hera shook her head. “The driver is a client, but I haven’t said anything to anyone else.”

  Sergio?

  Janus gave a satisfied nod. “Then there isn’t anything to worry about. Nobody ever speaks to the drivers. I can still get you all out, guaranteed.”

  “He’s a brat,” Hera whispered, “but he’s also really, really good at what he does. Aside from driving.”

  “Okay.” I took a deep breath, dying to get out of the rain. “I suppose you both better come on board, then. I don’t know how long it’s going to take for this tree to be cleared.”

  “Not long,” Janus said, already moving over to the doors. “I called the Forest Service, they’re on their way.”

  “How? There’s no service out here.”

  “Rule number one. No questions. Absolute trust only, understood?”

  Before I could answer, the doors opened and he disappeared into the bus. Hera reached out and squeezed my hand.

  “I’ll stop you from killing him if you promise to stop me from doing the same, okay?”

  “I’m not sure if I want to agree to that.”

  She eyed the Lotus. “True, why not add ‘murder’ to a list of growing crimes?”

  Letting go of my hand, she followed him onto the bus, me bringing up the rear. Janus was already lounging in my seat, flipping through my paperwork with a smirk, and I was left facing the rows of perplexed seniors. I had no idea where to even start explaining. So I didn’t say anything.